1. Will list all switches used.  When a switch is selected from the list, it will list the outlets for that switch(List Selection Command is: Select and Nest)  This is the default way the list will work when the driver loads
2. Will list all switches used.  When a list is selected from the list, it will select the switch and the first outlet but will not nest down(List Selection Command is:Select Only).  (Page 2 of the sample shows the idea of how it would be used that way)
3. Will list all outlets for all switches.  (To show all the outlets in the list, you can either execute the command: Switch List View Type or select Show All Outets from the list that will show up if more than one switch is configured)  The list selection name command to use is: Select and Nest.  This will not try to nest if “Show All Outlets” is set to true. 

• Turn an outlet on, off,toggle or power cycle (if the outlet is powered off, power cycle will not turn the outlet on)
• Run a script stored on the web power switch
• Turn all outlets on, off or cycle on all switches

• Outlet and Switch names setup in the web configuration for the switch
• Outlet ON
• Outlet OFF
• Outlet Locked
• Outlet Unlocked
• Rebooting
• Switch Connected
• Switch Not Connected
• Selected Outlet and Switch names setup in the web configuration for the switch
• Selected Outlet ON
• Selected Outlet OFF
• Selected Outlet Locked
• Selected Outlet Unlocked
• Selected Rebooting
• Selected Switch Connected
• Selected Switch Not Connected

• Events
• Outlet Turned On
• Outlet Turned Off
• Switch Login Failed

• Var Set to True
• Var Set to False

• When Var Set to True
• When Var Set To False

• Remote specific Keyboard popup
• Full Media center Navigation
• Full PowerDVD Navigation
• Full Keyboard
• Any Manual String to be sent to event ghost (add whatever you want to the Event Ghost Profile)

• The 2nd version can control up to 20 connections and control VMC Controller,EventGhost including the 2 way websocket plugin and Kodi.  2 way feedback is available for Kodi,VMC Controller and running windows applications that are setup in EventGhost.
• Version 2 is not available for download at this time.  If you are interested in testing it, please send me a email or a private message on RTI's forums.

This driver is not going to be free (price is undetermined right now).  I also think that the majority of what thisdriver does should be a native feature built into RTI, but that is currentlysomething they do not provide.

If you do multi zone systemsin RTI it shouldn’t take long before you see how ridiculously easy it is to dothem using Master Control, especially when all the drivers you use supportit.  I have written a few drivers to helpget the ball rolling(more info on what those drivers are is coming soon), butfor long term success it will require support from all driver writers.   To help with this, I will be posting simplegeneric add-ons in the developers section that can be added to almost anydriver to enable support for Master Control. These additions take minimal time to implement, so there can be noexcuse for not supporting master control.

Before getting into the details of Master Control, Iwant to first start off with a little history.

RTI originally released UsageTracker Driver” in December 2010, In June 2011 Terry released his spin off ofthe idea and called it Virtual Selector. then in July of 2011,  I tookRTI’s idea and expanded on it calling it “My Tracker”,  In October 2011 Terry expanded on VirtualSelector and added tracking calling it VMS. Terry and I did not know each other at the time nor did we collaborateon the whole tracking driver idea.  Heworked on his version and I worked on mine. His version was gaining attentionand a lot more traction.  I prefer towork with people as opposed to against them, so to avoid confusion by having competing drivers I pulled “My Tracker”and stopped sharing my revised versions of it.  But…. I never stopped working on it or the whole concept  of trying to make it easier to maintain andmanage multizone systems in RTI with a driver.  Cjwood posted a similar idea in the developers section and some examplesa year or so ago.  I can’t find theactual post to reference.   I lost countlong ago of the number of versions and failed “this will be the greatest thingever” ideas for maintaining and tracking things in RTI  over the years.  It has been educational and incrediblypainful!! But……after a massive amount of failures I believe I have found theright path and am calling it “Master Control”. While it is new to the public realm, I have been using a constantlyevolving version of Master Control in jobs for a while now.  It has proven to be very successful meaningit works, is easy to setup, maintain and scales infinitely.    Instead of thinking of this as a competingdriver, I think of it as a driver to help evolve the entire RTI trackingmanagement ecosystem.  I along with a fewothers that I know of have all shared the same goal, make RTI a betterproduct.  Everything about this driverand how it works is done with that simple goal in mind. 

It is and has always been RTIwho triggered the idea of a tracking type driver.  Thank you RTI Andy for the idea.  Master Control would also not be possible hadRTI not recently documented a core component that is used to make everythingwork.  THANK YOU RTI! 

