Automation in Motion

2008-09-08

CEDIA ’08: Crestron News

For sure, as usual in the past with Crestron, we get a nice range of new products presented, here is a brief story on each of them:

  • For sure we won’t speak again about wonderful TPS-6X with its receiver CEN-HPRFGW which I had already well presented before summer (check here that article).
  • As few of you have suddenly discovered, AAS products have suddenly disappeared from catalog. It looks CEN-ISERVER would be a replacement :/ But it looks to me a very strange choice from Crestron to use an iPod that is definitively mono-zone product in an audio server. It means as much iPods and CEN-ISERVER than audio zones you need ! I’m not convinced for now with that product as solutions such as SlimServer work lot better with unlimited zones and allow stream of protected music. Nevertheless, iPod dock changes to manage now video from iPod, CEN-IDOCV, with iTunes synchronisation through Ethernet, et now dock is PoE compliant.
  • Avalaibility of Flash SDK to develop your own interface with popular language: Flash from Adobe (read my previous article about it).
  • For sure as everyone Crestron presents its own iPhone native interface, which looks nice but none demo avalaible. Product will be probably avalaible at end of year, not before !
  • A big surprise is announcement of a new Adagio Box: ADMS which combines best of Adagio products with media streaming and storage such as Kaleidescape servers. It includes either a DVD player with 500Go on disk storage in ADMS, or Blue-Ray player with 1To storage in ADMS-BR). It handles also rent and buy online system of Amazon Unbox and Media Store but avalaible only in US. It’s able to manage till 5 DVD/Blue-Ray 200 discs changers (ADC-200BR), which allows also to copy content to internal hard-drive of Adagio that can be extended with optional external 4To storage CEN-NAS-4TB. Storage is in RAID to avoid any loss of data. Adagio server includes one main zone and two auxiliary audio zones.
  • To allow display of any composite video signal, such as alarm cameras, entry door cameras, Crestron offers little box CEN-NVS100 that’ll stream your video signal to display on any panels compatible with MJPEG viewer.
  • For other news, as I had already presented them earlier, please check my previous article where you’ll find all details.

And that’s it for shows that year, see you next year for other great news and products !

2008-02-13

My first Adagio programmation: wow :)

So here we are, I have to go on site to program an Adagio system in emergency for a customer that didn’t realise some few things :(
He bought an Adagio System with five iPod docks. He learned lesson from manufacturer stating you can install an Adagio directly out of the box without computer neither programming work :) Unhappy it’s not true if you use five docks as you need to attribute each dock at a room ! So I have been called in emergency to go on site and program system. Unhappy I had never used previously an Adagio, yet less programmed one but Crestron told me it was really simple with Adagio Designer, so let’s go….
Here I’m few days later on site, in a nice place in french Alps with my Macbook ready to program (well I read all manuals of equipment few days before, downloaded all firmwares of products used and checked I had latest version of System Builder installed).
First thing, I check quickly wiring made by the dealer (correct wiring between iPod dock, Abar, Adagio, and loudspeakers). It looks fine. So now I connect my computer with program cable to program port of Adagio and set up its network with Toolbox. Once setup and one reboot later of Adagio, I’m able to connect to it with Toolbox directly through Ethernet :) Looks to be on good way !
Now let’s start Adagio Designer, it’s really simple, select number of zones, name of each one, output used, number of accessories (so I declare my five iPod docks), which input I use for each one, number of keypads used (five APAD here), and then it generates everything for me, and it flips to System Builder directly ! Wow, I did nothing special, very simple and straighforward :D
I just check quickly what system has done for me and it looks fine, so I decide download everything, it first starts to download keypads (slowly, not very nice for that), then Adagio program, and Adagio restarts at the end.
I go to first APAD, put my iPod in dock, and it works great :) and so on for the other four zones !
So I must confess it’s really simple to program (well it’s not programming when you do so few things) and quickly avalaible for use by end user :D
It looks to be really a great product as it includes also a bunch of control ports as a regular controller so you can get a whole multizone audio system with also control of other sources or equipments such as lights, HVAC.. without additional equipments for automation !

Thanks CRESTRON to make it so simple !

P-S: I also did update of firmware of all equipments before first upload of program to be sure everything is well up to date :)

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