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Bring back ^BMF

Why???


Is anybody as frustrated as I am that AMX have removed the ^BMF command from G5 touch panels?

Comments

  • sling100sling100 Posts: 123
    + 1 here.

    It makes no sense. Take a RMS-type schedule interface for instance. It has 96 slots (24 hours at 15 min intervals). Each slot needs to be shown/hidden, have some text added if needed and background colour changed for adjacent meetings. Instead of 96 commands to each panel I now have to send nearly 300. How is that going to ever make my system more efficient?

    Simon
  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    Do the commands actually not work or is it just omitted in the docs? If it doesn't work then +1 for this stupidity since most folks use ^BMF somewhere in their code and it would mean code would have to be re-written to provide for the difference between G4 and G5.
  • sling100sling100 Posts: 123
    It doesn't work. The panels respond with a 'CMDERROR' string when they encounter an old G4 command - and this is one of them. There are a number of things that don't work any more - even the camera commands have been ditched and they were introduced specifically for the X series. TS response? Use Skype. Not great when I have 20 panels and no internet access.

    Simon
  • ^TOP is also missing, which means the fancy (albeit overrated) drag-and-drop interface doesn't work. We've delayed swapping G4 1900s for G5 that use drag-and-drop until ^TOP gets added. Assuming it will....

    Jeff
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    I seem to remember that the BMF command was a bit of a kludge thrown in to mollify a few (at the the time) oddball feature requests. It then grew out if control.

    In fact, I think BMF is an inside joke.
    Big
    Mother
    F***er

    I use the BMF command a lot and not having it or some equivalent would be pretty awful.
  • gsmithgsmith Posts: 59
    We are still selling G4 panels for those who do not need G5 functionality. Although you may certainly disagree, these decisions were deliberate based on a strategy for where we intend to take the G5 firmware and the differences have been clearly communicated: http://www.amx.com/assets/whitePapers/AMXG5Considerations.WhitePaper.pdf

    The G5 platform gives us options for new functionality that were simply impossible in G4. You can expect many powerful new features in future releases. However, expecting older ways of doing things to be added back in will likely prove fruitless. So for now my advice is pretty simple. If you absolutely cannot migrate away from G3/G4 commands that have been obsoleted then stick with the G4 series panels.

    As always, you should communicate requests to restore commands to tech support who will involve product management.
  • DavidRDavidR Posts: 62
    ^BMF seems to be replaced with ^BMP with some formatting changes required as well. I've changed one project to the BMP commands and its working again.
  • mushmush Posts: 287
    DavidR wrote: »
    ^BMF seems to be replaced with ^BMP with some formatting changes required as well. I've changed one project to the BMP commands and its working again.

    The BMP command is for assigning a picture to a button.
  • champchamp Posts: 261
    I programmed a system with G5 recently and discoverd ^BCT doesn't work (text colour).
    [CMDERROR:^BCT-1,0,Green]
    [CMDERROR:^BCT-1,0,00000000]
    [CMDERROR:^BCT-1,0,12]

    I tried '^BMF-1,0,%CF Green' with no luck so ended up having to make multi-state buttons and use ^ANI to go to the desired colour, I enjoyed wasting 4 hours on that, then I discovered that if you do a page flip at the same time as triggering an animation it doesn't work, another hour modifying my code to delay page flips.

    Tell tech support so they can throw it into the suggestion bin with the complaints about Duet modules.
    I'm happy to continue this rant any time.
  • gsmithgsmith Posts: 59
    ^BCT was added back in along with several others in release 1.1.13 available on the web site.
  • champchamp Posts: 261
    gsmith wrote: »
    ^BCT was added back in along with several others in release 1.1.13 available on the web site.
    Ok, I did it when 1.0.7 was the firmware on the web site.
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    BMF was definitely a kludge, and had way too much going on. Yes, it's frustrating when you are used to it to have to look up individual commands for functions, but it's better to have it more streamlined as far as I am concerned.
  • a_riot42a_riot42 Posts: 1,624
    DHawthorne wrote: »
    BMF was definitely a kludge, and had way too much going on. Yes, it's frustrating when you are used to it to have to look up individual commands for functions, but it's better to have it more streamlined as far as I am concerned.

    I don't know, you could pack a lot of information into a BMF command which saved commands. I used it for that reason alone. Perhaps the newer panels can handle more commands efficiently so it isn't an issue, but there should be a way to encode a lot of properties in one general command, rather than every property requiring its own command. If I want to set up a button with text, color, font, bitmap, blah, blah, blah, doing it with one command is awfully convenient.
    Paul
  • travistravis Posts: 180
    maybe we can smash more than one command into a single message.
    that would be better than BMF anyways no?
  • mushmush Posts: 287
    travis wrote: »
    maybe we can smash more than one command into a single message.
    that would be better than BMF anyways no?
    Good idea. I would be open to concatenating commands with a delimiter. Probably a more logical approach as well.
  • jbarrettjbarrett Posts: 5
    Pre-defined structure

    I would advocate something I have done in the past be used in a more integrated fashion to the development environment (perhaps an include lib). Others may have done this too, but I had built a pre-defined structure that simply housed all of the available button params. Just call a function to clear said structure, then define the params you wish to set (compiler helps after structure is compiled first time - e.g. "Button_Parm." and a list of available params shows up based on struct definition) and then call a function to embed values that have an assignment into a ^BMF command and shoot it to a particular button or range... Just a thought.
  • Can we have a Time command that doesn't need an SSH session

    Is this possible, or is it in already and I've just not seen it. I wanted to set the panel time to suit my masters, but you can't without doing a an SSH session
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    Hmmm.. Doesn't your panel time sync up with your master without your prompting? Mine do.
  • mushmush Posts: 287
    Yeah! They've relented, it's back. Long live ^BMF.
    Thank you AMX!
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