In a nut shell this is how Master Control works:

All remotes use MasterControl commands and variables instead of their actual device hardware commandsand variables.   Instead of thetraditional way of having the management driver or macro on a button call asystem macro that executes all the commands needed to perform the appropriatetask for that request,  Master Controlmanages sending the appropriate commands to the appropriate drivers directlyusing a standard protocol(created by me). The supporting drivers interpret this standard protocol and send thedevice specific commands to the device or devices they are controlling.  This eliminates all the tedious easy to makemistake tasks (set this zone or source to control, turn this on, wait this longturn that on,etc).   All tracking of whois doing what is managed and maintained by Master Control.  Changing from one amp, display or matrixdriver to another requires almost zero configuration, changes in ID or systemmacros and requires zero changes to any remotes;  this also expands to supporting sourcedrivers.(Roku, DirectTV, Squeezebox, Sony Blu-Ray to name a few that existtoday(will be available when master control is officially released).   With exception of page redirect macros, asystem of almost any size will require zero system macros, you simple put onecommand on your button that tells master control what source to start in whatzone or zones and you are done.

All levels (volume, tonalcontrols, etc) are scaled to 0-100%. This allows you to  make aconsistent layout utilizing a single slider, button, etc to control or show thelevel for the selected “thing”.  A singledisplay setting page can be used to control all TV’s in the project;  same thing for AVR/Mzone/Matrix settings,etc   No stacking or unique hardware adjust pagesare necessary.  Master Control allows anend user or integrator to save preset volume and tonal controls (resolves theissue of the AD series amps forgetting their settings when they losepower).  By default it will always setvolume levels to 0 before turning off and then back to the default or presetlevel when turning back on (eliminates any popping sounds when turning backon).

All configuration is done inthe Master Control driver configuration. You tell it how many zones, how many sources and what zones areassociated with what devices, then set the appropriate input for each sourcefor each zone that can play that source.  All of the supporting hardware drivers I have written have a connectionoption that allows the driver to run in virtual mode.  This was done to make it easier and faster totest while preprogramming a job.  Theonly thing you need to do before pushing the file out to a real job is changethe connection to the real connection type (serial or IP).  This also makes it super easy to show a realworld working demo of your latest cool existing project to a new potentialcustomer, with minimal to zero work(just put all the drivers in virtual mode,including the source drivers(more on this coming soon), push it to yourprocessor and show it off to a client.

I had hoped/planned onofficially releasing the diver and a collection of supporting drivers thismonth, but haven’t had enough free time to write a couple of pieces that areneeded to make Master Control usable by anyone (configuration andtroubleshooting tools).   Due to this,I’m only sharing a couple of simple sample files (5 zones, 7 sources. T2x,iPad,RK1) that will hopefully draw interest and excitement to the entire conceptbefore it is actually released.  Both ofthe samples are slightly altered files from a real world job I did a whileback.  Both samples have all the sourceand utility drivers pulled from them. The first sample uses all supporting drivers.  The second sample shows the same file but howyou would set it up using a unsupported Matrix switch and using IR only forcontrol over the displays.  The best wayto understand how the driver and supporting drivers work will be to downloadand use the sample exactly how it is on your own processor.  After you have played around with it, thenstart looking at the driver configuration and how to set things up (each itemin the driver configuration is briefly explained under get info for MasterControl).   [b]The sample and what I havesaid so far only scratch the surface of what this driver can do or where it isheaded.  [/b] There are currently no easyto use troubleshooting tools/logging, so unless you are familiar with howeverything works it can be tough to troubleshoot. These tools/logging willexist when the driver is released.

Here are a few things to never forget about thisdriver:

• 1.   Its sole purposeis to make it faster and easier to do multizone systems

• 2.   While the driverwill work without supported drivers, the true value only comes into play whenat least all of your amplifier drivers are supported

• 3.   You can usedrivers that are not supported by Master Control for direct control.  This is done by putting in one of the virtualdrivers and using master controls events to call a macro that has theappropriate commands.  While not ideal,when/if the non-supported driver is updated to support master control, it willtake seconds to swap out the virtual driver with the real one and be up andrunning.

• 4.   You can alwaysuse a driver specific command or utilize an event that calls a system macro todo extra things.

Please do notforget that I am a one man show, so the entire flow of how things work comesfrom my experiences using RTI as a control system in jobs over the years.  A lot of effort has been put in toaccommodate as much flexibility as possible; there will be some things that mayappear confusing at first.    This is notthe be all end all solution, however it is something that I hope can gaintraction in the community, so it can be improved/evolved by everyone movingforward.  It has served me well and Ithink will help others too.

Open Items:

• ?       Improve the way sound modes are handled by MasterControl

• ?       General cleanup, documentation and better logging

• ?       Easy to use configuration tool(this is the sole reasonI’m not releasing the driver yet)

• ?       Easy to use trouble shooting tool(an automated processis only as good as its troubleshooting tools, another reason I’m not releasingthe driver yet)

• ?       Fix a couple of misc. items to help speed things up

• ?       Add the ability to manually set a Zone to aSource(right now all tracking requires 2 way communication, so you must utilizevirtual drivers so everything can be accurately tracked)

Very soon additional features to beenabled(approximately two weeks; all joking aside, VERY SOON!)

• ?       Add the ability to manage image lists similar to howthe image list driverworks.

• • This feature willallow someone to set groups of image lists and assign these groups tocontainers.  You will specify how manypages per remote you want to use and then let the Master Control manage what isshown. Unlike the imagelist driver, you will only need a single containercommand to execute whatever function is needed for that image shown. There isan option that will auto center per row each image list, to help with graphicalpresentation.  This is done to letsomeone setup a system of any size and never have to touch the interface whenthey use it for smaller jobs.  It willautomatically adjust based on the number of zones, sources, settings you havesetup in Master Control

• ?       Expand the number of zones and sources. Right now itsupports up to 24 zones and 24 sources

• ?       Expand the number of hardware device counts.  Right now it supports up to 10 Amps,20Displays, 5 Video Matrix switches, 5 Audio Matrix switches

• ?       Zone and Source Grouping, syncing

• ?       Enable the ability to set schedules and createscenes(it works very similar to how Savants scenes and scheduling works).

• ?       Online Management of configurations and storedsettings as well as on the fly dynamic changes to master control(no download toprocessor needed).

• ?       Lighting management(this all ties into the schedulingand scene management)

All drivers in the samplesrequire a serial number and are all set to expire on January 31st 2016.  To obtain a serial number please go serialgenerator and select Master Control for the driver and enter your MACaddress.  The same serial number used forMaster Control will work with all the virtual drivers in the sample.  When the driver is officially released, Iwill do my best to make as many different sample files as I can that clearlyshow all the different features and options available.  There are some tricky/useful things that I’mcurrently not showing in the samples provided.

Password for samples is "remote"

Now we just need RTI to allowa driver to directly interact with MPIO ports, so an IR driver could be createdthat managed the port routing for you. This is the last piece that still forces me to waste time setting upsystems with RTI.

Remote Specific Vars

Up to 50 remote specific variables can be used to make it easier forpresenting popups or information on remote controls.

RevisionHistory

1.0         InitialRelease

Functions:

• Set to true, false or toggle a remote specific variable(command runs on the remote)
• Set to true, false or toggle a remote specific variable from a XP processor(you must input the remote control names that are listed in Integration Designer for this to work.
• Clear all vars for a remote

Variables:

• Var True
• Var False
• A Var is true (if any var is true for a remote)
• Remote Control Name

Socket Server to launch macros

The driver will support up to 100 commands, running on whatever TCP Port that is above 1000 that you want. In the driver configuration you specify the string you want the driver to listen for and the macro you want it to launch.  The driver will also trigger an event.

The Socket Server expects a carriage return to be sent to indicate the command being sent should be processed.

Example for sending a command to the socket server

1\r

The socket server will process the string “1” and execute the macro associated with this string as well as trigger the event for the command that is looking for “1”

• My version pulls extra data from DirecTV’s online guide data(station and program logos).
• My version supports select all receivers as well as alllows a single command to all receivers for all commands.
• My version allows for numbers to be inserted into a form and then sent later(makes it easier for correcting typing in mistakes)
• My version supports master control

• 1.3 Added the ability to maintain a global two way favorites list
• 1.4 Added Master Control Support. Switched from System.GetURL to HTTP for obtaining additional guide data. Added what is playing next, Episode and Season numbers as well as what category the current and next shows are.
• 1.5 Fixed some miscellaneous bugs, select all receivers send to all recievers

• Season and Episode number
• Station and Program Logos
• Season / Episode available (Boolean)
• Now Playing Category
• Now Playing Video Format
• Whats on Next Title
• Whats on Next Station and Program Logos
• Whats on Next Episode and Season Number
• Whats on Next Season / Episode available (Boolean)
• Whats on Next Video Format
• Whats on Next Category

This driver is for Sony Blu-Ray player control via IP.  The driver can control up to 10 players with a single instance of the driver.  The idea behind this is to make it faster and easier to manage controlling multiple players across multiple remotes.  All the commands for the player control can be the same.  You only need to tell the driver what player you want to control.  When the driver is configured to control multiple players, a single command can be sent to all players.  If a command is sent to the player and the player is powered off, the driver will first turn the player on, wait for 3 seconds and then execute the requested command. If the driver is configured to control a single player, the functions Set Controlling player will no longer be available. Selected Player variables and commands are always available regardless of the number of players’ setup in the configuration. The purpose was to never have to change the commands or variables on any source Blu-Ray pages regardless of how many players are used.  Same command works for all.

The driver has only been tested with a 2013 BD 5100.

If the driver fails to control your player, try using the register command. This process only needs to happen once.

The driver will run for 2 hours without a valid serial number.  If you would like a serial number, please send the money via paypal to me.  Include the MAC address of the XP processor and what the purchase is for in the notes field.  As soon as payment is received, I will send you a key.

