Integrating Axon C1: Part A

There are a lot of Q-SYS installations where a simple wall panel with a couple of buttons

may be more desirable than the full depth of control you can get with a UCI on a native Q-SYS touch screen.

If all you need is some source selection, volume control, or preset recalls, you might want to consider the Axon C1 controller,

which is one of the Attero Tech by QSC peripherals.

This customizable, cost-effective device is easy to integrate into the Q-SYS Ecosystem—but if it’s your first time using one, then this is the tutorial for you.

While most of this configuration will take place within Q-SYS Designer Software,

the actual menu structure of the Axon C1 needs to be configured in the uniFY Control Panel,

which is a free software from QSC designed specifically to monitor and configure AtteroTech Series devices.

If you don’t already have the uniFY software installed, follow the link below and start downloading it while I explain a little about the needs of our hypothetical situation.

Here’s a design for a simple hospitality venue with four different zones.

Our two audio sources are a stereo channel from a Software-based Dante receiver, and a stereo Audio Player for background music playing from the Core itself.

These are just examples, of course; you might also use any input channels from the Core or from an I/O peripheral,

another networked stream, or you could bring in a local audio input via a wall plate by using another Attero Tech Series device, like the unD6IO, for instance.

But we’ll keep things simple with just two sources in this installation.

Each of our four zones would require an Axon C1 controller that can control source selection, zone volume, and muting.

For this tutorial, we’ll only show how to configure one C1 in the first zone, but the process is the same with all four.

Once you’ve installed the uniFY Control Panel software, open the application and you’ll see this screen.

You have some basic navigation buttons at the top, and a list of discovered devices on the left.

Other AtteroTech Seriesproducts may be used to control Dante or AES67-enabled devices,

but in our case we’re going to select the “Control” tab to search for control peripherals like the Axon-C1.

Provided that your device is properly connected to a PoE-enabled port on your network, you should see it populate here.

If you don’t see it, well, you can browse the “Compromised Device List”, as your device might have an IP address outside of your PC’s subnet range.

But if your PC and the C1 are configured in the same IP range, you’ll be able to select the device and either double-click it here, or right-click and select “Configure device.”

If this device has never been configured before, you’ll receive a notification about that, so proceed by selecting OK.

Here on the “C1 Control Tab” you have some configuration options for the device itself.

For instance, you could rotate its orientation for horizontal installations, you can change its brightness, add a PIN,

apply a custom name, or configure a static IP address.

In addition to the C1 Control tab, certain models might have the C3PO control tab,

which lets you enable the binary language of moisture vaporators into your protocol droid, or the C4 control tab, which will make your panel explode.

But the most important thing is to make sure that the “C1 Menu Mode” is set to “Q-SYS.”

Once you’ve done this, navigate to the “Menu Builder” tab so we can start creating its menu structure.

At the highest level, you have options to include the Volume/Mute Screen, which is a basic zone volume fader controlled by the encoder knob,

which will mute if you depress the knob in.

You can also include access to the customizable Menu Screens via the menu button on the device.

Unless you’re only controlling a single fader, it’s a good idea to keep both of these enabled.

You’ll notice that you can rename your Volume/Mute screen, and any time you make changes to this structure

you’ll notice an orange notification bar at the bottom of the screen alerting you that the Menu has changed, but has not been deployed yet.

You can send your changes to the device by selecting “Apply,” and your device will update.

So, let’s build out our menu screen.

Each menu page can contain up to eight items, and each item could either be an action, which will perform some sort of task,

or a submenu that will open another screen … where you can then add up to eight more items.

To add either one, simply click the Plus button and then define whether this is a Menu or a Trigger, and give it an appropriate name.

As you start building multiple submenus into your menu tree, you can see how deep you are with these icons at the top,

and you can return up one level by using the Back button.

When you’re adding a Trigger action, you’ll also need to define whether it is an Event, a Source Select, or a Snapshot.

I’m going to create two of each and segregate them by submenus just for clarity’s sake in this tutorial,

but realistically you’d probably want to give your submenus more intuitive names than these.

An Event can be used to change the state of a control pin in Q-SYS, and you can have up to 16 of these total.

These are particularly useful for targeting toggle buttons in Q-SYS—I’ll label mine for a System-wide mute, and an EQ-bypass button.

Next, we’ll add two Source Select buttons, which will activate a particular input on a specific router in your Q-SYS design that we will define later.

You may recall we have a Dante stream and an Audio Player, so I’ve named mine accordingly. You can have up to 8 of these in your menus.

Finally, let’s add two Snapshot triggers, which will activate a snapshot of your choice from a specific Snapshot Bank.

Once again, you can have up to eight of these.

I’ll call mine “System Reset” and “Party Mode”, because every building in the world should have a secret Party Mode option. Once again you can have up to 8 of these.

Note that as you build these, it indicates how many of each item have already been created,

but this is not an indication of which event, source, or snapshot will be triggered by the action.

That linking process will take place in Q-SYS Designer software next . . .

so for now, just be sure to name your actions appropriately as this is the unique identifier we will inside the Q-SYS configuration component later.

Once you’ve completed building your menu structure and actions, don’t forget to select Apply again, and wait for your device to update.

You’ll know it’s complete when your C1’s screen is active again, and your status bar here states “Connected.”

We’re now finished with the uniFY Control Panel, and can do the rest of the work in Q-SYS Designer software.

So, let's take a quick break right there and come back whenever you're ready.