I met AJ Thompson from the LearnAVProgramming.com website. He enrolled in a bunch of courses over the past few years and we recently exchanged some emails where he told me about some interesting solutions he is working on.
He tells us about what it takes to move from traditional AV programming to modern software tools and more importantly – why you would want to.
Today’s guest is Co-founder and VP of business development at Global Cache. Global Cache makes connectivity products that let programmers like me control and automate pretty much anything using whatever software we like.
In an industry full of propriertary solutions, this is quite the unique approach. That’s why I am really looking forward to learning a lot today from Robin Ford.
I have the honour of having two cyber security experts on the show today.
Dr Jonathan Butts is a retired Air Force officer who among many other roles served as Research Director at the Air Force Center for Cyberspace Research.
Billy Rios has held security positions with companies like Ernst & Young, Verisign and Microsoft. He probably had one of the coolest sounding job titles as Google’s Security Ninja.
Both Jonathan and Billy are currently Managing Partners at QED Secure Solutions, whose mission it is to advance Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection.
Highlights From This Episode
Anyone can purchase hardware or software and spend as much time as they can afford learning how it works
There are three layers of security, The Vendor, The Systems Integrator and The Technology Owner
All three parties need to work together to create a secure solution – it is a team game
One defensive strategy is identifying critical systems and segmenting them from other systems
The biggest security weaknesses are usually in the system configuration
Security exploits can include Terrorist Threats, Public Safety, Critical Data Breaches and Unauthorized Usage of Computing Cycles
The public safety aspect of the IoT may spur some regulations for security requirements
Using a third party IoT platform does not shift risk away from stakeholders
Raising awareness among Management and Leadership Stakeholders is the best way to make security a priority
Mentioned In This Episode
QED Secure Solutions, IBM, War Games, Microsoft, Google, Sochi Winter Games, Crestron, Defcon, BlackHat Conference, Department Of Homeland Security, Microsoft IoT, Amazon IoT, Ubuntu Core
Vangelis Mihalopoulos has a background in software engineering, product marketing and startup investing. He is currently CEO and founder of yodeck. a digital signage management platform.
Highlights From This Episode
The Raspberry Pi is capable of displaying 1080p 60fps video
Video performance in a web browser is limited because the browser does not use hardware acceleration
Interactivity applications in digital signage are not all that popular yet
The most common environmental awareness applications involve detecting footfall
Digital Signage security has three aspects: security of the player, protecting sensitive content, preventing unauthorised logins
Organizations that display confidential content with digital signage usually opt for an on premises solution
Mentioned In This Episode
yodeck, Raspberry Pi Foundation, NEC, etcher, Chrome
Peter Krogh is a photographer and author the DAM book, Digital Asset Management aka the bible on digital photography. His currently the Acting Director of Digital Strategy at History Factory where he integrates storytelling, web-based media publishing and digital preservation into a seamless user experience. I am really looking forward to hearing more about how he uses technology to tell stories and preserve the past.
Mentioned In This Episode
History Factory, Google AI, Adobe Light Room, Google Cloud Vision API, South By Southwest
Thomas Walter is the Strategic Product Marketing Manager for NEC Display Solutions Europe where he also served as product manager for public display solutions. He’s also served as Product and Sales Manager for Sanyo Sales & Marketing Europe.
Highlights From This Episode
Open Modular Intelligence allows a product to be customised in ways a manufacturer cannot forsee.
The lifetime of a computing device is usually shorter than a displays. Modular solutions address this.
Digital Signage is the most common application of on board computing.
Operational benefits include device control for power saving and using sensors to adjust content based on the current environment.
OPS (Open Pluggable Specification) Slots allow third party computing power and video signal interfaces such as HD-BaseT in a standardised format.
Bruno Napoli has a background in the Home Cinema scene in Paris, France. Which over the years, evolved into luxury smart home integration. He is a columnist for Smart Integrations Mag and served as co-founder of Krika, a remote monitoring platform for integrated AV and smart home systems.
Highlights From This Episode
Custom Installers may resist remote network monitoring because they are forced to use the network – they’d rather be doing AV.
Even if the value proposition is clear, the market may still not adopt it – this is the life of an entrepreneur.
End users should be informed that is their responsibility to keep network devices up to date – or offered a service contract.
Start the conversation with service and maintenance instead of features
Communicate to the customer that you will be there for them and you are not a sales sniper (one shot, one kill, next customer).
Residential installers should team up with IT companies to service the network.
Controlling home systems has safety repercussions that are often overlooked.
Matt Dodd has an extended background in training and has served on the board of Cedia and as Director of Education.
He was Co-founder of smart home and residential integration company thinkingbrinks and is currently Managing Director of Clavia – a coaching and training development company that creates e-learning videos and explainer animations for the AV industry.
Highlights From This Episode
There is a big difference between presenting and training.
Training should be planned in a similar way to an AV system.
Ongoing testing and evaluation is the only way to be sure a training has reached it’s objective.
A one hour training seminar at a trade show is difficult to evaluate and execute on. That may be why the value of online training is growing.
Mentioned In This Episode
Clavia, Cedia, Dave Schoenbeck, Paul Harris, Avixa, SDVoE, Justin Kennington, TPLink, Nest
Transcript...
this is software defined survival where we explore how software defined systems are changing the business of E. V. I. T. today where do you find survival she’s will be during the matrix which %HESITATION and then you know what IT switch next to it in the same right why would you do she just wants to sell more products status their objectives get these people some this is my what product you pick up the Senate works the same exactly the same I urge people to try first of all before we do the research for you think about what the outcome of the training looks them business how you Chiles are you waiting the success of that learning people telling the thing we need to soon as great but it was really something last sparkle happy she thing to do during itself we do cool stuff and AV but sometimes it’s hard to explain it’s hard to explain our products it can be hard to explain how our systems work in a world where patience and attention are so limited it’s an even greater challenge so when I first saw the explainer in E. learning videos at Cleve your group dot com I was really impressed by the high quality and professional productions narrated by people who are obviously passionate about AV explainer videos are kind of a unique tool where education and training bumper right up against marketing and branding the benefits for product manufacturers are obvious and even integrators and technology owners can use explainer videos to train and users how to operate a system the managing director of clay via Matt Dodd shared with me a great idea of a betting these types of videos right in the touch panel now I’ve seen this done with web apps before and I think it’s a great way to get users up to speed on how to operate a system in a quick and fun way go to cleave your group dot com and check out some of the sample videos and then start thinking about how video can help get your message across welcome my name is Patrick Murray and today’s guest has an extended backgrounds in training and has served on the board of sedia ends as their director of education he was co founder of a smart home and residential integration company called thinking bricks and is currently manager managing director of Claudia you’ll have to correct me if I pronounce that right levy is all good that there is a coaching and training development company that creates you learning videos and explainer animations for the TV industry please welcome mat dot net welcome thank you very much is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to correct or expand I know knows I guess I’m not or cancel million online profiles of today could be easily really embarrassing that’s it it’s getting pretty obvious that I just go to the guests linkedin profile and quick synopsis of it so tell us how did you get started in AV I I always like to ask this question because nobody really grows up saying I want to work in the AV industry hardly anybody really even knows what it is until you get into it so so what’s your story how did you wind up in a well back in two thousand four and to the point to two thousand fool when all was well years old keep them on the my I’m on the court jokes on with true launch industry M. large corporate only the largest hospitality company in the world actually I’m gonna be voted system a networking Batman from streaming charts from the user perspectives on end user what begin a computer with a C. R. T. monitor what possibly not even an Intel processor so it was so nobody Kay and then you have to turn away all of their accounting processes %HESITATION on the machine might muscle from team on which we we should trucks around the U. K. helping people training people now seems things or treatment system so I did not from from an early age might not only I left college and went straight into hotel management and then from there went into training Sir well my about point my interest in a V. walls primarily amateur novel so much on I do play the drums up being rolled in bonds for many years but I never really thought that I was going to the set getting to a V. at the time in two thousand four honors at the stage where I was at a crossroads and I didn’t have any children most twenty seven years old and I just didn’t feeding style carried on the way I was going I was going to just become a number not able to do that because of the age where I could do something about it so I did I left and I left moving to Aviano I looked around various different industries what I want to do what they don’t have to be on is a skill set which was training and I really like the idea of of the of the lifestyle business and you know the resident chalet V. world time is starting to look really interesting the more more products available to people but not off the shelf so there was an opportunity to buy some stuff put it all together macular retracted and send it to people in that big house is I’m not so we started a sense of thinking bricks with money and business partner when we started from a blank piece of paper he too was from the corporate world so you know we like to think that it probably know we set up a business plan together and we started from zero tried to learn how to integrate the trades and %HESITATION I’m lost began the journey fit for the business and I had a personal goal I suppose but then it was gone leave my head %HESITATION is big move jumping to a corporate shipping zero the boat I’m not yeah I had a personal goal I would just like to potentially sold the business so I didn’t really want the job because I had a job I wanted to challenge and not challenge was senior credit business get it running and not to sell it within ten years ten years flying in there last night we went and it was really good really good %HESITATION churning we build an awesome business and it you know we did exactly what other lost all businesses were doing and we sold really cool stuff to reach people in London but during that time that’s when golden CDS because that training Forman pool failure if you will eat it was wholly different to what I was used to in the corporate world where everything is done by a process if if you will about me not to denigrate in a CD or any of the trade association but you know when you working for huge huge organization like the is is lots of people so of course it’s and rather than just be the moaning elegance and %HESITATION order what went in the store real people involved on my arms to senior install you could do this and will get better and this is what I bring to the table skill set and you know they did it in price that you know they were they were they thankfully the name Bryce inside come all help is help us to make it better on a mass how I ended up on the on the bold and and subsequently from the board I was unable to and my account for school work believe the education or should look like my work to the guys in the west and to do that stepped out of the golden and stepped in as the consumer education director to help them to grow their education %HESITATION failure on that profile and that’s exactly what we did and and you know when I left stop role and it’s more like my colleagues I am it’s great to see that continue to grow and now in a senior education in the NBA is is a whole lot different than what was back in the day I’m not gave me gave me some real faults about what I want to do next two thousand fourteen I sold my shares in my integration business ten years four months off to starting it so I want any more personal goal which is good and that’s where he was born months where and that’s when I decided I wasn’t going back and doing any kind of integration work on teacher but I want to defend starts and really helping people outlet to to get it right first time because more more people coming into the industry and they were turning just to see here which is great returning to the education for more help to to to grow which is great them but then you know there’s certain bits of education of people needs directly relating to product CCD being a trade association couldn’t be seen to be aligning with those products are there was still plenty of opportunities as independent going to to help them training and present training two groups of people and then I’m about three years ago I decided to move clay buffoon only residential focused company into a commercial I need the company as well so we moved hello training cool square largely down to networking Cisco qualification networking so helps and was doing %HESITATION floor network training at the time yeah I thought there’s a big world out there with with commercial so played yet now look softer and primarily is commercial and most of my business now is this to the commercial channel about sent on still I’m still very much in building residential and %HESITATION and then up until recently don’t have sars still trotting around the country almost like a date when I was over going and teaching people in the classroom I have a fairly unique ship I’ve got my hand stylus of training which works on my website proves that people really enjoy it we turn the power points off we get the chance out we do so it’s a ballooning we have good phones one is learn but that’s people can’t get to a training room all the time leading for most people it’s expensive also also manufactures offering training for free so now some of what may be going on that’s teaching charging was becoming difficult that’s when I decided to to revisit my business plan and take a look at how I can use my training skills but direct one on one perspective on where we’re at now we went way back to school and had to be video it is none of my cases what’s the software giant some threw away in joints Mormon just actually decided that he would go we can we can take the successes in the training room when we can put them into really easy to stop pretty cool videos that people can watch whenever they want begin marketing site is massive we’ll look at you cheaper than a daily basis so if we do that a recent little little little told I’m for appetizing but it’s still under a tent across social media platform for sexually ten clicks on the website and we did thing but just using the video still one thousand eight hundred thirty seven clicks on which just goes to show how powerful video which is a marketing tool and that’s where I now we we are enjoying it wait wait wait very quickly became recognized as the go to choice for good quality good value for money educational video to help them do anything from understand the product to teach about the content like there was on mobile networking yes about Bucks the technician need two thousand to the current day excellent thank you very much for that overview and %HESITATION there’s a lot to unpack there I want to go over a few points first I can certainly sympathize with one of your last points trying to sell paid in a V. is certainly a challenge to %HESITATION integrators and end users that’s something I could certainly sympathize with %HESITATION but we’ll get back to that to all the training stuff and what you’re doing with clavier in a little while I want to circle back to the beginning %HESITATION you mentioned that you started out as a musician that comes up an awful lot on this