The Future is Lasers

Well, lasers, jetpacks, food in tablet form and of course robots.  Robots that bring you dinner (so that’s just some pills on a plate then), do the housework,  order the shopping, pick the kids up in a jet car from school and so on…

As we are acutely aware, very little of this Utopian future has yet to materialise (talking of materialising, where’s the teleporter, hmm?).  Our tentative steps into an automated future have just about got as far as closing the curtains automatically at night and, if you’re feeling very flush, possibly running you a bath at a time of your choosing.  Personally, I find the idea of a tap turning on when I am out a little bit of a step too far.  If I wanted to flood my house when I’m away, I’d just take the lagging off the pipes over the winter holidays…

Some electronics companies have, none the less, made a living out of remote controlling as many aspects of our domestic and working environments as possible and,  when implemented well, these systems can offer a genuine improvement on the way we work and live.  The companies I am thinking about are Crestron and AMX who are the two major players in home automation systems (there are now many others but to my mind these two are still the main players – please feel free to correct me if I am wrong!).

With the release of the DC1048 about a year ago, xta were pitching for the upper end of home installation, as well as any venue that needs the best sound quality in a unit that is tailored more to the permanent install both in terms of features and style.

So, to go with this new sexy look, we brought out a new sexy touch panel to remotely recall some presets.

With a view to offering the most flexible options for automation, the remote doesn’t rely on complex serial comms or specialist protocols – it connects up with a Cat5 cable (only because it has 8 cores!) but it emulates contact closures and this allows several panels to be parallelled up around a location.  If you don’t want to use this panel, or want access to more than 4 preset configurations, you simply change the setting on the front panel of the unit and use the port to recall more presets, or connect things back to relays in whatever system you have.

We’ve received good feedback about this flexible approach, but of course there will always be instances where something more or something different is required.  What if you need volume controls?  Do you want to leave the preset config changes to be handled automatically by the DC1048s built-in scheduling, and just have some level control in the venue?  With the simplicity of the GPI hardware it is also possible to have 2 pairs of up/down volume trim controls that can be assigned to any input or output so you can adjust (withing a fixed [programmable] range) gains.  I say ”it is possible” as currently it’s not implemented, so any feedback would be gratefully received on this topic!

What we have implemented is a simple serial protocol which works via the RS485 bus for those instances when you need a bit more control.  I know I waxed lyrical a few paragraphs ago about obviating the need for learning complex remote protocols to perform any automation, and this system really is designed to be simpler than the full remote protocol used when programming via iCore.

It alows any input or output to have its gain adjusted (absolute settings, not trims), mute control, and preset recall.  There are no fancy checksums or CRC codes to deal with so any Crestron/AMX system (or anything else – from a humble batch file up to an iPad) can control it.

The info on this is a little beyond the scope of this blog, but it’s all in here:
https://audiocore.wpengine.com/tech-support-docs/DP4%20Series%20Remote%20Protocol.pdf

Unleash the geek in you and have a look!*
*Do you unleash a geek, or do you unstick them 😉