Home AMX User Forum AMX General Discussion

Samsung display in video wall

I'm looking at the Samsung API and getting more and more confused. I'm trying to program a video wall of 10 Samsung UD46E-C displays and want a variety of window layouts. This is for a control center, so instead of one giant single image I'm looking at anywhere from 1 to 10 images on the wall at once. Samsung's docs describe two parameters that need to be sent to set up a wall - Wall-DIV and Wall-SNO. I'm beginning to think that if I want multiple windows, I need to set up the individual screens as part of different video walls. In that case, would Wall-Div be the bottom-right corner of the wall? So that in a 2x2 window, the wall-div would be hex 22? And is the wall-sno a sequence number where the individual screens would be listed as 1-4 describing their position in the wall?

And if all of this is true, I guess I send the same source to all 4 displays and issue the call to turn the wall on?

I'm trying to find out if I'm on the right track before I consume the remainder of the weekend running headlong down a dead-end street.

Thanks - Danny

Comments

  • John NagyJohn Nagy Posts: 1,734
    While someone here might have some experience with this, your question is 0% AMX and 100% a Samsung tech question, and you don't hint that your search includes Samsung tech support... where the answer logically lies.
  • John Nagy wrote: »
    While someone here might have some experience with this, your question is 0% AMX and 100% a Samsung tech question, and you don't hint that your search includes Samsung tech support... where the answer logically lies.


    Don't be a douche! This is for an AMX system so it is a 100% AMX Forum GENERAL QUESTIONS request. Yes, my request to Samsung tech support got me an API document, with no examples, and no real definition of the terms. For the past 12 years I've been on this forum supplying code samples to people who are struggling with new equipment and was hoping to get some of the same in return. I remember when you first joined and you main focus seemed to be selling Cinetouch and telling everyone how great it is and you are. If you can't seem to contribute something maybe you should just keep your opinions to yourself.
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177


    Don't be a douche! This is for an AMX system so it is a 100% AMX Forum GENERAL QUESTIONS request. Yes, my request to Samsung tech support got me an API document, with no examples, and no real definition of the terms. For the past 12 years I've been on this forum supplying code samples to people who are struggling with new equipment and was hoping to get some of the same in return. I remember when you first joined and you main focus seemed to be selling Cinetouch and telling everyone how great it is and you are. If you can't seem to contribute something maybe you should just keep your opinions to yourself.


    I don't feel like John was trying to be douch-ey at all. But, to speak to this from a strictly "control" perspective - I would challenge you to rethink using the display itself for the processing of a video wall screen splitting. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE Samsung displays. but you're calling a function from them that can change from one firmware version to the next. And with the technology life-span of displays right now being around 18 months - it doesn't bode well for the longer term functionality of our system.

    If I were in your shoes, I'd seriously look at something like SVSi. It does a fantastic job of video wall creation (literally on the fly) let the displays be just displays. That way when the time comes around in a few months where you need to swap out a display in your wall - but that model no longer exists (along with the needed feature) you won't be re-engineering the whole mess.

    Hope that helps..
    e
  • Eric, I wish it did help but I have no control over the equipment being installed. I'm a sub of a sub of a sub here so I have to work with what they provide. I did bring up to everyone involved that they would get better results with a real wall processor but my plea fell on deaf ears.

    Yes, I was probably being too hard on John but the response just set me off. Perhaps I phrased my initial request wrong, but I'm not one of those newby types that never took the classes and somehow made their way into the forum to ask how to learn programming. I guess I made the wrong assumption that anyone here reading it would realize that I am looking for someone who had done this before with the Samsungs and was looking for tips.
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    Eric, I wish it did help but I have no control over the equipment being installed. I'm a sub of a sub of a sub here so I have to work with what they provide. I did bring up to everyone involved that they would get better results with a real wall processor but my plea fell on deaf ears.

    Yes, I was probably being too hard on John but the response just set me off. Perhaps I phrased my initial request wrong, but I'm not one of those newby types that never took the classes and somehow made their way into the forum to ask how to learn programming. I guess I made the wrong assumption that anyone here reading it would realize that I am looking for someone who had done this before with the Samsungs and was looking for tips.


    Well, I'll leave you and John to smooch and make up. But, no worries on my part about tone on the forum. In fact, you are probably battling a bit of the history on the forum at best anyway. For quite some time several years back the forum gateway was allowing a lot of trolls in - basically people who grabbed Netlinx Studio of of the dark interent and were just trying to figure out how AMX worked or worse yet, a bunch of end-users who were trying to fire their integrator and program the damn thing themselves.

