Firstly let us have a look at the history of control systems in the Audio Visual industry.

There are two prominent control solutions that have been around since the 1980’s. With more than 20 years of experience as well as continual Research and Development, these companies lead the industry and are the only true consideration in commercial & high-end environments due to the flexibility & reliability they offer. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses as well as the organisation who delivers your solution so picking the right product as well as the organisation to implement it will ultimately provide you with a solution you are extremely happy with or a poor outcome that leaves you somewhat disappointed.

AMX & Crestron lead this marketplace. One of the downfalls using either of these products is the significant expense you will go to but ultimately you will not achieve the flexibility or intelligence achieved with these platforms. If you are not technically minded than comprehending this can be difficult but the best way to explain it is this:

Imagine you were purchasing a painting to hang in your new home and you were talking to an art gallery as well as the artist. You are not purchasing an existing painting because none of them will match with your new decor so you are looking to engage the artist to paint something that will be suited to you.

An important thing to remember is that every automation system in some shape or form is a custom solution and is not something you pull out of the box and turn on.

Now the artist is telling you that you can only have three colours and on a canvas that is one of three sizes and paints are water based only. Plus he can only offer you a few designs to choose from.

Not very flexible is it…

Both AMX and Crestron offer a blank canvas of a size you choose. The problem is that the artist needs to be good to deliver a great result. If the artist is not so good he might use a stencil designed by someone else but the problem is that he can’t change the stencil and can only use the colours provided with it. Sort of like a colouring-in book….

Take into consideration that the Gallery is the company you look to purchase the solution from and the artist is the programmer who will provide the user interface and code that is the core of any controlled environment.

If you can grasp this concept, now you know the difference between a control solution provided on AMX or Crestron verses the large number of control systems that have entered the market in the past 5 years due to demand. The majority of new control systems that have entered the market such as RTI, Control 4 & Philips Pronto provide limited flexibility either due to the hardware design or the proprietary software that is used to program them. Apart from the significant cost difference that these systems do provide customers there is one major benefit for the programmer not requiring anywhere near the skill and experience of a certified and experienced coder.

AMX provides the greatest flexibility when it comes to language based programming and although some people will have you believe that it takes much longer to program an AMX system over its competitors; that is only because of the poor programming methods used.

Our organisation has been providing solutions on the AMX platform for the past decade and our approach has allowed us to achieve deployment for residential projects within a third of the time of our competitors as well as delivering the solution remotely and giving the client a far more feature rich environment that is thoroughly bug tested and reliable.

More often than not, when it comes to people and organisations selecting a suitable integrator, price is a major consideration, but when you consider that each integrator is unique, it no longer becomes apples for apples.  Here are a couple of tips:

If a colouring in book is all you need and can afford, by all means go with it but take into consideration your requirements now and in the future because picking the wrong solution can be more expensive further down the track.

Be careful selecting the artist (programmer). Too many people assume that a programmer is just a programmer and that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. No artist is the same and all have their unique talents. Their background, training and experience are all very important.

Avoid organisations utilising contract programmers. The programming of a system is a core component of a solution and there for should be key personnel for the organisation delivering the solution. Organisations using contract programmers are doing so for a few reasons; to reduce or minimise costs, to cope with too much workload and a lack of expertise within the organisation. All of these reasons are not in favour of you as the customer. If you are making a significant investment with an organisation to deliver a control solution then why shouldn’t they be doing the same?

Make sure that the organisation providing the solution is a certified agent of the control product. Manufacturers want to insure that their products are installed correctly by trained people. They are also out to grow their market share so if an organisation is not a certified agent for the product, it is most likely with good reason!

A fundamental thing to consider is the system design. A control solution is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. This can be the products used or it can be how they are interconnected. It is not uncommon to find a control solution delivered with a poor system design that ultimately limits the functionality and flexibility. The system design should try to achieve ultimate flexibility on a hardware level and leave only programming changes to achieve the desired result.

Redundancy and resource sharing is paramount if you want to get the most out of your investment. When you are going to the expense of such a system, it should not be functioning as a glorified universal remote which unfortunately we see far too often…

As you can see there is a great deal to think about and you need to answer many questions when considering an integrator. You are placing a great deal of trust in this organisation to deliver on the promises made and your expectations.

Structured cabling has existed for many years and is a term more commonly found in the commercial sector. It is a cable network design that is implemented in a building to support technology and communications services. It can incorporate data, telephone, security, BMS, Fire and electrical but it is commonly referring to data & telecommunications services.