podcast I’d say more than half of the guests have some kind of a musical inclination and that’s how they wound up in a V. so I think that’s really interesting I’m always looking for what people kind of have in common you mentioned before you started your residential company that there was that you took some time and looked around and thought about what you wanted to do was there anything obviously you had your experiences and your skill set but was there anything in particular about the residential AV market at that time that help to make that decision quite honestly I think Connie was really open to where I was going to go %HESITATION which industry I was going to go to my then business school to be a business partner he on the local experience if you will through research of of of the ATV market place and integration market place you know when I when I was a college I studied in business management sorry to me what was important was being able to an exercise stopped him not learning not qualification only when I go to college and I’m really into that it’s all about creating a business plan making these on work and and I wanted to make sure that I did it the right way from a business perspective needs to understand what it was like I’m not not just being a recipient of the pocket and was really lucky as a corporate guy want what’s hard but you know late twenties on being given a call an expense account and you know corporate governance wasn’t really my scene at the time so we were really looked tall term ready Molly coddled anything we have to focus on the fact that the share price was the be all and end of the business I want you to you know get in from the other end all to to reach look at the panels onto to get worried when %HESITATION what what would happen when when the business didn’t take any money in the on now I couldn’t pay myself as a whole different feeling that some people just keeps running they just they just do it from leaving school ninety nine take on a train and they just just get out there and do it in their eyes armory observance recording restrictions but that was just what they did nineteen more about how they were doing the right to business management and earn money and spent a lot of cases but the whole AV thing came to me from I was influenced on other people and when I looked into it in more detail actually so yeah last cool place to be and the fact that I’m a musician come from a family of musicians you know I I I was originally very quickly that you know to be a musician professionally coming have you know I was in my family it’s really tough no you yeah if you think it’s going to be in the next must you on whatever and back in the day that there wasn’t Newman and you know people have got talent comes on that they just didn’t happen so you know he he did a gig and I’ve done many gigs been getting so much Sir can no we went very good and we thought we were we were just a band like any other you never know when you get a lucky break that some guys in the crown and he likes what you doing while in office sorry sorry read and you cannot hanging out on the so the creativity I have as a musician does help with this industry watch honestly you don’t need it I don’t think it’s more of a bit of a stretch quite some see that a lot of those are you know music money is in there we we were in bands we saying we do star musical I think there’s a rule so it wasn’t to me to be in the industry because on a musician if anything what I’m doing now these formal relate it’s far better related to the facts %HESITATION emission is we have to create music videos we have to think about video is going to work amusing much more my crazy brain now than I was as an integrator and the production as well absolutely yeah I’m I’m I’m working my customers now they don’t know how it goes together they’re relying on manly thing to do to put it together them nobody yet that was very few of my customers are very very strict with exactly what we need to be doing on this site will mark we’re gonna leave it with you is yeah you know what it is we’re trying to say but we don’t really know and we want to say to the parent video sure it’s it’s certainly is an art and %HESITATION just editing video cutting things together it’s extremely time consuming and if you don’t have a vision and some experience with how to organize that kind of a task you can get in your over your head pretty quickly so yeah circling back again you are you for this business with the goal of selling it ten years later I really like that and you talk about having an interest in knowing where every nickel is right I had a business co shot on the podcast one Steve sure in back and he said that’s one of the most important things that a business owner should have is to know where the money is and where it’s coming from so that curiosity and and I’m going to correlate that with you being a musician it sounded like you didn’t really like the fact that you didn’t really know how to how to grow it how to make a predictable income from that kind of a a business model so I’m seeing a lot of things that go together here and I like to do that you set a goal from the beginning in ten years I’m gonna sell us and then you did it ten years and four months later congratulations that’s a kind of a big deal but in the meantime you you got into sedia which is probably the biggest trade association in the residential channel and you noticed a need for education and began to help them organize things what was some low hanging fruit at that time well he did the very fact that the we went early days of our integration company we went to the CD are to learn you know we went with an open book do you have the people do you know what what what’s the official line and as we all get together them and then you know learn from from of the people within it now have you done it will be a new chief chief usual stuff I’m just going back to point about business myself and my partner at the time oaks kind of took it for granted that everybody use the site rulebook answer setting up running a business really became quickly apparent that that wasn’t the case you know how it works sinister in every seventy war when I come to speak really the whole concept of I didn’t set the business up to some it is just a correction on I had a person will goal I would like to be in a position to sell out so I’m grateful for the part or a hand as he helps you know we we both shaped business I’m also grateful for that learning on hand for from the corporate world so none of that really got in the way of the job in hand which is to integrate people systems not to we didn’t even think about selling the business until towards the end when I I just felt to be ready to move on so you know I’m I’m great that’s it thank you very much few few crises and and yet that this there are there are certain rules but if you get to business you have to have an exit you know what is the end of this business trip look like and most people don’t have one of those you think if you’re in your forties now need living the life living it but you try much hands on you don’t really want to let anybody touch your baby you do it you do the best way then not quite the homes that are gonna happen for sure help keep going long so will she makes it but that’s a whole different conversation the fact that I will send out a tech company which we work outside of the ring of a day we write ups and you know we do well with it way of writing as a vertical business with doing some research on the vertical business when %HESITATION involved that customs we creating a product in in the business the business can then be sold it really is a different strategy creating a business that you intend to lean tend to sell certainly big chunks off rather than creating a lifestyle business which in which you wall the business I think within a V. seven dot bust different in the case of most business owners the navy and see how many of the small business arena they all the business when it’s time to finish you finish and you just hope that you go in US money on the way somewhere you’ve made enough money to live the rest you guys all I’m so yeah I mean at the scene just came about when we went to learn about the industry and you know what I really wasn’t very impressed jeep is clean it’s amazing that they’re really small clever people in the industry which is which is a good thing lambs must be surrounded by people who can challenge you and how you learn you learn a lot of things when the people but they just clearly just did not have any skew stocks most didn’t have any qualifications in Rhode Island nat told how to teach resent it night paying isn’t isn’t isn’t isn’t isn’t learning paying decent money to sit in the training room for a day to be just kind of show voted to all this is a system or some sorry this isn’t system what it is I’m sorry residential was an awful lot of nine is gonna be the biggest in store story to tell and you kind of have to pick through the middle of angle on the two walls questions then to find out how you did it and you shouldn’t have to do that muscle learning about Dylan thank you shouldn’t have to sit there dragging information out from somebody who’s willing to give it but they just don’t really know how to how to do that I’m not sure what was the low hanging fruit for me because that’s what I’m good at I’m gonna teaching people how to teach in present I’ve been doing it for a long time long time before and whatever is you’ll teaching there all this is so the rules that you use to impart knowledge to people in the room can you give us a few of those rules yes show so you know it delighted you’ve so I teach people who I am to present and I teach people to teach I’m not from a box crated and and and run I am trying to trying to run trying to sell the types of programs are being run over in the U. S. again I’ve had in a good success with it because it’s refreshing to think would never have done on a training before and you know primarily training you’ll start about you as the train is about them spent alone you know they’re there to learn something and you’ll that to explain what is is that going to look when you go to teach them and then you’re going to we find that learning she can you trying to seize the objectives that you set the big train of being mentioned do not question aren’t circling getting into doing nexus they have to do at the end of that training session mortgages use told them that they would be able to do at the end of the transaction and if you don’t have that structure right the objectives that have to be small going to nine holy detail when I need to now look at small text amount say those objectives off to be clear on small and then the whole learning piece in the middle and then at the end you know these guys have to do whatever it is you said they were going to do anything don’t give me your training failed you know it didn’t work and we might have had a really nice time a good timing liked you funny if they come do the thing that they turned up to learn how to do at the end of that session G. then get sessions failed and no one wants to hear the words fail but it’s true them presenting different presenting is all about you as a presenter on that’s making impression people like choose what it is I’m going to say among women as engaging as possible I’m not better teach somebody when I’m presenting a trade show on that to talk about some content took me sets a jet to this and you are going to bill to do these things session I’m going to sing there’s a clear distinction between presenting a training and that just wasn’t apparent that wasn’t that and rather than be I do want to appear supercilious in any way shape or form %HESITATION just wanted to offer my services and general good for them they acknowledged it and and that’s how I started working with the guys and see excellent I I’m really like that %HESITATION that you pointed out the difference between teaching and presenting it and I will certainly keep that in mind the next time I make a %HESITATION a make a submission for a call for presenters because yeah like you said what are the objectives and then doing some testing at the ends and as you were describing that I was thinking of a navy system right my first conversation with the new customer is what are your objectives with building this thing do you want to impress your clients do you wanna hold better meetings do you want to %HESITATION impress your neighbors ends so you need to define those clear objectives in the beginning of a navy system or a training module and then at the end testing can the person perform what they learned well does the system actually behave as expected what are the metrics did we actually meet those objectives so and that the bit beyond that cool send link star is a Chinese evaluation and not just not let him in these these trade associations and it still isn’t you know I don’t see huge evidence of it you know when somebody can do the thing that you said they were going to do at the end of the training stocks a ticking the box coming to be a week later can I do six weeks later coming six months later and corporately you know we have to go one step further than that we have to identify how about we do improve the bottom line of the about two columns or back to get the part of the business now how does making %HESITATION how does facilitating helping somebody to do something new help the business because if it doesn’t help the business them why they that she was gonna help them as individuals certain times trying which which aren’t fiscally driven and eager to make people feel happy what you got to give them the opportunity to feel comfortable and do not feel better themselves important when it comes to its of science training when it comes to I’m going to go and learn how to program a new system right okay some help the business understand what each how it’s going to benefit from you coming back and actually being able to do this new programs and you will see it is nothing happens with it for you know she she’s never evaluated I’m not person doesn’t actually gone by any of the kids for a few months or and how valuable was the training day you know it sure that dot the least mold but rather than banging the drum anymore which I get passionate about why do I love what I do most of the debate but rather than keep banging out drum realizing that actually this isn’t helping my business what we do now is we support people doing not through a different medium completely different nineteen you know we also question now video scripts what what does what does he look like what is the success of this video might not more in terms of the types of animation we’ve used or older characters we within it what what do you want to get out of it as a business and H. primarily the same message by many people to it’s our understanding of the things that we are trying to sell them we as an industry will go on a product because of the people buying the same product popularity contest and on all the different products and what might be best in the business there each sterile I could be I could get hate mail cemex but that’s still a big popularity contest going on our way and I think that he’s detrimental to a lot of business is a lot of businesses yeah absolutely Paul Harris of Aurora was on a podcast and and he said that a standard is nothing more than a a popularity contest so she is you mentioned a bunch of things that I’d like to unpack and then connects to us some changes that are happening in our industry so you you mentioned somebody learns something they go to a training they learn a particular technology or product how it works and then maybe they’ll actually use it or maybe they won’t and a year later they might still have that certification ends traditionally in a V. a lot I I’d I’d say more than half I don’t know but a lot of the training was provided by manufacturers you learned about their products and ancillary to that you learned about the fundamentals of that technology and they’re also associations like a vixen sedia that really give you the fundamentals now with AB industry moving more towards I. T. with more standards based technologies like STV O. E. coming into play and even things like open source software where there is no manufacturer who’s really interested in teaching you about it because it doesn’t help them sell products in that kind of a world’s with things going in that kind of direction how do you see training changing in a way that is a really good question I’m I’m suppose it’s something I think about regularly but don’t SO many thoughts in my head as you it as yours is yours getting to the question this is a massive she you mention this nearly as on looking to work for jet Justin Carrington’s present can I get on reading the well and he went on went banging on the door to say you need to let you need to bring me in I’m at this early stage don’t really really want to be the guy that helps you with the education part for me totally sold out you know did some sessions and we just get on really well scenes the bomb you made which I’m very grateful for any such arm that is a real mental for me the guys sorry clever really talented and now he’s also extremely passionate which is super super important when when you’re doing something like he’s doing which is actually taking the whole aspect of what we’ve done to use right tricks which I’m turning it on his head improving it beyond any reasonable doubt with this is the absolute white or you know just walks aren’t going into view and he is brilliant I love working with people I learned from every day so hopefully it’s just is here in the I will be asking for a pay rise just joking had he he’s a really cool guy and and yes dot dot the the whole I. P. peace we mentioned talked about it briefly before we start with internet but dole I. P. pieces is a is a real boon for my business because we all one of the few a business is an outlet to bring a lot to the table you know we can really help an industry with knowledge that they thank now house to house it’s cool knowledge you know if if anybody out there listening to this which there may well be the mental depending on the listing to this cantantes set this question which layer of the OSI does he live in and how does it relate to the Senate and a few con consular question why are you in the installing a P. products eat it does that does the debate and again I don’t mean to put people down with it ten years ago maybe you didn’t really need to have strong question lots of alternatives but now it’s all about and it’s been around for forty %HESITATION he’s the internet was around before the VCR right so we know developing a brand new product or brand new vehicles you like to to to to move pockets and dance around is there is already done which is using it properly no using iris only seven last stock using Ethernet to help to move packets of dates are we doing it really well two people that rather than go out there and install a ninety V. network if you will in a in the system and then an IP network next to it which is what you during the matrix which and then you know what IT switch next to it in the same right why would you do that why do you do that when we give a really compelling reasons to don’t do it for everything on the only pay network it simplifies the job it actually makes it better removing latency Starman wins as to why you would use or take and to me that’s the big she I’m I think training to all see question training is changing two fold first thing people have got less time to sit in the training room and I really appreciate I really admire manufacturers they have that guy that training guy in those twenty guys are getting better and better and better you have the added you do something enough times and you will Maastricht they are getting better but ultimately you know when I had mine two Croatian business not engineers and they will state government about some new some the most among French training and she just wants to sell more products spots they will check to get these people up to speed on what we do sell the thing and get them to buy and that works really well she is is oaks is some things in the back of it this in our street too cheap or Iran is a normal cold smoke we spoke about rage nineteen nineties now we’re talking about in the Senate pulled back and now we’re having to give them vanilla content is my what product you pick up these networks the same high in a package of dates remove across from almost another in exactly the same way whether the host mark me Sir manufactures having to step up to the plate a little bit and and and not she educate people on things like a pink and thanks becoming harder and harder for them to fill joining rooms because all around them installing the busy we it’s never been automatic thing to sell system if you’re a small to medium sized into correct with two three four goal is I’m blessed that must be really difficult you know when when the client same model of Nick hold %HESITATION greening I’m smart plugs not just pull the nest camera just popping sings Mike my sixteen year old was just put it all together in the same thing that’s got to be it’s going to be hard yeah right absolutely now we we know how we would sell that in all right I would be comfortable with the clients and nuts may not win them over with the product I was going to be selling them and why they would spend more money in use without me I think this is less than they’re able to do that but the so busy trying to get the business that they all we have a good time to consider trying training for the first the first aspect the face to face stuff unless you to spend the money and go to places like the CD shop showing home in a room not in the training room you’re in a presentation trying to join the some of the road in an hour cannot possibly sing you objectives that he sent the beasties beasts the study was going to make the beginning of the session possibly am seekers objections words to sixty people in an hour is impossible you couldn’t do it so it’s not you know going that’s the whole point of training each asked not a training room mustache buttons on seats people having to sell assesses to how much they knew how much they need to know who sold you can’t possibly evaluated either doesn’t get evaluated it’s it’s the it’s the trade show is this normal you got someone’s pick up some new bits but you have to go away work out what you’re going to do this new knowledge and most of the time I think a lot of people they don’t really know what to do with that new knowledge and they don’t use it very well so I think training is moving very much towards decent online stuff decent E. learning trying and watching a pub cost of a man’s speaking over forty five slide powerpoint charts often I was saying %HESITATION every five to six seconds isn’t learning you know rushes boring I feel really sorry for the people are asked to do that is to put it together and and do it so there is a huge shift in in the in the training dynamic industry and that’s why claims to mind as we want to be strong wanna be brought to the form of being able to allow people to take take the foam and always with anything from signum trying going to work quick six seven minutes with with valuation questions in this you can self assess you learning perfect time I get to work about you realize that the snow bank products thank you to everyone seems to be buying nine need each product beat is that will fit in the environment I’m going to install the number nine five six minutes almost a year all the way to you know online stuff couple minutes on training I need to understand how documents will host the next not come cheap myself with a mind that the account is no point me cheating to find the answer because many cheating myself I’m sorry I think this huge massive muscle triangle gets delivered and all she has a good shape new broom sweeps claim very nice so with that shift do you see a shift in the responsibility of who let let let’s put it quite frankly who actually pays for that training I think a little training at the moment isn’t painful and that’s that’s a shame you know give it and it’s great to the option looked online about networking with your distribution Sri for somebody to come teach about networking obvious which one against Jews on what right but at the same time when not individual comes back what’s the expectancy what what what do we expect them to be able to do over and above what they could do before what what they could do before they left that training and again the economy I’m not putting it down and you have anybody listening to this this pot constant thinking come on making a route to try and help I I know this I’m I’m with it you know and I’d I’d bet my career the the you know he is the right way forward but I think if we you know you you get a training room with people in in that room some guys is rarely picked up a computer they don’t really know why P. is and you get somebody else in the room who is CCNA grades on a network show and he’s bored right %HESITATION China house dangle to use skills that he didn’t get the drawings incredible not ring changed I’m not really all to really hard thing to do so the value trying coming harder for people to get to train cools things when they get training course training is going to be really really tip talk because he’s not they’ll go to another manufacturer is offering free training it might just be better training could be the difference between winning and losing a customer so yes east east just just ground man who delivering training %HESITATION or in charge of training people to accomplish in a different light Irish people who will go into training first of all before we do that whether it’s free all paid for think about what the outcome of the training looks like for them and their business and also this question you know don’t don’t worry about saying to the people who live off for the training this is what I want to achieve at the end of this training session is not going to be possible do you think that’s what I’m going to be able to do help me understand how you’re going to make that happen that make sense absolutely I I love the practicality of it and it just makes sense and it’s it’s good for everybody think about the physical aspect of it as well you know engineer every the state she is right engineer heads off to a train girls because they like their businesses decided they want to point you know X. Y. Z. secret answer triangles on the cost of getting in trouble maybe put up in a cheap hotel and then I’m being that she’s out of business so if you want to roughed up a mistake cost around about five or six hundred dollars for that business to pay for that going to go out there business is doing well forty forty four percent gross profit prop the internet business so how much of a so you know to generate enough profits not guns about keeping them and we talk all the time he’s done that this is a significant chunk of money specially from some two or three people with OCD show in San Diego how many people is that without any real idea as to what they want out of that show sure the wandering around the show mindlessly because that was going on that they think the summer C. sharp yeah am how many people she’s forty three what’s the benefit to my business only get one and when you start to speculate more not less when people say all not shot is no we don’t hear that sorry swim we we don’t hear that we just we just wanna go and enjoy ourselves show great do not think you through is as it is in a ten day or learn to think it through more ease you’re actually gonna benefit how you gonna benefit is an issue %HESITATION you your right to the name comments whoever is gonna be delivering much during the psychoses why one town of this help me understand how you can help me to change that and if not what will almost the questions and you never know you might just be the deciding factor as to whether or not you will go ahead and do it absolutely that that folds in really well into my last question which you probably Ansel already which is %HESITATION the people working in a V. engineers technicians a lot of us like to learn we really enjoy learning new technology and you know if we’re not the business owner that might not be the top of our priority but somebody’s got to send us to training somebody needs to pay for that so there’s also in this question of how do you convince your boss to send you training or to pay for an online training so if you have any ideas on that I think we were just saying falls right into it yeah I’m sorry to reply to record but I think you can if if any of my team in the past in innings person right things in there that it wasn’t just training it was anything that they wanted on once a new machine all this former sure yeah I want the owner portion on eleven on the joint Waco is but lost sucks sometimes one so you know I always used to say to if you bring that time your brew viable reason the this business will benefit as a result and get what you want let’s go for it perfect because it helps me out no end your review the end of the year I spent six hundred pounds takes and you know this thing took me through what you did as a result in this business the day before and that he might remain in I we we would go home Jolene’s and I’ve got a skunk at jungle island she dies down under the wings of the business it’s always just reading a tingling but when it comes to going awesome day learning stuff training calls can do we only doing it because the training providers told us we have to do it before we can buy any product again you get not but then how would they assessing learning Our Lady Alexander awaiting the success of not learning what are they doing these big companies so it looks awesome questions how you actually evaluating the success of that learning people telling me that if they really enjoy the day the food was great it was nice and warm by was very funny last one called happy she thing to do the training itself valuation comes down Soling down to the training provider on the people who is actually sent the jewel triangle so yeah I can try to be boring but I think my business respected nothing is nothing is off the table nothing at all I’m distance owners just need to really think about what the business successes of sending somebody to a training course I’m not should be shared with the training provided first place yeah lost a lot easier for the training provided as well because I can cite actually you know will treat you shouldn’t be at the strangles messages to do this next next post this training course then you get so much more and it makes perfect sense I really like the way all of this is coming back to business and and how it how it all ties into each other I think we could %HESITATION do a whole nother podcast just on the business aspect of of training and if anybody would like to get in touch with you how would they go about doing that yeah I’m so through the website is a good place you can get to see little about what we do we’re updating the videos the example videos pretty much every week I’m so you can see how we growing as a business and what we’re doing is different to the previous week the website economy directly mats and a double T. group dot coms Matix maybe group dot com love to hear from me you know what what we’re always get wet with every day is a school day I think so wells were learning center ways always learning and so excellent best of luck with clay via and thank you very much for being on the podcast thank you very much for anyone on your staff ever considered themselves just in eighty programmer join the club that’s how I used to feel I was just an amex programmer or just Crestron program or whatever language of your choice is whatever it may be is generally this feeling an AV that we’re not capable of using modern programming languages and it simply isn’t true sure there’s a learning curve but once you get through it all other languages become easier to learn and it just expands the amount of options you have when designing a system it’s not an either or decision you don’t say I won’t be using these manufacture tools anymore it’s just you have a broader palate to choose from ends here’s what market day founder of idea box had to say about his experience with the online courses at learn AV programming dot com you know Patrick it’s funny how the smallest things can sometimes be the star of really big ideas %HESITATION before I took the learn AV programming dot com courses I was in that Hey Terry I’m only a control system programmer kind of mindset ray %HESITATION when he came to new technologies or current technologies like Java script %HESITATION or things like that for some reason I thought that was different from what I’m doing and what taking your courses flipped for me was not so much what I learned technically taking the courses it was the mindset of %HESITATION wait a second I’m already doing ninety nine percent of what some of these most of modern programmers are dealing I just have to learn %HESITATION you know the other one percent and that’s really what I did so it’s really been kind of a big change after taking the course %HESITATION and I would really recommend this course to any integrator not only will obviously help their skill set but more importantly it might change their whole mindset %HESITATION which is more important and and and really show them new opportunities open the door so they kind of see problems through a different lens %HESITATION I gotta tell you one of the biggest changes for me was as soon as I caught myself HTML CSS Java script and solve the U. eyes that I can make with those technologies I just couldn’t sell a %HESITATION Crestron touch panel again mark is a great example of somebody who takes new information and really applies it I know that mark still sells a lot of Crestron equipment but for him for his company for his customers for his business he needed a better you why he needed another option for user interface and modern programming allowed him to do that so the question is how can you use modern programming to improve your business please go to learn AV programming dot com and wherever you see a sign up button go ahead and sign up and you’ll get some free information to get a feel of my learning style and what kind of information is available and of course it would be an honor to have you enroll in one of our courses and help you upgrade your skills and take this industry to the next level thanks for listening to software defined survival I hope you found it useful and maybe it inspires you to try out something new this week if you have any questions software defined survival dot com and click the appropriate but I’d love to answer your questions on the air and if you’d like to help spread the word please subscribe comment and share thanks
Today’s episode is a little different. Instead of interviewing a person, we review a University project that is changing it’s traditional control systems to Raspberry Pi’s and Raspberry Pi Touchscreens. Joining us from the Brigham Young University OIT AV Services team to discuss this project are Daniel Wells: Director of AV Engineering, Brad Streeter: Chief Engineer and Joe Blodgett: Primary Developer of the open source AV control and management solution.
The project can be found here:
https://github.com/byuoitav
Highlights
You can’t know what kind of interfaces the customer will need. Giving them an API gives them the freedom to adapt the system as their needs change.
Active learning classrooms can have up to 10 displays. Because commodity hardware is so affordable, BYU is able to deploy a touchscreen control systems for almost every video display.
Microservers running in a Docker container could be an interesting way to create cross platform device drivers.
The SALT stack can be used to manage policies and security updates on Linux devices.
The ELK stack can be used to store and visualise data.
Mentions
Daniel Wells, Brad Streeter, Joe Blodgett, BYU, Raspberry Pi, Sony, Epson, ELK, Aurora Reax, C#, .net, Node.js, Golang, Docker, SALT, Linux, JWT, CCUMC, University Of Utah
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we explore how software defined systems are changing the business of IT today software defined survival how can we make all of our EP systems accessible through our university API projects just like every other I and I think one of the principles that we’re trying to adhere to that %HESITATION is making this possible as we we kind of refuse to support any technology does that that does not have a network based control air it actually mounts the raspberry pi and here we have all sinned in about one package which send clips into if you will of three young boxer forgetting box with an Ethernet cable running down into it powers it and provide the network connectivity and that’s kind of the core compute power that’s running in the room itself and so it’s no longer cost prohibitive in one of these active classrooms where we’ve got eight strains ten screens whatever we’ve got in there each screen actually has its own dedicated touch panel security we think is actually a better story with this solution it was before because when you’re dealing with a proprietary eighty solution all you’re limited to whatever they fought for it right welcome my name is Patrick Murray and today’s episode of software defined survival will be a little bit different we are not interviewing one person we are kind of interviewing a project and this is F. projects that took place sores on going at a university to change over from traditional AB control systems to using raspberry pies and the raspberry pi touch screen ends the development process involved in all of that and joining me to discuss that or Daniel wells director of AV engineering Brad Streeter chief engineer and Joe Blodgett primary developer of the open source software at Brigham Young University gentleman welcome to the show thank you thank you so I’ll just address all of you at once and feel free to jump in with whoever thinks they get an answer best and my first question is is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to correct or expand upon you know that kind of sums up the project itself %HESITATION pretty pretty cleanly so where did the original idea come from so as university we’ve been %HESITATION really trying to promote inside of our center well first off the audio visual group is part of the office of ID the central office ID for university and therefore our online management goes through the the CIO and see I only really been trying to promote %HESITATION open standards %HESITATION web based controls API’s restful web services eccentric and all of our IT systems across campus and several years ago I I come from the I. T. side of the house and I was brought down to be a part of the eighty group of one of the challenges that we were given was how can we make all of our EP systems accessible through our university API projects just like every other action system we’re trying to build so that was a challenge that was given to us was was basically around what kind of API skin you provide us from the classroom specifically an AV systems in general so that’s kind of what set us down this road was trying to explore how to do that we we we played an experimental little bit was trying to make our existing better that we’re using %HESITATION put a layer on top of it if you will to make these systems expose expose an external API layer and Matt got pretty it was difficult to get a proprietary ecosystem to play nicely in an open world and that we had we had a bunch of other cycles as well around automation and %HESITATION improved %HESITATION deployments %HESITATION better monitoring %HESITATION we wanted to play around with big data and see what kind of analytics we could get out of our systems and based on that analytics will kind of trend analysis and can get a I helping us out decision so we had a lot of these big broad goals up at the only if we came quickly to the solution that the only way we can make this happen is to start building it from scratch your CIO was on board with letting us do that as for a pie was a favorite piece of hardware for many of us down here that we’ve been playing with for the better part of the decade in many ways and some of us and so it was %HESITATION and we had a test now available that had been recently released some we figured we’d start there and see where it took us excellent I’m I think it’s really interesting to note that the decision kind of came from the top %HESITATION so the stakeholders said we want your systems exposed like everything else we’re used to on on our IT at work was there anything in particular that they were looking for or was it just a global sweep of everything that’s on the network we want to be able to speak with or were there really any particular status is reports or functionality that that they were curious about I think from AB side was largely philosophical from that level %HESITATION okay there is a a problem project that I think got some interest in a globally where we have a a campus mobile app that is trying to incorporate a lot of the functionality of university into it so that’s one that was used early on as a justification for getting this sort of thing is that we can build intentionally the control of the classroom equipment into them all out and API’s obviously can help make that happen a lot more clearly but I think I think also the the intent is to expose anything that’s available yeah so that all of our systems any any metric and control points is is available via the API nothing gives us the option of determining which of those %HESITATION we make usually in a philosophical aspects of our CEO was really we don’t know what our customers want to do is for us to build interfaces for them often times %HESITATION seems things that maybe we shouldn’t be assuming and so giving our customers API’s and letting them determine what they want to do with our systems philosophical goal of his and so he basically mandated in many ways it all over I all of our systems have API’s for that reason alone and then we’ll see where we go from there was kind of his stance in many ways yeah that makes a lot of sense when you start I mean database is a perfect example you can’t do analytics without collecting the data first and you have this chicken or the egg what is it that I should be storing well you don’t really know what will be interesting until you start using these systems until some time goes on so I can certainly appreciate that mindset so once this decision was made you mention that you all had some experience with the raspberry pi what were the first steps that I imagine you made some kind of proof of concept to start with can you describe those initial baby steps if you will yeah let me just talk a little bit more about this but as as we were first starting out while we were working on a lot of the the efforts to put that layer on top of other system we had a couple of students working for us that had some interest in taking this little brother Joe was one of them at the time he was one of the students we kind of just said Hey what you guys are playing with this thing over here and see what you come up with maybe you can talk a little bit Joe about that yeah so it was kind of an interesting problem was handed to us for leadership in the broadest down they just kind of sat down I mean when they decide how hard would it be to do this without our traditional Bender is would be possible you’ll figure it out and then they just left us alone for like five or six months build something at work kind of money for a down until something else before down into something else tore down and finally they realize that they’re paying us just how fun deadline on SA some of them by the state and so we have a push to have our was really simple thing was controlling a couple of Sony TV’s just changing input turning them on things like that from a really basic you why and so we you know we got together I think all the others simply for five months from start times that demo time and once by Sony them this is the only TV is one of those was that the Sony TV have a really nice web API in a restful API on them as we need to really nice and easy for us to talk to them went through several iterations of this and then demo did for the site that they call they is that leadership council here in the us immigration policy they would like to log in kind of a great go ahead with it and maybe make it actually work which was really cool sprinting ever since I’ve been pushing and they make it actually all so what does that process look like went once you seen it working had this touch panel you returning a TV on off on off the proof of concept was there and you mentioned the word sprints which maybe not everybody here is familiar with so maybe you could talk a little bit about that development process how you define goals set metrics and really make sure you stay on track and are always moving forward so I think they’re taking it from where Joe just left the story off %HESITATION we kind of did things a little bit backwards you know and we we got a bit a little bit by the the the high fidelity prototypes problem that a lot of developers running to where we had a thing that looks really it looks pretty good at the time and it it did some very basic things and I I think our our upper line management figured it was more complete than it really was and and gave us a deadline to start putting it out on campus actually with a building that was being built a new edition to a building and and baby gave us the mandate that that building was going to have this product in it what we need to do to get there and so we started scrambling about point to to kind of really hash out what pieces needed to be done in order for this to be you know quote unquote finished right to be a product tied staying in and %HESITATION yeah so we started working with the business seems to kind of gather the needs of the building what were the what was the bare minimum that we needed in this product in order to meet the needs and then just started scrambling at that point we haven’t even completed a mounting solution for the raspberry pi a touch screen so we started scrambling a little bit of a prototyping effort there so brats team he’s got several different skill sets within his engineering group and so we had some of this team working on we actually three models the prototype a %HESITATION a mail for this because we couldn’t find anything nobody had made a decent flush mount wall mount if you will for the raspberry pi touch screen so we modeled one we’ve got some three printers leader printing up we tested a mountain once we decided we liked that day was our work was local aluminum manufacturers and all this was in a compressed time cycle trying to make me this deadline of this building and then all the while Joe was starting to scramble to really make sure this product was solid on the back and was going to work reliably was gonna work in the distributed fashion that we wanted it to and %HESITATION yeah so so one of the things is I guess entry is that the initial battle it was it was really basic beginner talking directly to TV and you know we kind of had a bunch of hard coded commands in a little work and we realized that we had to have something a little more generally could handle not only one kind of TV but could have a potentially any TV there was a guy control any projector any video switcher any any there’s a lot of that was was taking it back in and trying to figure out how to make a generalized back and %HESITATION and that took up some time but in all honesty the actual control got so the system we were done fairly soon in the process on that demo was in October I wanna see the guts of the control system were done probably by January and I don’t think we really need major modifications to them since it’s been a lot of the things that make enterprise system and persistence of the monitoring and ointments and you know the support ability on it and that’s still kind of in that today in the configuration of it and I was really what was the big push from there and and that’s in large part still we’re kind of doing it and I think one of the principles that we’re trying to adhere to that %HESITATION is making this possible as we would have refused to support any technology does not that does not have a network based control air preferably a restful control where a lot of proprietary protocols out there that are dies on the TCP layer which we can work with we we’ve got a lot of those in the system right now but we’re trying to in part of our efforts with this open source initiative a little bit is to raise awareness to vendors out there on the value of making a nice clean restful interface is too users like us out there all right so we covered a you mention a few things that I’d like to circle back on of course open source we’re gonna come back to that the whole software design getting that generalized backends but before we get there can you paint a picture for what the hardware looks like you you mentioned there were some issues or there was no mounting solution available so what are what are the components that are involved in this solution arm so what one thing before you jump into this particular solution is to keep my but the the software suite we’ve written is not fundamentally tied to the rest it runs Danny can run anywhere we actually have an instance of it in a W. last that allows us to remote control July is a very nice you know are devices in the room that is consumer you know consumer mail hold it off the shelf and it looks nice and works well but the system the control system itself is not fundamentally tied %HESITATION their usual system we have that you know the control system goes in a room you have just a pie how we you know we we have a caller just a regular seven inch touch screen and there’s our friend the mounting brackets it’s basically like a little thing that sits behind the pilot also the from the wall by one inch made of anodized aluminum got some you know air flow events in there and it looks really nice it is designed to record a bracket basically on the front side of a two or three or four games electrical box and then then then the actual housing bent the high screen %HESITATION connects into on the back of the pie screen them out it actually mounts the raspberry pi and the people we have all stated about one package which send clips into if you will of three young boxer forgetting box with an Ethernet cable running down into it powers it and provides the the network connectivity and that’s kind of the core compute power that’s running in the room itself excellent just four of those not familiar with the rest very pie hat is basically another circuit board that you could kind of clip right onto there’s GPI opens on the raspberry pi and you kind of put another component right on there and it’s called the hat so so these raspberry pi touch panel solution just has one cat cable going to it for network and power correct right and how many of these do you have to pull it our turn we need a little over two hundred there were about two hundred and thirty eight glasses of last night okay so roughly around two forty home deployed across campus right now they’re they’re kind of a core component of of our efforts of doing what we’re calling an active classroom it’s a concept within education for kind of changing the way professors teach and it it’s a ball and so trying to put technology in an active classroom there’s the concept of all spaces and break out space isn’t so trying to put this technology was really valuable to us because the touch screens on the pies are relatively inexpensive to other touch panel solutions and so it’s no longer cost prohibitive in one of these active classrooms where we’ve got eight strains ten screens whatever we’ve got in there each screen actually has its own dedicated touch