Revision History
1.0    The Initial release of the driver
1.01 Added Model selection for each player (some players use a different TCP port for control)
1.02 Fixed a minor bug in the code that would prevent a command from being executed if multiple commands from two remotes controlling the same bd player were pressed at the same time.

1.03 Fixed problem with not correctly enumerating all remotes in a system file. Added the ability to set the default player for a remote(up to 20 remotes).

1.04 Fixed connection issue related to using the selected player commands

1.05 Added Master Control Support

Connection Requirements 

(All fields are required in order to power on the player)
•    IP address
•    Subnet Mask
•    MAC address

Selected Player Variables
•    Powered ON
•    Powered OFF
•    Connected
•    Disconnected

Player Specific Variables
•    Powered ON
•    Powered OFF
•    Connected
•    Disconnected

Events
•    Powered ON
•    Powered OFF
•    Failed to Connect

Thank you to Joshua Combs from www.sihometheater.com for sharing the http commands to control the player.  This was a HUGE help.

Epson 6010 projector

This driver is for Epson6010 projector. All of the basic functions have been tested and are working. The driver has been used in a job with out any issues.

This projector does not broadcast changes. All information is pulled when the projector first turns on. After the projector is turned a query is sent every 5 seconds to keep (Power,Input and Color Mode variables up to date. All other values are queried when their respective commands are executed from this driver.

The driver allows an integrator to send an input command with a power on or power off command.

• If an input command is set with a power off command, the TV will be set to this input before powering off.
• If an input is set with a power on command, this input will be changed when the TV is ready to receive a command. This was done to make it easier to program in ID and not have to worry about waiting X amount of seconds before sending an input command. Just let the driver do it, when the TV is ready

When the Projector is powered off, all input variables are set to false.

RS-232 Connection

• The RS-232 connection on the switch should be connected with a null modem cable/adapter to the XP processor.

IP Connection

• The Driver supports using a Global Cache iTach as a middle man enabling you to control the projector over a network connection.

Triggered Events

•  Power On
• Power Off
• Input Change
• Input HDMI 1
• Input HDMI 2
• Input Component
• Input Video
• Input PC

• Support for a Global Cache iTach
• Set input and volume on power on or power off
• Update 3 separate variables to be used for graphic digits display
• On driver startup, all known values are loaded.
• Set TV input names
• Remote specific popup variable

• If an input is set with a power on command, this input will be changed when the TV is ready to receive a command.  This was done to make it easier to program in ID and not have to worry about waiting X amount of seconds before sending an input command.  Just let the driver do it, when the TV is ready

• When the TV is powered off, all input variables are set to false, except for the selected input integer variable.  An added command to test this input has been added in the event that someone needed to know the input the TV was set to. (I have no idea when you would ever want to do this, but it is there in case you need it).

• Power On
• Power Off
• Input Change
• Input HDMI 1
• Input HDMI 2
• Input HDMI 3
• Input Component 1
• Input Component 2
• Input PC
• Input Photo Viewer (SD)
• Input Viera Cast

• If an input command is set with a power off command,   the TV will be set to this input before powering off. 
  
• If an input is set with a power on command, this input will be changed when the TV is ready to receive a command.  This was done to make it easier to program in ID and not have to worry about waiting X amount of seconds before sending an input command.  Just let the driver do it, when the TV is ready   
  

RS-232 Connection

• The RS-232 connection on the switch should be connected with a null modem cable/adapter to the XP processor.

IP Connection

• The Driver supports using a Global Cache iTach as a middle man enabling you to control the display over a network connection.   (Native IP control for these TV’s isn’tdocumented nor does it support Power ON)

This is a one way IP driver for Panasonic TV’s.  It has been tested with a 2012 VT50.  This TV will power on if a WOL Magic Packet is sent to it. This command is used to provide a discrete power on command. You must turn WOL on in the network settings for this to work.   The driver requires the IP address and MAC address of the TV in order to work. 

There are no discrete input commands. Logic was built into the driver to simulate a discrete input command.  It sends an input, followed by a 1 second delay followed by the respective number for that input.

The driver allows an integrator to pre select a input command with a power on or power off command.

• If an input command is set with a power off command,   the TV will be set to this input before powering off. 

• If an input is set with a power on command, this input will be changed when the TV is ready to receive a command. This was done to make it easier to program in ID and not have to worry about waiting X amount of seconds before sending an input command. Just let the driver do it, when the TV is ready

Revision History

1.00      Initial Release
 
Variables:

• TV Powered ON
• TV Powered OFF
• Trial Expire Time
• Trial Expired
• Entered Serial Number
• Driver Connected

The driver requires a valid serial number to function indefinitely. If a serial number isn’t provided, the driver will work for 2 hours.