Video Transcript
Introduction to Q-SYS Control (Part 2)
4m 25s
00:07
Welcome back! Let’s walk through the two directions of serial communication.
00:12
First, incoming serial communication from a 3rd party controller are received by a Serial-to-TCP Script,
00:19
and then the script talks to Q-SYS virtually via Ethernet.
00:22
Alternatively, when Q-SYS needs to send control commands out to a 3rd party device,
00:28
the control component in your design can connect directly to the serial port on your Q-SYS system.
00:34
In terms of establishing or troubleshooting an outgoing serial control connection,
00:39
there are a few different elements to look for.
00:42
Start by downloading the controlled device’s Serial protocol or API documentation that details specific
00:49
Serial port settings and the proper command and response formatting for the device.
00:54
Next, we verify the wired connection.
00:56
You've probably all used Serial control enough to know that if at first you don't succeed,
01:02
flip transmit and receive and try again.
01:05
Jokes!
01:07
Here we have a design example.
01:08
I have a serial port of a Core 110f wired to the serial port of the I/O-8 Flex which is acting as our controlled
01:16
device so I can control and monitor both ends of a serial connection independently.
01:22
A controlled device will require very specific Serial port settings that we will need to match to our Core
01:28
in order to establish any Serial control communications starting with the baud rate.
01:33
I need to verify that the baud rate of the Core’s Serial port matches that of the controlled device.
01:40
If these are set differently, you'll either I'll get some weird unprintable character of what was received,
01:46
or you'll see no response at all.
01:48
We will also need to verify if we have identical settings for the number of data bits and the stop bit,
01:55
otherwise the last bits of the Serial transmission will not be received correctly.
01:59
Next, we need to check that we have the proper Parity setting required by the controlled device.
02:05
One other aspect we need to include is the required delimiter,
02:09
also known as an End of Line or EOL character a device expects at the end of each command.
02:15
In this example, the controlled device is looking for a Carriage Return, or Hexadecimal 0D,
02:22
at the end of each line, so if we do not include this, these two devices will never understand that
02:27
they have received the entire line of the submission.
02:30
Once we have these settings configured to match the controlled device,
02:33
the communication will be interpreted correctly.
02:36
And so the final thing for us is to verify we are sending correctly formatted commands.
02:41
Now we can test our control command.
02:43
We can send a command strings to the controlled device, which will then in turn,
02:47
send a feedback response acknowledging the command was executed.
02:51
So as I can send commands 1 through 8, the controlled device will then provide feedback responses that these
02:58
commands have been received correctly which is demonstrated by our feedback LED’s.
03:03
Next, let’s look at the example of incoming Serial control from a third party control system
03:09
connected to the Serial port of a Q-Sys Core.
03:12
As we mentioned earlier, to utilize the External Control Protocol or ECP will require a Serial to TCP Script to
03:20
receive the Serial commands and then forward them to the Core over a loopback IP connection.
03:26
Like in our previous example, we will need to verify that the Serial communication parameters
03:31
are identical for both the Q-Sys Core and the control system.
03:36
We will also need to add the Q-Sys component to the Named Control with a custom name
03:42
that will be referenced in the command strings.
03:45
In this example, we are receiving gain level control commands from a control system.
03:50
When a gain command is received by the Core, the gain level is adjusted and an acknowledgement
03:56
is returned to the control system.
03:59
This communication can be seen in detail in the Debug Console of the Serial to TCP Script.
04:05
To ramp the Gain level, the control system sends a sequence of gain commands with increasing or
04:11
decreasing values and the Gain fader should ramp up accordingly.
04:15
Alright, that’s about it for Serial Connections.
04:17
We’ll pause right there, and pick up with GPIO connections when we get back.
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Introduction to Q-SYS Control (Part 2)
4m 25s