The term Smart wiring is most commonly used around residential dwellings and is a marketing term used to pitch home automation sales to new home builders. People regularly see a few blue coloured cables that have been run around the house and call it smart wiring but more often than not, there is nothing smart about it at all.

I personally dislike the term “Smart wiring” because I associate it with the poor installations carried out by so called “Home Automation Experts”. The first thing to remember is that probably 90% of organisations who claim to be home automation experts are in fact far from it. In an industry that bares no regulations how can there be so many certified experts?

Regardless of what term you choose, “Smart Wiring” or “Structured cabling”, the concept is very important because there is only one or two opportunities to install true structured cabling into a house which is when it is being constructed or a major renovation is taking place.

With structured cabling design in a residential dwelling you should be considering the lifecycle that you are trying to achieve. Try to consider how long it will be before the house will either be rebuilt or have major renovations carried out. This will be the next opportunity to change the structured cabling as retrofitting is near impossible.

When our organisation designs a structured cabling plan for a project, we are trying to achieve a lifecycle of at least 20 years. This means that we are trying to support current and new technologies in the future for at least this period. It doesn’t mean that in 20 years the structured cabling will need to be replaced.

One thing to remember is that the majority of cabling that you will install in a structured cabling design is relatively cheap. It should cost between 1 and 1.5% of your building cost, supplied and installed. Labour is probably the biggest expense in the process but the difference in cost between running 2 cables to a destination or running 3 is fairly insignificant so always have spare cabling installed for future capacity.

Try to pick a suitable central point for all cabling to run to. This is generally the biggest mistake that is made by picking an area that is unsuitable. If your installation is substantial then you should be looking for an area that can house a free standing equipment rack with good access to at least 3 sides and adequate ventilation. You should also pick an area that will not affect adjacent areas due to equipment noise.

Contrary to what some people believe, sticking a 40RU rack in a cupboard in the Theatre room is not a good idea. However it is advisable to have the equipment room in close proximity to the Theatre as it will most likely have a large amount of AV services installed and reducing cabling lengths is important for signal quality as well as a reduction in cabling costs.

A well ventilated store room is the perfect choice and something that is virtually dust free if you want to achieve good equipment life. If you are unable to provide a dedicated room for this then your next best option would be a space in the garage as it offers great ventilation but the drawback is typically an increased level of dust.

Avoid small cupboard spaces inside the house as they provide poor ventilation, poor acoustics and poor access. Cupboards are for linen and crockery, not for racks and noisy equipment that generate heat.

The types of cabling that you install will depend on the size of your project and the services to be installed. Try to have an open mind when working on your structured cabling plan. Assuming that you will never want the ability to watch TV in a guest bedroom or have music by the swimming pool is not offering you a great deal of flexibility in the future should you change your mind.

The structured cabling is the backbone of any technology installed in your home and you are given one opportunity to get it right so always talk to someone who has a great deal of experience in this area. Make sure that it is well documented and cables are clearly identified when installed. It is this documentation that will allow you to identify whether you can support future technology later down the track.

How much cabling is enough you might ask? I would tell you that more often than not, people tend to not have enough than have too much. A large scale residential project that our organisation completed a few years ago had more than 20 kilometres of structured cabling installed and this excluded the electrical services. Admittedly this was a 1300Sqm home valued at over 7 million so you wouldn’t consider it to be your average home…

We have successfully delivered solutions in residential, corporate & marine environments without the requirement of skilled local technical support due to having the ability of remote diagnostics and management of systems.

These solutions have been deployed throughout Australia, Papua New Guinea and the United States with minimal resources whilst providing very minimal system failures and downtime.

The concept can be hard to accept when choosing an integrator to provide a solution as it is common for people to want the organisation to have a local presence as a sort of security blanket however the IT industry has been successfully achieving the same result for almost the past decade.

Integrators with a solid IT background are capable of using the same methods and incorporating smart management services within the system design before deployment. Power management, external watchdogs and monitoring have helped increase system reliability and quick fault diagnostics.

It is possible to diagnose issues with systems before the user is even aware of the problem in the first place.

Some manufacturers are now incorporating remote diagnostics internally in their products to not only improve the customer experience but to gather metric data on the reliability of their products to help improve manufacturing design and techniques.

One may consider this as “Big Brother” watching but more often than not there is little personal information, if any that is being supplied. However there is a significant benefit to consumers with the ability to provide a standard operating environment throughout their sites

Ultimately this now provides customers with more choice when they select an organisation to deliver a solution.

