Video Transcript
Monitoring Third-Party Devices with Enterprise Manager
6m 39s
00:07
You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that Q-SYS Reflect Enterprise Manager
00:11
allows you to remotely monitor and manage your Q-SYS system,
00:15
but what you might not realize is that Enterprise Manager
00:18
not only monitors native Q-SYS Cores and Peripherals, but also third-party devices!
00:23
Enterprise Manager can monitor projectors, lighting consoles, displays, window shade controllers,
00:28
you name it, as long as they are properly configured to do so in your Q-SYS Design.
00:33
If you’ve been integrating these device types into your Q-SYS designs already,
00:37
you know that this happens in one of two ways: either through a Plug-in, or a custom script.
00:44
Using an Enterprise Manager Enabled Q-SYS Plug-in
00:46
is the easiest and fastest route to get Q-SYS to communicate with a third party device,
00:51
and to get Enterprise Manager to monitor it.
00:53
If you look in Asset Manager,
00:55
you’ll find a growing library of control plugins available
00:58
that let you connect and control devices with no additional scripting experience required.
01:03
And if you find this emblem under the device manufacturer’s logo,
01:07
you'll know that it’s ready to for Enterprise Manager.
01:10
All you need to do is install any of these plugins,
01:13
and you’ll be able to add them to your inventory and connect them to your 3rd party device.
01:18
Once you add them to your Schematic, make sure to go into its Property window and click “Is Managed”.
01:24
This will enable monitoring in Enterprise Management.
01:27
You’ll also want to change the default name so you can more easily identify it inside Enterprise Manager.
01:33
Then all of that device’s status data will be visible
01:36
in the System Inventory and Eventlog sections of Enterprise Manager,
01:40
along with rich device data from your native Q-SYS devices.
01:44
No other programing is required. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
01:49
But realistically, there are far more devices in the world than we could ever write plugins for.
01:54
In this case, you or your programmer are probably writing custom Lua scripts
01:58
using the Q-SYS Scripting Engine to send and receive information to and from a third-party peripheral.
02:03
We have an entire curriculum on Control Training that can help you script those interactions,
02:08
so we won’t get into that right now.
02:10
The question is—
02:11
how can you get your custom script that’s controlling a third party device,
02:15
to also send Status updates and Eventlogs to Enterprise Manager?
02:20
The answer is this: the Monitoring Proxy component.
02:24
This component can represent any third-party device that is connected to your Q-SYS Core,
02:28
and deliver its information to the Enterprise Manager.
02:32
You’ll find it in your Inventory, under the Peripherals tab. Let’s add a Monitoring Proxy into the schematic.
02:39
You’ll notice there are several fields that you have to complete in order for it to function,
02:43
such as Manufacturer and Model.
02:46
You should also give your device a suitable name to identify it, as well as select what type of device it is.
02:54
If none of these Type categories are appropriate, you can select “Other” and specify its type here.
03:02
All of this information—Name, