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Anyone used extron annotator??

samossamos Posts: 106
in AMX General Discussion
Has anyone used the extron annotator??. Specifically has anyone had to use a TPI-PRO to track the touch and pass it to the annotator??any help or sample code will help

Comments

  • nickmnickm Posts: 152
    Having played with the Extron annotator at Extron U, and currently working with 2 TPI-PRO's, what you're describing sounds relatively redundant. Since the latest beta firmware of the TPI-PRO's has TakeNote embedded, you're pretty much doubling up on functionality.

    A little more insight into what you're ultimately trying to accomplish may shed some light on the situation.
  • samossamos Posts: 106
    my issue

    OK here is a summary of what I am trying to do.

    5 touch panels

    3 connected to TPIs.

    2 connected directly to the extron annotator.


    all get there video feed from an extron switcher,but none feed as inputs to the switcher


    the annotation must be seen on all displays, and not just the touch panel.

    the ones connected to the tpi, need to function just like the ones connected to the annotator when showing a full screen image.

    so what i was hoping was that there was a way to pass the touch data out a serial port on amx to serial port on the annotator.


    1. can i just pass the touch information straight to the annotator over the serial port??
    2. i dont have a connection from my tpi's to the switch, so i cant just annotate on the panel, it must be displayed on all monitors.
  • nickmnickm Posts: 152
    Do you happen to have touch panels that have both USB and RS232 interfaces for touch?
  • samossamos Posts: 106
    No I do not have touch monitors that do both
  • nickmnickm Posts: 152
    I'm really not sure how best to approach this. The obvious solution is to add TPI outputs to the matrix switch. It sounds like that is not an option, though.
  • tracktoystracktoys Posts: 46
    I had an Annotator on loan from Extron in my test system for about a month. I only had a few days of that time period to spend with it unfortunately, but here is what I found:

    1) The Annotator does not allow a USB connection with the Pro. The Annotator actually locks up when connected with the Pro because the Annotator does not have a driver to allow communications. It appears that the Pro may not be a "transparent" USB device. I had asked AMX to send a Pro to Extron (thanks Greg Castelli) for them to add it to there driver pool. Extron is currently working on that driver and I would hope to see it before the end of the month, though I have been given no specific timeline.

    2) Any further evaluation of passing user touch through the Pro could not be managed due to the communications incompatibility between the two devices. Our TP of choice is the Elo Intellitouch which supports both serial and USB. As a note, the serial connection was also ineffective in passing information to the Annotator. As for passing the touch coordinates through the serial port to the Annotator from the Pro, I could see how it could be possible but only if it passed through the master. I don't think that the Pro has the ability to send those touch values to the master, however. I might be missing something here, but I am unsure as to how the Annotator would correctly interpret a window touch value without some sort of "translation."

    I am having some trouble understanding the system description, though. When you say that none of them feed to the switcher as inputs, how would the annotation get back to the system to feed the other panels? Am I right in assuming that the people using the Pros want system control overlay as well as add additional annotation to a given source that is being displayed and discussed? Some sort of classroom, maybe a medical training thing? This sounds like it could lead to AMX creating a driver for this type of application. Your situation is similar to ours, but seems a lot more involved.

    As far as the Take Note functionality on the Pro, it's very software oriented and only supports annotation on one device. With the Annotator, it's a hardware platform that allows annotation over any number of sources, basically providing infinite possibilities.
  • jweatherjweather Posts: 320
    tracktoys wrote: »
    As for passing the touch coordinates through the serial port to the Annotator from the Pro, I could see how it could be possible but only if it passed through the master. I don't think that the Pro has the ability to send those touch values to the master, however. I might be missing something here, but I am unsure as to how the Annotator would correctly interpret a window touch value without some sort of "translation."

    The Annotator accepts touch data over ethernet or serial. Input coordinates are scaled to 1000x1000 in the protocol regardless of output resolution. I have used this to send touch data to it from an area on a Cre$tron TP, but haven't played with it much beyond that.
  • tracktoystracktoys Posts: 46
    Great point jweather. I just setup a simple TPI-Pro page with a video button in the background and a joystick on top of that. I will write some sort of transition from the level feedback of the joystick button to the appropriate string format to send to the annotator(1000,1000). I have scaled the level ranges to 1000, so in theory I can basically just take itoa(level.value) and ship it off to the Annotator.

    I'll give this a shot when I go back to work tomorrow. The only issue for me is if our "standard" network equipment will allow for an easy integration with the annotator and the master for IP comm. We have some "creative" policies within our firewall structure that make things like this "fun". The annotator, like you stated, will also accept the x/y coordinates through serial. I will try both and see what happens.

    I was always so hung up on the USB support, I never gave the joystick idea any thought. If it works with absolutely ZERO issues, I will definitely post the results.
  • samossamos Posts: 106
    If you get it to work????

    Thanks for all of the responses guys but in the end I did not need to do it. However if anyone does get it working please post the module on the thread for future use.
  • tracktoystracktoys Posts: 46
    I got it to work somewhat with joystick control, but it doesn't move quite as briskly as the USB touch and the calibration is off somewhat. I do not have any additional time to spend on it at the moment as I have 26 rooms to design in the next month for our summer projects.

    If someone is interested in taking a look at it, I could forward what I have. For some reason my test unit had the serial port get locked up. I can't figure out why, I was sending everything over IP? Oh well.
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