    Consequently, we had a bunch of people who'd come on and basically say, "Hey - I'm a real integrator and I need someone to post all their code so I can copy it and figure out how to do this." When we commented that we didn't do this for free we'd then get a whole bunch of guff about being a jerk and open source and "how dare you not share with me" kinda crap.

    For a while tempers were a bit frayed on the forum. So, again, no worries and hopefully, you'll get some help on this.
    e
  • JasonSJasonS Posts: 229
    Hi Danny,

    +1 for standing up for what I see as a completely legitimate question. I had to implement a Samsung video Wall awhile back, it used the 400UX-2 model of display and the Multiple Display Control protocol which I think is pretty common on the Samsung displays. In the online event for the RS232 port that all of the displays were daisy chained on (also a case of sub contracting with no input on design), I sent the Videowall code or Address command $4F for each display to set its position in the layout. You can then use the Video Wall On command $84 command to turn video wall on or off. When it is on you have to route the same source to each display. I had an 8x2 arrangement of displays so only the center 4 were given addresses, so when video wall was off you had 8 separate displays or when it was on you had 1 large image image on 4 displays in the center and 2 smaller on each side. The end user was trying to view spreadsheets on the this wall and the borders between screens were ridiculous so the center four displays got changed out to a single 90?. I hope this helps.
  • Thanks Jason, that was the kind of information I was looking for. I have done video walls before where they were relatively small and you either had on large display with the wall on command or individual displays with it off. In the document that Samsung sent for this model, the 4F command is greyed-out and replaced with an 89 command to set up the wall. This appears to allow for multiple walls to be set up. What is going to be a real pain is that they want to select from at least 8 different layouts of the walls. So in the 5x2 array of displays I may have two 2x2 "walls" with 2 individual displays active at any given time. They still won't have what I consider a real video wall (similar to my exchange with Eric about needing a video wall processor) and their granularity is limited to one complete display rather than being able to show completely configurable windows on the total canvas that could use part of a display. My big concern with this is that I will need to rebuild the wall settings on the displays each time they pick a different layout. So one of my concerns is the length of time it will take to reconfigure the wall through the daisy-chained connection.

    Danny
  • ericmedley wrote: »


    Well, I'll leave you and John to smooch and make up. But, no worries on my part about tone on the forum. In fact, you are probably battling a bit of the history on the forum at best anyway. For quite some time several years back the forum gateway was allowing a lot of trolls in - basically people who grabbed Netlinx Studio of of the dark interent and were just trying to figure out how AMX worked or worse yet, a bunch of end-users who were trying to fire their integrator and program the damn thing themselves.

    Consequently, we had a bunch of people who'd come on and basically say, "Hey - I'm a real integrator and I need someone to post all their code so I can copy it and figure out how to do this." When we commented that we didn't do this for free we'd then get a whole bunch of guff about being a jerk and open source and "how dare you not share with me" kinda crap.

    For a while tempers were a bit frayed on the forum. So, again, no worries and hopefully, you'll get some help on this.
    e
    I remember those times. We still have them periodically for some reason. I don't know about the smooch and make up part. I'm getting very cranky in my old age. Maybe a non-aggression pact would be better.
    Danny
  • JasonSJasonS Posts: 229
    This project was several years ago so I don't remember how long it took for the setup commands to take. Hopefully the technology has progressed to the point that it will not be an issue.
  • After a week on-site, I thought I would provide an update on this.

    you can indeed use the internal Samsung wall commands without having a video processor. So in the 5x2 arrangement that I was working with, I could define a variety of layouts. The favorite among the installation team was a 2x2 on the left, 2 1x1 in the middle and a 2x2 on the right. The displays were daisy-chained and ran from one RS-232 port. For generic command like turning the wall on and off, you could use the ID of "FE" to send the command to all displays. Commands to set up the wall required using specific display IDs in that field. The WALL-DIV value is determined from looking up a hex value in a table. Some of the documentation was a little funky, but with trial and error you could get the proper result. For example one manual said that the 5x2 Wall-div was a value of hex 25. Another showed the correct answer of hex 52. The correct document was somewhat non-intuitive since the table was showing values based on the H and V values but had the H values listed vertically and the V values listed horizontally. The WALL-SNO is a sequence number that you provide for the position in the wall The time it takes to set up a wall was less than 10 seconds so the wait time is not too bad. I would have the user select a wall layout and then confirm the choice before changing the layout. It does take a while (maybe 15-20 seconds) for the entire wall to power up and if you send a group of layout commands to the wall before all of the displays are ready you will get some odd results.

    Danny
  • We manage the content of our dashboard displays using a free bit of software that loads as a receiver in a browser, and then using an admin panel we can remote control the content of that screen easily. Overall they work very well, have not required any maintenance after the video wall screens were installed and are really quick and easy to change what they display when we require.

Sign In or Register to comment.