panel to enable the technology that we want so that’s part of the reason why the numbers grow we’ve got quite a few those going out there but I say probably only forty of those are some of the active classrooms in the other two hundred are kind of stand alone systems spread across different rooms in cap across campus so that sounds like a really good sample set what kind of issues have you had or their heat issues or anything that you would expect so the main the main issue had with the raspberry pi has been that there’s no on board members storage inside the flash card or an SD cards in there as a result SD cards wear out and OS’s are are not coming by way of how many rights they do so we had an issue where we had the kind of the first wave of the SD card do with kind of a middle grade middle lower rate STR can for cost reasons those all I don’t know if it’s so widespread failures failing at about the same time which makes sense we put them in about so we had to replace those we’re trying to make it out to a few different ways to control how much logging we do making parts of the OS read only and is using yeah so you will be using a larger capacity %HESITATION SD card can help with that read right programeri cycle and then we’ve also gone with what they call high endurance carts that seems to help a little bit as well that are more intended for higher I owe applications I mean the nature of a card and you’re gonna have to replace it every you know three to five years someone in the in the context of of cost you know where the the high in and of itself was was a motivation from a cost perspective and we’re seeing that having to buy the more expensive cars it’s kind of also had a little bit but still is considerably less than any of the other options that we come across yeah we’ve gone from a fifteen dollar card to a twenty dollars or so its first system right so it’s still relatively inexpensive compared what other prosperous those are one problem in the big hardware issue I believe had any hardware problems other than because it’s a it’s kind of made for makers right it’s easy to miss can figure it like you know jumpers in the wrong place to forget to put a lead in the right place Sir attached how wrong and I think those are really the only things you have is just times or you know somebody doesn’t connect the power number to the right in and as a result screen is internal medicine you correct jumper works and and yes you I don’t think it’s also harder levels and if you just you we did with what we we we have another application bad that we’re using the same hardware solution for about was our scheduling panels we actually put in a room schedulers on the outside of conference rooms and whatnot we’ve been experimenting with using the same way as he issues with those it was a different technology we worked a lot of that’s obviously the way you write your code is going to impact he significantly and the way we read the code on the eighty control side from day one we’ve been very conscientious around around you cycle heat down we’ve cleaned out the become significantly on the and also we don’t have somebody and the fact that it’s aluminum melts helps with the dissipation it’s got some some cooling vents on the side we we don’t settled we are stick around the build the low fifties high forties audacity centigrade %HESITATION most of our most of these things out there right now actually designing amount when it was first assigned to had a fan mail to you know to put a little you know little twenty five millimeter fan in there we found that it really wasn’t necessary to do much in addition to he sinks so it out a little noise to the room and the noise wasn’t worth benefits so we actually pull those out because he wasn’t sure and you were able to be aware and make those kind of decisions because your collecting that data correct yes right so the raspberry pi as an access to go see what the process can pressure and has little time to censor and there she can gather that information on an automated basis I was just gonna say along the lines of of metrics and data collection we we have a pretty aggressive policy that just about anything we can measure and track and is being sent out to an L. cluster elastic sac which is a big data open source big data solution but we have kind of is our standard here on campus okay so we covered a bunch of stuff I wanna go back to the original question what kind of challenges it sounded %HESITATION that the biggest challenges will be discovered in deployment so if things aren’t hooked up properly you’ll have some issues with the SD card as the technology has a limited number of rights us so it doesn’t matter where that SD card is deployed it will need to be replaced every few years so you’ll need to plan for that you mentioned how the software can affect the longevity in the performance of the hardware I think that’s something interesting that we could dig into a little bit for example I have my my team here created an image for the raspberry pi that’s completely in read only mode so there are no rights and maybe you could talk a little bit about that scheduling panel and those issues there where was heating up due to the software and and about your open source solution and maybe even the decision to make it all open source hello there break it up unless someone else open source in the next question so I think open source %HESITATION it just fits well with the facade of philosophy of our team in general I think %HESITATION I’ve been a big fan of open source for the better part of my life and %HESITATION as such as we’re building teams and and kind of making %HESITATION bring bringing in resources the organization we we try to bring in people that think the same way we do in some ways since I think just in general the open source option for us just made sense and as long as our upper management was okay with that that’s the way we’re gonna go every time but at the same time Wu was resources being limited that’s part of the reason like open source if we can get this to the point where others are interested or we have people contributing you know the the driver database layer which is a micro service layer where where where we write a micro service for each type of hardware you know AB grade at some point we’ve got a lot of contribution of somebody writing a Panasonic line and somebody writing a Sony line somebody writing at some line of control and and and not having to do that all in house we’re obviously focusing on the hardware that we care about but it opens the doors and and and for everybody to be better weight when you deal with an open source model of the other saying the other reason too is there’s just a lot of great solutions out there already that are in the open source world and they’ve been vetted and tried and and you stand up when you’re working in a live action firemen there are a lot of amazing tools out there for management for deployment for locking things down for security and so it just made sense to have you know access all these tools relative for Reno free I’m out there and so yeah open source just kind of where we gravitate toward every time we can gravitate toward every time we can’t help me either and the other thing to consider is that the meeting be AB manufactures in general are behind in this kind of technology so this is an option for us to kind of evangelize the value of the benefits of this type of control and get you know more people than just me why you influencing the manufacturers to to go out and develop API’s further for the hardware and philosophically for me anytime we can legitimize the value of the business value of open source our software feels like a with me so absolutely I’m on board with with all of that to seize outages in it though you mentioned device drivers so that’s going to be a big problem for everyone and it’s could be a main reason why you might pick a traditional control system because of all the device drivers that are available right can you imagine a way to create some kind of repository with out choosing a platform what would you say the creator of houses for you in your house or your device drivers are well yes I mean and then we see without using platform you mean just like the rest Iverson is absent or what we mean right so so so one solution is going to be based on dot net another one’s going to be on no J. S. another one might be written in gold laying like your solution and that’s it it’s a big enough problem to deal with device drivers themselves but to develop them for all of these different platforms to run I think in our opinion that’s world were standardization comes into play right now the only reason we need device driver layer is because we have such disparate control %HESITATION interfaces out there right now and if we you know things like at Aurora is doing with the reacts platform trying to come up with a standardized way for vendors to expose the functionality their devices out to everyone is the only way that that problem is going to be solved for us in the meantime right you know out we’re trying to do something similar with %HESITATION standardize the interface for the micro services for example that we’re creating know we’re doing a micro service per protocol or per hardware tight and we have a standardized interface on the way the bat micro service exposes the functionality to our system and so if you build out that it’s it’s a standard if you will there’s no reason why somebody else’s control solution can’t piggyback off that same standard and throw those micro services up in their environment and use whatever the slayer logic you use they want if you will and that same code that people have written around %HESITATION each hardware types to control that software there’s are the hardware in their systems the concerned about language and platform as far as programming goes I think the fact we’ve each GPS are communication there between the services abstracts along the way and then documentation or containers Asian really fixes how about the other half of it where you can build a docker container that use your you know your driver might research if you will and it again it exposes over even if it’s not a standard API as long as it’s it’s a configurable piece and it means a few basic requirements usual not docker container on whatever host you’re doing it on our case with high and you say it’s you know running on this issue port and here’s how you talked about drive America’s service in its you know someone extracted and then we we constructed house that generalized layer of the EDTA I it will do all that translation for you and call out of reach so far as it being a language using C. sharp or dot net over go over peace be over now it is kind of hopefully we’ve we’ve made out a non issue the interface is the same regardless of the technology used to ride it as long as we’re doing that as restful API later excellent thanks for that inside I really appreciate that because obviously device drivers are a huge part of this puzzle and yeah I think %HESITATION standardization will play a role in solving that and this idea of micro services is something I’m gonna dig into a bit more as soon as I get off this call but until that how about the question on everyone’s minds security what kind of issues concerns yeah prevention how do you manage and deploy these things to make sure that they’re secure so first up front you’re only as secure as the leaders linking your change and as of right now the weakest link is almost always the devices themselves so that the manufacturing of the the projectors for example may communicate over Iraq TCP socket so even if you know I put a password and SO we transmit over the network over in plain text so until some of those things get fixed the system just isn’t isn’t going to be as secure as it should be as far as a rather enticing souls go the nice news is that it’s just a leading server so we use our cell stack it’s a kind of an animal shelter is open source management system for living servers and so it’s it’s really is very simple to say you know I want the system to be locked down each year chords on the show houses around the bases %HESITATION you trust your lectures music journal a few days here I know your bank records your range or whatever you can basically lock down a rather quiet using the same best practices methodologies exist for regional excellence and that’s one of the reasons the other reasons why we’re excited about this security we think is actually a better story with this solution than I was before because when you’re dealing with a proprietary eighty solution all you’re limited to whatever they fought for it right and in today’s world we’re still finding ourselves largely Intel that space in a lot of our ecosystems which anyone who’s delved into the security side of things now is a town that is very dated when it comes to it’s just it’s security features some mildly so yeah I was Joe was saying we haven’t once again going back to the open source source world right %HESITATION lyrics is used in some of the most secure datacenters in the world and there are a lot of great tools around securing it and the salt stacked we’ve chosen its policy based things so you don’t find what you were security website and every device you bring in gets that policy and figures itself to here to it right which is one of the great things about using an open source product like lyrics as the core OS two system I’m beyond that believe guys self musician gas in this kind of standard everything that we have secured me tied into our it’s a it’s a Seattle based its cast token authorization and we used a somewhat tokens for authorization ongoing session management but that’s your older our choices but because we’re using standards we can use really any of the same things Edie’s care any other web server yeah and Dan were using modern open open standards %HESITATION we grow with as they grow so you know as as they change in support newer encryption algorithms because you know as shots got hacked or you know whatever and they moved to the during Christian algorithm we get it it comes along with the new packages that come down and use our Christian things like SSH are built in by default we’ve got secure shell access to all these devices across the board and there’s just a lot of benefits that you can take advantage of going down to stroke excellent I think the big takeaways there are that nothing is really secure out of the box is more a matter of configuration and %HESITATION yeah and to think security and how you’re going to to manage these things absolutely you mentioned earlier about the elk stack can you dig a little deeper into that what that means with these letters E. L. K. mean and how you’re using it in an AV sense so L. stands for elastic search log stashing combina it’s a it’s a it was was big data engine based on the leucine charting engine %HESITATION basically it’s it’s and it is a big data ingestion searching and then visualization pieces arm so anything that happens on any of our devices every time it turns on every time it turns off every five minutes ago based status check I generates an advance and it pushes out of and up into this elastic search cluster and elastic search is a very powerful green language with which you can you know do all sorts of cross Asian and searching and filtering in one hour we use that for a lot of our modern pieces you actually generate alerts based on presence or lack of presence of certain events we use it for keeping track of the state of the rooms you know this room is on the line is seventy three we also use it for you know validating some of our assumptions so one of the success stories that happened before I got down here actually with with right down you and are managing director was these are getting much out of our existing system and we had previously been putting a bill requiring every wrong the matrix kind of supported that wasn’t being used as much as we had thought it was and as a result we kind of stopped doing that a little bit and so we’ve allows us to do things like that where you can you know we have some assumptions that we make and that he loves either through those or you know district so based decisions they have a direct effect affect on on the bottom line right and it takes all the discussion out of the decision because %HESITATION sometimes it’s just a feeling I think I need a Blu ray player right now you know right any any final thoughts no I mean the only if people are interested in and learning a little bit more about it where we we try to make ourselves available to answer questions and to interesting we’ve got an email address they can reach out to