Using an energy management system will provide you with reduced power consumption, produce less carbon emissions, provide more flexibility with how you interact, as well as automated processes to save you power when you forget.

Rabone Systems has carried out extensive research in how best to deliver energy management systems, providing its clientele with powerful solutions that give great return on investment. With Philips Dynalite as our partner of choice for energy management hardware and all programming services provided ‘in-house’ by highly trained and experienced staff, customers can rest assured that they are receiving a reliable and robust solution that provides simplicity & advanced functionality meeting your current and future needs.

With the wide range of interfaces provided by Philips Dynalite, the integration of an energy management system will keep with the aesthetics of your new home regardless of your design. Placement & functionality of interfaces is discussed well before the final stages of construction and a heavy emphasis on future proofing your investment as well as improving resale value of your property is paramount.

Keeping up to date with current and future energy efficiency requirements as well as technology trends, Rabone Systems is an innovative company with a proven track record of exceeding expectations and delivering on time in some of the most demanding environments Australia wide and off shore.

Energy management is only the beginning and it is one of the services out of the large portfolio Rabone Systems delivers. You should consider us as your complete technology solution provider for residential, corporate, government & marine environments.

Contact us at info@rabonesystems.com.au

Or you can reach us on 1800 722 663

Intelligence. Control. Innovation.

In the 2007 trial, the DVD CCA claimed that Kaleidescape breached the CSS License Agreement and in particular, that Kaleidescape did not comply with a document called the “General Specifications.” Kaleidescape successfully argued at trial that the General Specifications document was not a part of the original contract since it was never referenced in the CSS License and was not provided to Kaleidescape until after the contract had been entered into. In addition, Kaleidescape presented evidence at trial that its products fully comply with the General Specifications anyway. In 2007, the trial court agreed with Kaleidescape that the General Specifications are not a part of the original contract. Because of this, the trial court did not clearly rule on whether Kaleidescape complies with the General Specifications. The Court of Appeal has now ruled that the General Specifications are a part of the contract, but did not decide whether or not Kaleidescape complies with them. The Court of Appeal has sent this back to the trial court to decide.

The new proceedings by the trial court will likely take place in a year or two, unless the California Supreme Court agrees to review the Court of Appeal’s decision. Kaleidescape will continue to fight, and we expect to prevail. However, it may take many years for this issue to be fully and finally resolved.

In the meantime, Kaleidescape Systems remain 100% licensed and legal. We will continue selling Kaleidescape Systems, developing innovative products and technologies, and providing excellent service to our customers, including the Movie Guide, the Music Guide, automatic software updates, and automatic service alerts. The Blue-Laser Player is still on schedule for release in 2009.

What has changed is that there is a greater presence in the residential arena for these systems and they extend from the basic contactor switching methods to dimming systems with a greater focus on energy management.

Lighting in the home has had some significant changes too. Once it was all about functional lighting for people to see what they are doing and provide a safe passage. Now feature lighting is becoming more prominent and if you are serious about lighting when you are building your new home, the services of a lighting consultant are utilised to provide a lighting design that will deliver both functional and feature lighting throughout your home.

Sustainability is also playing a key role with the use of energy efficient fixtures as a mandatory requirement for all newly built homes.

A lighting control system provides the management of your lighting throughout your home and is designed to simplify the way you interact with it.

This is not always the case as there are a large number of people installing lighting control systems who do not understand the basic principles and defeat the very key purposes for installing such a system.

So what are the key benefits?

• Reduced energy consumption – This is achieved through dimming circuits. Conventional light switches provide full power to a lighting circuit when more often than not it is excessive and a waste of energy. A lighting control system can be configured to run your lights at 70% as a standard brightness over a typical 100%. By this we achieve 30% less power consumption and we extend our lamp life which means less lamp replacement costs.
• Reduced energy wastage – It is quite common for children or even adults to exit an area such as a bathroom and forget to turn the lighting or exhaust fans off. This could be left on for hours at a time but a lighting control system can be configured to automatically turn off lights in designated areas after a predetermined time, helping forgetful people and saving you money in the long term.
• Dynamics – Conventional lighting circuits can’t be changed. They are restricted to the switch that they are wired to and require a person to activate or deactivate from this switch. A lighting control system does not care for the location of a switch point or circuit, just as long as it is a part of the network, any switch can be instructed to control any individual or multiple circuits. This gives you the ability to turn all lights off at one point when exiting the home or perhaps turn on all exterior lights in the event of an emergency.
• Integration – Other systems that operate in your home such as smoke detectors or Alarm systems can be configured to integrate with your lighting control system. In the event that your alarm system is triggered, the lighting control system can be instructed to turn on all exterior lighting or provide egress lighting inside in the event of a smoke alarm.
• Low level automation – Not to be confused with a full automation system which is how some lighting control system manufacturers like to sell and brand their products but a good lighting control system will provide basic interfacing / control of ceiling fans, motorised curtains / blinds, zoned audio systems, RGB lighting control systems and more.

