Lesson Description
Part A: Dynamic Pairing
6m 38s
Link a virtual peripheral device in the design with a new physical hardware device on the network, without needing to redeploy the design.
Video Transcript
Part A: Dynamic Pairing
6m 38s
0:08
Dynamic Pairing is a special feature in the Q-Sys Designer software
0:11
that allows you to link a virtual peripheral device in your design
0:16
to a new physical hardware device on your network, without having to reload your design.
0:21
If you weren’t using Dynamic Pairing, then the only way to add new hardware is to take your system offline
0:27
update your design and then redeploy, something that you don’t really want to do
0:31
if your sound system is crucial in running your business.
0:34
Dynamic Pairing lets you plan ahead for expected additions to your system
0:39
by telling the system what to do when those peripherals are found on the network.
0:44
Let’s say you’re designing a system for a conference hall with multiple rooms.
0:48
There’s a bingo game scheduled every week, but it changes rooms depending on which one is available.
0:53
The bingo operator has a multimedia cart with a microphone and audio from a computer
0:59
and let’s say a Blu-ray player and a keyboard because this isn’t normal bingo this is Awesome Bingo.
1:05
He has this all routed to an IO-22 on his Awesome Bingo Cart, which can move from room to room.
1:12
With Dynamic Pairing, all he has to do is plug his IO-22 into
1:16
a network port in whichever room he travels and his audio will be played over that room’s loudspeakers,
1:21
and not the others. So how do we set this up?
1:25
Let’s take a look at a very primitive version of this scenario.
1:28
You’ll want to build your design as if there were a separate IO-22 in each of the four available rooms,
1:34
even though there will only be one in reality. So here I’ve created a signal path for our first room:
1:40
the IO-22 input card is routed to an Automatic Gain Control to keep the Bingo Operator’s levels in check,
1:46
then I have a mixer that lets me play some background music and announcements in this room
1:50
from another Audio Player in my design. Eventually it’s all sent out to the loudspeakers
1:55
in that room through this IO Frame. I’ve duplicated this path for each of my four potential Bingo rooms,
2:00
using a different IO-22 device in each one, even though there will only be one in reality.
2:05
These IO-22s here, they don’t even exist on my network yet, so what I’m going to do
2:09
is use Dynamic Pairing to set them up for future use to be linked with the one roving IO-22 on the Bingo Cart.
2:16
First, I’ll click on the IO-22 in Room 1 and go to its Properties Panel,
2:20
where you’ll see the Dynamically Paired field. Let’s change this to Yes.
2:25
And let’s also change the Is Required field to No. If a device is considered Required,
2:32
then it will register as a Fault when the device is missing from the network,
2:36
so with a setup like this one you would constantly be triggering faults.
2:39
I’ll make this same adjustment to each of my IO-22s. By specifying that each device is not required,
2:45
the system will simply display a grey bar around the missing device
2:48
when the design is running on the Core rather than registering a fault.
2:52
In fact let’s save to the Core and Run, which you could also do by pressing F5.
2:56
Once it’s up you’ll see that grey bar that indicates the device is missing.
3:02
Now if you don’t have a Core and some extra peripherals handy,
3:05
you won’t be able to replicate this next part on your own, so stay with me here.
3:08
I’m going to plug my IO-22 into my network, and let’s assume that this port here
3:13
is our network access in Room 1. Meanwhile let’s access the Q-Sys Administrator,
3:19
which you can do here in Designer or you could use the stand-alone software.
3:23
You’ll see a new tab that’s titled Dynamic Pairing.
3:27
This tab only exists when you’ve selected at least one device for this function.
3:31
Here you’ll see a list of peripherals that can be paired, which are my four theoretical IO-22s.
3:36
Select a Method of Dynamic Pairing – you can choose to do it by Net Name or Switch Port.
3:43
The scenario we’re working on requires the Switch Port method,
3:46
which means that we primarily care about where the new device is being plugged in.