us at AV API DB dash dash API at the way you know you yeah we’re just having a good time over here and we don’t mind talking about it if anybody thinks you’re looking at the code that organization name and get out of this be why you all I see a movie on the space is not that is just one more so you can go find organization get help in the now that you brought that up really quickly what what would that process look like I have a raspberry pi my desk I’m looking at the ghetto repository what what are the steps to make this happen if I’m if I’m a Christian on an X. Ekstrom programmer and I don’t know much about this modern programming stuff do I have a chance so %HESITATION as Daniel said in the beginning we haven’t done a great job of packaging this up so I could read also stops actually isn’t that complicated I mean it is silent but really what it is we have an image we build and maintain that does it kind of infrastructure all marketing things are set up automatically but also has all the pieces on it fundamentally need to run the systems you can download that some get out and then really there’s a there’s an example doctor compose file doctor composes it’s a sin tax on a tool for downloading and running a bunch of different docker containers so you have to his example now herbal solemn duty all your basic stuff you need up and running so I don’t do that you start running the containers and then you have to you know configure whatever device you’re controlling in such a way that it has right passwords and things and there is a slight amount of configuration that data base you have to do ask you might is I don’t know if we have a great documentation about it if somebody is interested in this please do reach out and we’d be happy to you know detail exactly what you have to do and and he is set up so I would imagine that you know if if you’re trying to get a really basic system set up in a contact us we can probably work and working with you through to get set up in less than a day for sure probably a couple hours if your engine is the basic system but I think I think that’s one of our goals as an organization is his timing is to make the code more consumable to the community how we’ve done a lot of of customisation that isn’t really easy for everyone to understand so on going I think we’ll see improvements in terms of how that code is is available on consumables for for those that maybe don’t have the expertise to someone like Joe and going through the process of helping someone set this up in their ecosystem and hearing the questions and problems they run into will only help us make this more simple style of anybody’s interest please please reach out we helped ideas while relations were kind of in the process right now helping them get asked you to set up we’d love to help anybody itself excellent I love the attitude of %HESITATION generosity and helpfulness and yeah I sense a little bit of passion for this new approach to things it is exciting and it can be intimidating I think those first few steps you hear a lot of words a lot of acronyms flying around but %HESITATION getting to that first I touchable and and the light goes on once that happens I think the motivation comes by its own so that’s why I’m always looking for those initial steps how do I make something happen anything else any other personal information like to give out you’ve given some contact info anything else you’d like to mention I think I think from the perspective of an ATV engineer so I didn’t grow up in the in the IT world %HESITATION it’s it’s doable so don’t don’t fear the the the language and the acronyms and and everything in it takes a little bit of time but it’s it’s learn a ball and it’s durable and it’s exciting anything else you’d like to mention %HESITATION lasting for a there there is a group of %HESITATION university have media people that I called CCM see they have a conference every year this year see CMC is being held at %HESITATION sister university up the up the road from us a little bit the state universities in the area university of Utah and we’re less than a hour away from where she’s young she’s gonna be also anybody attending that interested in in in visiting with us and maybe possibly see what we’re doing we’re we’re not too far away so I will I will also be presenting at the conference sure we do we are doing a presentation of the conference excellent thank you so much for being on the show gentleman thank you if you or anyone on your staff ever considered themselves just in AV programmer join the club that’s how I used to feel I was just an AMX programmer or just Crestron program or whatever language of your choice is whatever it may be there’s generally this feeling in AV that we’re not capable of using modern programming languages and it simply isn’t true sure there’s a learning curve but once you get through it all other languages become easier to learn and it just expands the amount of options you have when designing a system it’s not an either or decision you don’t say I won’t be using these manufacture tools anymore it’s just you have a broader palate to choose from ends here’s what market day founder of idea box had to say about his experience with the online courses at learn eighty programming dot com you know Patrick it’s funny how the smallest things can sometimes be the star of really big ideas %HESITATION before I took the learn ATV programming dot com courses I was in that Terry I’m only a control system programmer kind of mindset rate %HESITATION when he came to new technologies or current technologies like Java script error or things like that for some reason I thought that was different from what I’m doing and what taking your courses flipped for me was not so much what I learned technically taking the courses it was the mindset of well wait a second I’m already doing ninety nine percent of what some of these most of modern programmers are dealing I just have to learn %HESITATION you know the other one percent and that’s really what I did so it’s really been kind of a big change after taking the course %HESITATION and I would really recommend this course to any integrator not only will obviously help their skill set but more importantly it might change their whole mindset %HESITATION which is more important and and and really show them new opportunities open the door so they kind of see problems through a different lens %HESITATION I gotta tell you one of the biggest changes for me was as soon as I become myself HTML CSS javascript and solve the you guys that I can make with those technologies I just couldn’t sell a %HESITATION Crestron touch him again mark is a great example of somebody who takes new information and really applies it I know that mark still sells a lot of Crestron equipment but for him for his company for his customers for his business he needed a better you why he needed another option for user interface and modern programming allowed him to do that so the question is how can you use modern programming to improve your business please go to learn AV programming dot com and wherever you see a sign up button go ahead and sign up and you’ll get some free information to get a feel of my learning style and what kind of information is available and of course it would be an honor to have you in role in one of our courses and help you upgrade your skills and take this industry to the next level thanks for listening software defined survival I hope you found it useful and maybe inspires you to try out something new this week if you have any questions does software defined survival dot com and click the appropriate I’d love to answer questions on the air and if you’d like to help spread the word please subscribe comment and share it with your
Andrew Page has been working at Cornell University for over 16 years and currently Manager of Integrated Audio and Video Engineering.
He has experience designing and delivering for unified communications, digital signage, video conferencing, web conferencing, content delivery networks, webcasting, and video platform services as well as cloud based solutions.
Highlights From This Episode
AV Control with a Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Touchscreen, HTML5 and NodeRED
Ordering Matrix Switchers from Alibaba
Deciding between Contract Manufacturing and Established AV manufacturers
How to Manage and Scale software defined systems
Enterprise monitoring of AV systems
Mentioned In This Episode
Cornell University, Glyph Technologies, Cisco, Zoom, NodeRED, Javascript, Node.js, NPM, Kramer, PJLink, Amazon Alexa, Revit, Blender, Unreal Engine, David Bianchiardi, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Chromium, Angular, Alibaba, Amazon Alexa, Colin Birney
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we explore how software defined systems are changing the business of IT today software defined survive another place or suffer great place hardware is in the control system stack and looking at the ability for source software to replace what currently uses a proprietary technologies for controlling user interface the model of that technology being closed proprietary just doesn’t really won’t really get us there really isn’t we’re having something that is anyone can write notes for publish and that you could be really can connect that is you start trying to it will just have these external pressures to do what’s what’s a real change and what’s just sort of a possibility I think this has enough ten chilling this idea of software eating into the control stack %HESITATION I think this has enough potential to disrupt that it’s something that should be taken seriously and looked into and and understood welcome my name is Patrick Murray and today’s guest has been working at Cornell University for over sixteen years and is currently manager of manager of integrated audio and video engineering he has experience designing and delivering for unified communications digital signage video conferencing web conferencing content delivery networks webcasting and video platform services as well as cloud based solutions in some of our previous conversations we’ve talked about some of the alternative solutions he’s been looking into and I’m really looking forward to hearing more about those experiences from Andrew page Andrew welcome to the show Patrick thank you for having me happy to %HESITATION is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to correct or expand upon no you just reminded me though that it is a little old at this point and could use some updating your linkedin profile he mean yes so tell us how did you get started in AV how did you wind up in this little niche industry allow he goes back to public high school and %HESITATION you know messing around with %HESITATION different theater productions and being involved in the tax side of those and friends who had bands you know kind of getting broken to doing the sound and employing these together and seeing what works and what doesn’t work just having that a technical ability to take things apart and putting together and understand how they’re going to work and then that led to when I went to do my undergrad at college I make majored in television and radio production and that kind of solidified that trajectory for me getting into video production and producing things was in the studio and producing stuff in the field and audio production music recording which then after college turned into a couple years doing live sound freelance which is a great gig in the summer but when winter rolls around there’s not a whole lot to do in a central New York unless you want to go on the road and eventually I got a job at a small company called cliff technologies which maybe some of our listeners remember but it was a hard drive manufacturer they need hard drives and CD burners and take back up a music recording industry and also for the film production industry and they would rat him out these devices and the qualifying with various design workstations and non linear editors as I do tech support for them for a couple years and that was a great game so you right out of college you only ring and you pick it up and be like Hey this is serving Hancock and so your goal has done and we had a great customer base we had Sony pictures and and copy it roses was a customer and just a very wide base sting you just never knew who you’re going to be talking to who is going to be calling for support and %HESITATION that that John lesson for a little while until I finally ended up landing this job here at Cornell and I’ve been working my way up through the ranks started out at the language resource center which was a job where I was creating language tapes and digitizing all material managing mac and PC computer lab satellite operations and some other stuff so that really got me a lot of experience with various systems and managing things to be operational there is a consistent level need meaning that the in the system could be down at the right operational and then John opened up for new venue that was being renovated thirteen hundred seat performing arts hall or now and the technical director position opened up and I after that it was a great job so you got to do sound and video conferencing video streaming involved in a lot of great events a lot of concerts visits and that helped me to really see the whole university okay good insight into how the university operates the various in two plays a gone between departments and and very stakeholders so after two years of that moved into a major role and %HESITATION managing the video engineering team at best fourteen and so we support a video conferencing web conferencing service which is based on Cisco infrastructure and soon as a software service package are we offer a video platform service which is billed account for which drives all the online video that comes through Cornell dot EDU and libraries mass and also here and then we have an exact technical support service which we have staff that well or things like town hall meetings and distance learning classes and an operations we have those and commencement convocation and all those special events to go on and the digital signage service and then finally integrated eighty engineering service which does in the consulting is actually and facilities design build process and we do peer review of some of the larger capital projects that comes through and so that’s been my primary focus for about the past six years and and what we’ve been trying to do there is really trying to migrate away from proprietary technologies and move more towards standards based off more traditional IT technologies we can and we’re also looking at taking the hardware stack and migrating into software where it makes sense and then that software itself moving that software as a service for cloud based services so as many of the audio people listening well here we got Andrew here to us to put a headset on so the audio should be just a little better now what you said really a mouthful there so you you took us through your career path and then you started digging into the meat of what this podcast is about that’s the migration to more I. T. based solutions so I just want to comment quickly about that career trajectory ends you know the more I think about it this some background and live sound the music and you know it comes down to production I think it’s a great training field for for many different fields it’s a it’s a great way to learn about technology especially because you’re interested in it right it’s it’s cool to make music and and to put on a show so you’re interested in it you need to learn about this technology you learn about production just because you know the show must go on you learn about showing up on time everything being in the right time in the right place at the right time I think there’s a lot to be said for being in a in a rock band when her teen ager or at least having hanging out with the crowd that those that of course you could see to many different directions but on the more people that I talk to about this the more I realize there are many different ways you could take those skills to more up I don’t know more grown up type of tempers absolutely yeah really I think it it does teach you about the importance of of as you said showing up on time and the show starts at eight OO five you know there’s no there’s no room for wiggle on that and %HESITATION really kind of will hone your ability to work under deadline and to know what deadlines are important and which ones can slip a little bit yeah all very grown up things but I went when you just making music it’s you know that’s the focus and that’s that’s the motivator so I don’t know it’s an interesting