There are different manufacturers of lighting control systems and the decision of which system to go with is a very important one as a lighting control system becomes an integral part of your home once implemented. Design, hardware implementation, programming & support play key roles to delivering a trouble free solution.

Be sure to read up on our article that discusses the major manufacturers in Australia where we look into their strengths and weaknesses, giving you the ability to make an informed decision of which system is best for you.

Recently we looked into pricing comparisons in Australia and even we were surprised how Kaleidescape was not only cheaper to purchase, but provided far greater value for money!

Now Imerge do produce an audio only server (Imerge Sound Server S2000) which Kaleidescape doesn’t but the new Kaleidescape Mini System provides video as well as audio for only $ 2,800 more!

So let’s look at the comparative pricing:

Imerge S3004B-400 – 4 zones audio only, 400 Gig of storage, No RAID support.  $11,300.00 inc GST

Kaleidescape Mini System with 2 drives – 1 x movie / music zone, 2 x additional audio only zones, 500 Gig of Storage expandable to 1.5 TB, RAID K, additional cascading of mini systems and servers, additional player support up to 15 additional simultaneous movie or music zones.  $14,129.00 inc GST


As you can see, value for money there really is no question that Kaleidescape provides you with flexibility and future proofing of your investment.

Now let’s look at the Imerge Media Servers against the Kaleidescape 1RU Server:

Imerge MS-5000 Media server – 1 x movie zones, 4 x music zones (2 digital only), 3TB storage, RAID 5, non expandable. – $ 29,650.00 inc GST

Kaleidescape 1RU Server with 4 1Tb drives – 3TB of storage, RAID K, Cascade server design
Kaleidescape 1080p Mini player – 1 x Movie zone
Kaleidescape Music player – 4 x Audio zones (both analogue and digital) $ 28,965.00 inc GST

Additional Media players

• Imerge MP-1000 $9,430.00 inc GST

VS.

• Kaleidescape 1080p Movie Player $5,244.00 inc GST

Or

• Kaleidescape 1080p Mini Player (No drive for loading content)  $3,561.00 inc GST

Not only is Kaleidescape cheaper and more flexible on the original purchase, additional media zones can be added at less than half the price of an Imerge Media player!

One of the most important things is that all Kaleidescape platforms are interoperable, something that Imerge haven’t been able to achieve.

Purchase a Mini System with the intent to catalogue your CD collection and maybe a couple of DVD’s. In a year or two you might find that you now have an extensive DVD collection that you wish to add to your Kaleidescape system and it is as easy as adding an additional server or mini players to increase your storage requirements.

Regardless of how many servers or players on your system, to the user it is one big system and dependant on configuration it can store up to 1800 DVD’s or 19,800 CD’s on a single 3RU server and support up to 45 simultaneous zones!

Makes you feel sorry for all those people who bought an Imerge doesn’t it?

Rabone Systems, a leading control solutions company has implemented its proprietary touch panel tracking system into its Residential v2.0 software.

The system allows users to roam freely within the home and provide automatic configuration of the control environment. The software identifies the location of AMX MVP series wireless touch panels and configures the appropriate control pages.

In addition to the auto configuration of the control environment, the software provides a number of features that can be enabled or disabled whilst a user is roaming with a touch panel.

Active lighting tracking with override and last zone restore provides automatic lighting when a user enters into the room, the ability to override a room’s current active state, and return a room to its previous state when the user leaves. This allows a user in transit to walk around the home without needing to manually turn on a single light or push a single button.

Active media tracking monitors the current media source being watched in one room and will route the source to the next media zone entered. With Rabone Systems residential software built around resource management and the infrastructure supporting native signal distribution for all media devices, it is now possible for someone to start watching a DVD in the family room which is being sourced from any player in the house, activate the tracking mode, walk into the bedroom and continue the same DVD whilst having the option to automatically shutdown the previous zone or leave it running.

Byron Rabone, Director and Founder of Rabone Systems commented “Automation in the home is about true resource management, squeezing the most out of these resources whilst building in redundancy and system stability.