3:51
The system will be looking for an IO-22 on the network,
3:54
and in the Pairing Data field it shows us the port where it found that device.
3:58
In our case this comes in the form of the port’s MAC address,
4:02
but different switches may provide different labels. Once you pair this device in the software,
4:06
the system will always look for an IO-22 on that specific switch port in Room 1.
4:12
A nice benefit of this is that I’m not just limited to the Bingo Cart plugging in there
4:16
I may also have a DJ with an IO-22 in his gear, or a Dance Instructor with an IO-22,
4:21
they could all plug into this port whenever they want and the system will treat them the same.
4:25
The other Method of Dynamic Pairing is Net Name – in this scenario, we care about the exact device,
4:32
rather than where it accesses the network. For instance,
4:35
if you knew that your installation would eventually expand to need an additional Page Station,
4:40
you could build that Page Station into your design now and use a Net Name Dynamic Pairing
4:46
so that you can integrate that Page Station in the future without redeploying your design.
4:51
Alright, back to our conference rooms.
4:53
Let’s look at my network switch again, I’ll disconnect from Room 1 and connect to another port in Room 2,
5:01
and repeat the Dynamic Pairing process in the Administrator.
5:04
Now keep in mind that it may take from 30-60 seconds for the configurator to see this change,
5:10
so you may have to wait a little bit before it will show up in Administrator.
5:12
I’ll skip forward so you don’t have to wait with me. I’ll repeat this process with each room,
5:17
pairing the virtual device with the MAC address of the switch port in that room.
5:21
It’s worth mentioning that in order to use this Switch Port method,
5:24
your switch must support the Link Layer Discovery Protocol or LLDP.
5:30
LLDP is a vendor-neutral link layer protocol in the internet protocol suite used by network devices
5:36
for advertising their identity, capabilities, and neighbors on a local area network,
5:40
principally a wired Ethernet. If you don’t know what that means, well, neither do I.
5:44
You should ask your IT guy. In fact, buy him lunch, he works really hard.
5:48
You may have noticed that I hit Update in Administrator after each pairing,
5:52
and now that I’m done I’m going to save my design to keep these changes.
5:55
Now that my system knows what to look for, let’s see it in action.
5:59
I’ll play some music on my Bingo cart, and plug it into Room 1.
6:04
You can see that it automatically pairs the IO-22 with this first one in my design,
6:08
and it plays through Room 1’s loudspeakers. You’ll notice that it’s not playing through any of the
6:13
loudspeakers in the other rooms. I can disconnect it from Room 1 and connect it to another port,
6:19
and once again it will be discovered in your inventory, and it will become active over there.
6:23
You don’t need to shut down the system to add the peripheral,
6:26
you don’t need to do anything else in Administrator anymore,
6:29
it is literally as simple as plugging it in and it works. Thanks for watching.
Helpful Tips and Definitions
Part A: Dynamic Pairing
6m 38s
- Dynamic Pairing is a special feature in the Q-Sys Designer software that allows the user to link a virtual peripheral device in the design with a new physical hardware device on the network, without needing to redeploy the design.
- By Setting setting the "Is Required" field to "NO" when setting up your virtual device, the system will not register a fault when it doesn't find it on the Q-LAN network. Instead, it will just show a gray bar around the device.
- Access the Dynamic Pairing tab in Administrator. It will only show up in Administrator AFTER you after set one of your device's property panel to "Dynamic Pairing".
- Selecting "Net Name" means that your primary concern is the exact name of the device you are looking for, regardless of where it is found on the network. For instance, you may be building a design that will eventually expand to include an additional Page Station. Since paging is critical to your business you won’t want to shut your system down in order to integrate that new Page Station. So you could add it to your original design using Dynamic Pairing even though it doesn’t exist yet, and when it is connected to your network later (wherever that may be) it will function as desired.
- Selecting "Switch Port" means that your primary concern is the location of the device you are looking for. A benefit of this method is that this allows any IO-22 to function that is plugged into that port.
Downloads and Links
Part A: Dynamic Pairing
6m 38s