thought I think for a for young people for their own motivation so you talked about this move to away from the hardware stack to the I. T. stack of course there’s a reason why we have all this purpose built equipment floating around you can do what we do you can distribute audio video you couldn’t may control systems in touch panels that worked in real time and show control environment you you just couldn’t do it with software even ten years ago I would say certainly not fifteen or twenty years ago or longer but now it is possible so can you talk a little bit more about what that migration looks like how are you evaluating technologies and equipment what kind of things are you looking at just a tell us about what you’ve been up to sure out so the I think the mom one of the places where we first started to see this about over six years ago was in the video playback we’re we’re adding a DVD player or before that a VCR and then of course more recently Blu ray players into every build everything a standard classroom and as we rolled out the video platform service we began to realize that there are opportunities here to right size the technology that was going into each classroom in that we could start to use these cloud based services and is this the whole idea that there was some sort of link there between the cloud services that were being rolled out and what was being built in the classroom or the conference room was kinda new and we start to think well we don’t really need to put these devices and if we can get people to use video streaming to play back their content and there are some hurdles there like around digitizing various pieces of content but we’re able to overcome a lot of those objections and concerns and people were people professors faculty where we’re starting to do it on their own using YouTube so to then kind of shift them to more institutional tools to do that was fairly easy transition and then we’re able to phase out optical media playback devices in our design build and then as we started to get more into a soft was a service for web conferencing we realize the same thing was going to happen with video codecs and we were able to start to instead of incorporating a poly com or Cisco hardware codec into a build we could then put in something like a body %HESITATION Evey bridge and this was several years ago that we started purposely doing this but what we found over time is that it really wasn’t necessarily replacing all of the hardware codecs south records weren’t necessarily placing all the hardware codecs but that we’re just creating more conferencing a campus or just more video conferencing and web conferencing that was occurring with the prevalence of the software and so in some rooms now we just when it had would not have had video conferencing now we have that via some sort of software codec and the rooms where you’re still doing high and distance learning or there’s some specialized need they’ll still have the hardware codecs so it’s interesting that in that regard the softer hasn’t completely displaced a hardware it’s just created more usage of that type technology and we’re we’re now seeing more I’m sorry now where where we’re starting to look at another place where software group place hardware is in the control system stack and looking at the ability for open source software to replace what we currently uses a very proprietary technologies for controlling user interface so I like the way I think this kind of there’s obviously a cultural shift going on because technology is playing more more of a role in everyone’s lives and I think it was interesting to note that your professors worse doing their own streaming with you too right so that they didn’t even need any kind of a purpose built technology to do it the expectation was just there because there’s these pressures from the outside these services are available to pretty much anyone with an internet connection ends I think that that same idea is available in control or at least that same expectation is there from end users with control risers smart TV’s you could control with Alexa everybody has an apple of course it’s not as integrated as we would like it to be as as professionals in this industry but I think the expectation is also there and %HESITATION I’m starting to feel that pressure as well to to keep up with a great looking user interfaces can you tell us more about what you’ve been doing in in the control space and and what technologies in particular you’re looking at the absolutely and that that consumers ation of IT I think is a big pressure and will continue to be a big pressure and and we’ve you know seen it for years in terms of simplicity of design and costs the idea of what I can do this in my living room lies a cost so much why is it so complicated to do this at my work that’s something we’ve always tried to balance is that walk between using commercial and consumer technologies technologies that are familiar to the end users with building things that we can support at an enterprise scale the the technology stack that most interested in right now for control is software called no dread and it’s something that came out of IBM been open sourced in now as part of the I believe it’s a Java foundation and have to look up the exact name of it and this is an open source platform for the internet of things and the way I sort of see it I think the way that it’s described in in their literature is a way to wire together things with web services and and everything in between and it’s a visual basic programming environment so you have these nodes that you drag out onto a canvas and then you wire the nodes up and a node could do a lot of different things so one node could be TCP IP control and another node could be infrared control and then you could have been no debts just doing some sort of logic for you processing the very signals as a comment or you could have a node that is doing HTML and is driving your user interface it’s all based on very familiar technologies for web developers to build around Java script which is like the most popular programming language if you are out there and so a lot of front end developers can be very familiar with this Java script and then the underlying web server technology is no J. S. which is becoming a very popular web server technology so I’m a big fan of no dread anybody who’s been following my blog in and looking at the learning programming dot com website knows that I think node read up first of all I’m really grateful that it came out because using modern programming can be really intimidating for somebody coming from any V. environment even even if you’re an AMX programmer where you’re used to a script type of a language jumping from that to something object oriented something with so many frameworks and different ways of doing things I think it’s intimidating so I’m grateful that no great is out there because I think it’s the easiest way to dip your toe into the waters of of a more modern programming language because like you were saying you just drag over TCP node putting the I. P. address and the connection is there ends to deploy it it’s one click there’s no compiling uploading you can run it on your laptop you could run it pretty much anywhere on a raspberry pi it’s just really flexible and simple to get started so I’m really excited about it and if you do need to get more complicated like you said you’re you’re just writing Java scripts in in these little there’s that function note where you could write as much Java script as you like so it is really flexible and the underlying technology that you mentioned is no J. S. and that is non blocking any event driven which was really always the problem with using like windows XP for control you you would press a button and then it would block the rest of the program until that function was done so no JSA dresses that and I’ve been deploying it on several projects lately and it works just fine so do you have any more thoughts about node reading where you see it going well one of the the I think the really interesting things is the community around it as well and that folks are publishing their flows and they’re publishing their notes so you can go on to the a node red website and you can search and see if someone has created already a floor note for what you’re trying to do and there is already a few in the AV area published so for instance someone has published a node to interface with Kramer presentation switchers cool and there’s there’s a note for PJ link control of projectors and so you can start to where all the stuff together and then it really allows you to move beyond just the AV system in the room because you can tie and external web services you can tie into the field lighting system it’s very easy to tie into that you can find a Luxo or other voice controls we want and voice control it’s really I think the great thing about it is that it is this open platform and allows you to bring in all these various technologies and and make them work in harmony with each other which I always think it’s sort of the goal of us were trying to put together these AB systems is to make it function is one system and the model of that technology being closed and proprietary just doesn’t really won’t really get us there won’t really get us into the future were having something that is open that anyone can write a note for publish and that you could be really can connect with anything that I think is is is absolutely where we have to go in and where the industry will start trying to which it will just have these external pressures to do that yeah I’m kind of I’m looking forward to that future so this this idea of sharing nodes I think is really powerful no J. S. works with node package manager which is basically an online repository that anybody could submit their modules to and when you use no red you basically go into a search bar and look and just look for something you have no idea that it’s and PM underneath there what do you think it’s going to take for the eighty community to develop the habit of publishing their drivers I think it’s some point you’re gonna you’re gonna lose your competitive edge if you’re not publishing your your driver that eventually it’s going to get to a point where in order for you to sell your product you’re going to have to have that that ability for people to interfacing or hardware with an open source control platform that’s interesting so a lot like it happens today manufacture sometimes we even contract a company like mine to write a question on a Max extra module you see the same thing might happen in this open source area I think eventually that’s we’re going to get to yeah fascinating ends in the modern development web development software development it’s actually a common thing to publish open source software just to get some recognition and and show people what kind of skills you have I wonder if that’ll catch on MTV as well possibly so yes we see the next generation of IT slushy V. enthusiasts there too start on their chops I may be a great place for them to demonstrate what they can do so we’re seeing all the praises of these solutions obviously can run anywhere run out or as very pie for thirty five dollars it’s cheap it’s flexible it’s open source what are some of the cons that you could think of I think just the lack of a commercial support structure knowns commercialize this at this point you can’t pick up the phone and called tech support and have someone to walk you through you know the particular issue that you might be having you have to get online and join the forum and you know really said it Diggin yourself to fix things that are happening so that lack of commercials support offering I think is the is the biggest con at this point and and then of course it’s just not proven you know and we don’t want to be putting technologies into our bills that that don’t have a good strong track record and I feel comfortable with the stability of the hardware and software stack and amusing but it’s gonna take some time I think for others to really developed a comfort level yeah a lot of it is perception %HESITATION there’s been plenty of reports I keep mentioning the raspberry pi but I think electronics are also commoditized nowadays I mean a processor Olympics processors Olympics processor course the electronics have some tolerance is built into a but there’s plenty of reports out there of these devices running twenty four seven for many years as far as the software goes really haven’t seen it fall down or do any weird stuff like you mentions you do have to go to Google or go turn to the web to find some answers sometimes when I do that with proprietary systems is what many times so I personally think a lot of this is just perception and I wonder what it will take to actually change that perception because it’s kind of a a you go first type of a scenario at the moment probably just a few brave souls have to step out there and start using it exactly so are you working on anything interesting at the moment that you’d like to share with us something we’ve been working on that that we’ve that we’ve got a lot of head turns a lot of interest is using virtual reality to mock up buildings and rooms and spaces that we’re doing renovation on of that we’re building for the first time and we’re using in that space we’re using rabbit we’re taking the rabbit models and then bringing them into a blender which is an open source tool and texture rising adding textures to the rabbit models and then from there exporting into unreal engine which is working with an oculus rift headset and we’ve been able to get it to the point where we can we take up a building that we’re working on and we can have a person virtually navigate through the entire building go into a into a classroom and I can see the layout of the classrooms you the sight lines look like can get an idea of the screen sizing and it’s been very interesting in terms of the response that we’ve gotten from folks here in our facilities group and I to groups that build these buildings and do the actual designs are architects and engineering folks have X. expressed a lot of interest in it and it’s very compelling you put on the headset and you are really in that space it’s it’s very you know that they were the resolution the fidelity is obviously not the same as reality but the responsiveness as you turn your head as you look around is enough to create the illusion that you’re in that space and you can really get a sense of the space that you just can’t get that sense from a drawing so we’re really excited to start showing this now to our project stakeholders the folks that are making the decisions on budget making the decision you know what schematic design level about you know do we go with one large classroom into smaller classrooms are how we gonna lay out this office space so we see a lot of potential we just started getting this working about a month ago so we haven’t had a lot of experience under belt yet but it shows a lot of promise and I think another place where software can be used within the design build process itself to bring value to the customers absolutely I had a gentleman named David beyond Chardy on the show a few weeks ago and he uses virtual our reality quite a bit for modeling just like you were talking about and his intention there is to manage the risk in in a building projects because you have all these unknowns you’re you’re putting in this technology that may not be tested war parallel technologies that may need to integrate with each other and you’re not quite sure how old how to look in the ends and using virtual well virtual reality is a way for for you to simulate all those different systems working together so I I I kind of took away from that that you’re using it to make design decisions do you see any value as in in terms of managing risk I think one of the things that came out from some of the engineers that came in to see it but the more the %HESITATION the electrical engineering group is being able to look at the various utilities that are going into a space and how they may or may not interact with each other they may you know we may be designing things to try and live in the same exact physical space so some of that risk which I don’t made may not be the same type of risk that that you know John was talking about but no I I we had we’ve really just started to scratch the surface of what we can use this technology for yeah I’m always looking for practical applications but in the beginning of anything like this it’s it’s you really you don’t know what what you don’t know and now there’s just so much potential that you really do need to just start using it to see