Our residential software has been developed over the past four years and further development continues every day. It offers our customers a solution that is not obtainable from traditional programming methods, provides a more feature rich environment and a thoroughly tested platform.”

The proprietary tracking system utilizes two existing technologies, (Dynalite and AMX), requires no additional hardware costs to implement and does not utilize RFID technology, which is now making its way into the automation industry with additional costs to implement. It is extremely accurate and is not limited to AMX wireless panels.

The system functions by instructing networked devices to pulse discrete IR codes which are picked up by Dynalite panels and sensors located around the home. Dynalite broadcasts these messages along with the Dynalite device ID across the network which is received by the AMX control system. The software interprets the data, identifies the device, and stores its location in an array. Each touch panel is unique, including the tracking system options that can be enabled or disabled.

Communications between wireless touch panels and AMX are still handled by standard WIFI eliminating the limitations of IR but providing a unique method of identifying the location of devices.

Potentially any device that has the ability to pulse an IR code such as a watch could be used allowing a user to get up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack or a trip to the toilet with only the requirement of opening the fridge door or lifting the seat on the toilet.

Byron Rabone commented,” In the short term, Rabone Systems has provided a low cost and effective method of achieving an intelligent tracking system.

In the long term, we see short and long range RFID technology playing a big part and offering even more functionality to the home user like automatically reclining the home theatre chair to the user’s favourite position without having to lift a finger, just like luxury cars do with driver seat adjustment today.

However further progression and use of such technology will occur, such as setting your desired water temperature for a shower or bath based on user and ambient temperature but instead of having to configure a system manually, the system should be intelligent enough to monitor a user’s habits and set accordingly.

With the reading and writing capabilities of RFID technology, a user will eventually be able to take some of these creature comforts with them to a hotel or friend’s house.

The possibilities are endless which is what makes this industry so exciting.”

For further information please contact Rabone Systems.

Ph: 1800 722 663

Email: Info@rabonesystems.com.au

Web: www.rabonesystems.com.au

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-f454a8c30a9a0a4196f96c0a3bc61785}

The problem is that due to their popularity, we now have so many to choose from. Escient Fireball, Axonix Media Max, Imerge, AMX Max & Kaleidescape to name the major players but only one stands out from the crowd.

Almost all DVD servers or Digital media servers have an operating system because essentially they are a computer with a large amount of storage space. The majority of manufacturers resort to using Microsoft or Linux as an OS. Out of the two, Linux has been proven to be more stable in this environment but the limitations of using an OS from another provider is that you are at the mercy of the OS.

Kaleidescape is one of the only manufacturers who have its own operating system called KEAOS which stands for ‘Kaleidescape Entertainment Appliance Operating System’. What this equates to is a product that compares to the reliability of a mission critical, enterprise grade server.

They like to call it “The Kaleidescape Experience” and that is exactly what it is, an experience!

We can talk about all the Digital Media Servers, DVD Media Servers or Jukebox players and the different manufacturers like Escient, Axonix, Imerge & AMX but it would be no different to talking about backyard cricket versus the Ashes.

There is no comparison other than the importing of content to allow it to be played back. Much the same as backyard cricket uses a bat and a ball similar to that used in the Ashes or a test match.

Kaleidescape is in a league of its own and yes once upon a time with the price tag to match. Now with the release of the mini system we can deliver systems for less than $ 15,000, considerably less than the $ 30,000 entry level price tag we once faced.

It is the ‘Kaleidescape experience’ that provides management & storage of over 1800 DVD’s and 19,800 CD’s on a single server. It has the ability to cascade servers in minutes creating a virtually infinite collection (Not quite possible because Kaleidescape won’t let you import the same disc twice.) and simultaneous content streaming to 45 players from the same server.

It has a User interface that other manufacturers attempt to copy and it exists on a future proofed and backwards compatible platform unlike some manufacturers who have discontinued their platforms in the past, leaving the customer with an obsolete and non-upgradeable piece of equipment.

In fact, the very first Kaleidescape system produced more than 6 years ago is still in service and runs on the same KEAOS as new systems purchased today.

If there is any negative side to Kaleidescape it would only be that it does not support the ability to copy photos to the server for slide shows or let you dump your dodgy MP3 music collection to it.

But Kaleidescape is not really a digital media server, it’s an ‘Entertainment System’ used for watching your purchased DVD’s or listening to your vast CD collection in its original & intended format.

Untouched, just how the producers and composers wanted you to see and hear it…