Controlling External Devices

[Jeffrey Reynolds]

I too have used the amx system in large installations. not cheap and 
the amx coding is another world to deal with. usually the amx did the 
specific control tasks and the rev app is the master controller/user 
interface communicating via a serial connection. Troy is right, the AMX 
system does great down and dirty control of many devices (mainly av and 
lighting controllers) so letting it do that work is great and just have 
rev do the master user control where you might want a fancier interface 
and control system than the amx system easily affords (you can do very 
sophisticates stuff with the amx interface, but it comes at a cost and 
is really directed at av control.) if you go the amx route and 
depending on how much you want to do the amx side it might be 
worthwhile to hire an amx consultant. I started to get into it, but 
realized that it wasn't worth my time to totally learn if i wasn't 
going to use it much and the amx programmer was an ace and knowing all 
the little gotchas in the amx systems which are always evolving.

I do remember an inexpensive I/O system that was serial and usb that 
did both data acquisition and also switch closure and i think 
controlling voltages outputs. I thought it had the name bee or hive in 
it, but nothing came up on a quick google search.

what do you need to set on your mechanical control? relays, step motor 
controls? if you can find an I/O system that will control the things 
you want and it has a serial interface then rev does wonderfully 
sending/receiving serial signals to things like this and being the 
master controller/interface.

if you end up needing to control several serial devices, black box has 
a great serial switcher which allows you to route your single rev 
serial out to any number of serial ports with the addition of a simple 
port number flag to each serial command which is stripped off by the 
switcher and sent onto the proper port. works like a charm.

cheers,

jeff


On Nov 4, 2005, at 2:23 AM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com 
wrote:

> Yes, it makes sense. To be honest for those types of things I use AMX
> control systems, and their own programming language. I use Revolution
> as a device on my control network, but it isn't doing any of the "heavy
> lifting", it is more a data I/O system which the AMX controller
> resources for various types of data. I suppose I could send control
> commands through Rev to the AMX controller... but the native stuff does
> such a good job (and it is what my clients are actually buying) that I
> have never bothered to try. AMX stuff is also about the farthest thing
> from a low cost solution, if that is a concern – but it DOES qualify as
> a programmable logic controller.  ;-)