to see what comes out of it that’s what that’s what our theory was weird okay let’s just start let’s just build it and see what we can do with it and we knew initially I think are our main objective was to try and make decisions about most distant viewer and screen sizing and we creek quickly found that the resolution of the goggles themselves are gonna limit that you’re not gonna be able to really look at you know such and such point font at such a such distance and so that’s legible because the resolution of the display in your eye isn’t it is not dense enough to be able to make those types of decisions but you can get a general sense of the of the size of the screen and there’s all sorts of other design decisions that you can you can make outside of most distant viewer and one of the things we also found just a point of interest is that it can be kind of nauseating to fly through the spaces and some people are okay with it and some people they’re in there for a few minutes and like okay I gotta take a break and so what we’re doing to try and help with that is we’re gonna set up sort of a guided tour mode for folks so that they can put on the headset and it’ll take them through the model in a more no more controlled fashion and then have a pause point we can pause and you can stop and you can look around and you know this is the the such and such classroom and and when you’re ready to proceed to press button then they proceed on to the next point the tour group so providing a more controlled environment for some folks I think will be really helpful and other people are just gonna want bill slicing the whole model and look at every nook and cranny user interface design you’ve got your advanced user that wants to fly yet on the other one who just wants to be taken by the hand and showing around a bit exactly so let’s shift gears back to this control solution with node read what are your ideas on on employing that in in a practical basis how would you deploy it what kind of hardware would you use what kind of user interfaces do you expect how will they be made will be HTML five what do you what does this solution look like in real life so I’m a proof of concept right now that is a raspberry pi and it’s using the raspberry pi foundation touch screen seven inch into seven inch touchscreen mounted into an articulating case on that will sit sits on your desktop and or table top and that screen will articulate up on up and down %HESITATION and the U. I. itself is chromium which is the underlying technology for chrome the odd that the browser chromium is the version that you get on the raspberry pi for for the next and that of the web page itself is running all HTML five and angular which is web technology that allows users to create single paid web apps in the chromium is running a kiosk mode and it’s set to auto boot into kiosk mode so when the same boots up it launches the operating system and washes chromium goes full screen goes to that local host web page which just what page it’s running that the user interface and so that’s four I think you know somewhere sub hundred dollars you’ve got the touch screen and a control processor that is very stable very usable on the the back end of that you could really have any sort of matrix switch your presentation switcher anything that you can find out what the protocol is that its using and if if if it’s published then you’re all set you’re good to go and I found a company that is a manufacturer in China and through Alibaba was able to order a sample unit and for just a few hundred dollars have a very functional presentation switcher with I think it’s got three HDMI and a mini DisplayPort and and a VGA and then each debased T. out an HDMI out into that’s all completely controllable through the note read rats running through the raspberry pi running no grad and then from there you can do up we have said a voice control using Alexa for knocks it out for voice control if you want to add that later on as well wow that’s a that’s pretty fascinating stuff let let me circle back to beat the beginning I’ve been taking some notes here so we describes with the raspberry pi yeah it’s funny we’ve we’ve stumbled upon basically the same technologies so raspberry pi with the the official raspbian image and chromium running in in in kiosk mode and chromium is the open source version of chrome so I I made an image called controlled by its available on get lab which basically does all that for you it’s got raspbian it’s got that chromium that just boots at start up it’s got the SD card in read only mode to protect a little from power outages and then you were talking about using API’s rights you can control anything with an API and that’s what note read does rights you can pull over HTTP notes TCP nodes and I think the cool thing is you can test all that on your laptop without buying any hardware and then deploy the exact same programming to whatever you’ll be using for a control processor and finally this idea of contract manufacturing I I first heard this from Colin purity and it kind of blew my mind but I guess why not go to Ali Baba in order your matrix switcher arm I’m sure that the latest and greatest technology will always need to be provided by purpose built manufacturer with lots of experience in a support team where do you think the line will be or is there one between how do you make that decision between contract manufacturing and in turning to Europe more traditional AB manufactures so I think we’re it’s gonna be is if you’re building two hundred classrooms you’re going to want to try and do it as cost effectively as possible and that’s where you could turn to contract manufacturing you know you could find something off the shelf that that that that manufacture already makes were you could do if you wanted to do something %HESITATION yam give them a spec and have them build that particular product just for you but yeah I think when you get it scale that’s where it starts to really make sense to start turning towards alternative sources for sourcing the actual underlying matrix switching to the signal distribution hardware fascinating but as as these systems scale the risk will be scaling with it how do you go about managing that so there’s and ed at the note read software itself will run on the raspberry pi but also run on a server so you could have a server environment either running locally within your server farm or within Amazon web services or some other infrastructures a service offering and that can provide oversight for all of your installations and you know be hanging each of your devices whether online could send a notification when a device goes off line allow you to actually control various elements of each of the room like so adjusting labels are color schemes are basic functionality all between the those individual pies at fleet of of control pies that you have to use that term back to some sort of central service to monitor and control them and then there’s also enterprise monitoring technologies out there that you could use to be monitoring all your devices so we have here at Cornell we have a a very standard network topology that we deploy where each classroom or conference room we’ll get a fiber from our backbone into the room and then we put in a edge switch same edge switch that goes into our T. our closets maybe smaller ones like a court instead of a twenty four port but sometimes you do you use a twenty four port for larger rooms and each device is on is on that network we have a navy sub netting procedure in place and then all those devices get monitors to enterprise monitoring and that monitoring that is tied into our enterprise notification system so that if a device goes off line whoever is on call will get a push notification on the phone or to get a phone call or whatever they decide is that they want whatever method they decided that they want to have the communication sent to them and so I think as the stars to scale out you just have to start to build enterprise models for monitoring and for notifications and for maintenance of these devices managing a whole fleet as well of of these types of vices got to think about well how do you manage for more updates how do you know when the next version of no J. S. comes out of next version of node package manager comes out you know how you gonna monitor that and I think having a test environment will be important and then also sort of not pushing out updates across the entire ecosystem at once but maybe having a subset of rooms that you push out updates to monitor for stability and then brought to the larger set of rooms so really starts to become more of an active environment like it becomes a production I. T. environment as you start to go down this path and is it really is it before I think the idea of any system as a kind of built it and then it was there for four five six years whatever and then you pry do a forklift on it or maybe you would use you know you’d be able to do some sort of more precise update something more surgical dented a forklift but generally speaking you call people something put in the new stuff I think now start to look at a more of a continuous update model where you’re continuously updating systems you’re adding features adding new a new technologies and and that’s that’s a different model that’s a different way to start thinking about the EVF a structure and start to think about as warm enterprise IT infrastructure absolutely sounds a sounds very interesting and it sounds like you really get the opportunity to to customize like that last point where you’re continually updating not just the end user experience but also that monitoring ands and %HESITATION notification system you can tell that to what best suits your support team absolutely yeah it because certain agree if you’re supporting using slack you can put your you can push notifications to slack at the using UPS genie you know whatever technology they’re using you can build that and it’s not an integration that’s you know it’s not like you’re just stringing things together haphazardly it can be done in a very robust way yeah so I’m what what do we do as a community to start sharing the solutions with each other because the way it is now you go to Infocom and see what manufacturers come out with now we have this alternative where everybody could kind of make their own solution but I think it would be a bad idea to to not share what we learn with each other what how do you see that playing out I think we just need to start developing and %HESITATION publishing are for you know for working with the note read environment or other open source environment start publishing our work there is I think an opportunity to put together some developer kits and a you know bundled together some of the technologies and distribute those for people who want to actually start experimenting with and and using this stuff and then build some sort of community around that so that we can started knowledge share yeah I’m on board for that so one final question on this point I’m I’m not sure how much your organization works with contractors like %HESITATION independent programmers are even integrators consultants where do you see that traditional a V. integration ecosystem what what’s their role in this new kind of an environment where using open source source software and maybe even contracting contract manufacturing the equipment so I think it definitely the installation side was still going to have a need for people to come and install the technology and pull the wires and and we’re all together make a working system out of it but it may be less and less specifying you know spit the particular manufacture that that integrator is comfortable with that maybe less programming and so more along the lines of justice installation component but I think we’re still a little ways off from that reality and there’s a lot of other things that you to play out before before that happens but it would I think would be good for you know anyone who’s in the space to really start learning about what viable technologies are out there and start preparing their people and start thinking about you know what does it look like that what that new future might look like excellent from any final thoughts and things are changing and then technology is always changing and it’s always hard to keep ahead of stuff and no okay what what’s what’s a real change in what’s just sort of a possibility I think this has enough potential like this idea of software eating into the control stack I think this has enough potential to disrupt that it’s it’s something that should be taken seriously and looked into and and understood and certainly maybe not the whole world will move over that way but I think the to be a significant portion of people that just the value proposition is too great to just that’s it took the cost savings and the ability to manage your your infrastructure at an enterprise level we’ll be too attractive in that you’ll you’ll see a lot of folks move over that way but perhaps not everybody great and you thank you so much for being on the show thank you for having me Patrick I hope you can tell from this episode how excited I am that Andrew and I have stumbled upon the same technologies ends Azinger mentions the biggest drawback is there is no one single place to turn to for support to learn exactly how to set these things up how to create a reliable work flow that you could execute on project after project and that’s why we created the control pie image because why should we all be doing the same steps over and over and that’s available completely free and get help just go to get help dot com and search for control pie it’s also why we made the raspberry pi in AV class available at learn AV programming dot com now Andrew inspired me to make a free version of this course so you can dip your toe in the water and get an idea of what it’s like to work with no dread and the raspberry pi in AV systems so go to learn a few programming dot com and sign up for that free course and you’ll get an idea of what we’re talking about ends here’s what market day founder of idea box had to say about his experience with the online courses at learn eighty programming dot com you know Patrick it’s funny how the smallest things can sometimes be the start of a really big ideas %HESITATION before I took the learn ATV programming dot com courses I was in that Terry I’m only a control system programmer kind of mindset rate %HESITATION when he came to new technologies or current technologies like Java script error or things like that for some reason I thought that was different from what I’m doing and what taking your courses flipped for me was not so much what I learned technically taking the courses it was the mindset of well wait a second I’m already doing ninety nine percent of what some of these most of modern programmers are dealing I just have to learn %HESITATION you know the other one percent and that’s really what I did so it’s really been kind of a big change after taking the course %HESITATION and I would really recommend this course to any integrator not only will obviously help their skill set but more importantly it might change their whole mindset %HESITATION which is more important and and and really show them new opportunities open the door so they kind of see problems through a different lens %HESITATION I gotta tell you one of the biggest changes for me was as soon as I become myself HTML CSS javascript and solve the you eyes that I can make with those technologies I just couldn’t sell a %HESITATION Crestron touch him again mark is a great example of somebody who takes new information and really applies it I know that mark still sells a lot of Crestron equipment but for him for his company for his customers for his business he needed a better you why he needed another option for user interface and modern programming allowed him to do that so the question is how can you use modern programming to improve your business please go to learn AV programming dot com and wherever you see a sign up button go ahead and sign up and you’ll get some free information to get a feel of my learning style and what kind of information is available and of course it would be an honor to have you in role in one of our courses and help you upgrade your skills and take this industry to the next level thanks for listening software defined survival I hope you found it useful and maybe it inspires you to try out something new this week if you have any questions does software defined survival dot com click the appropriate I’d love to answer questions on the air and if you’d like to help spread the word please subscribe comment and share thanks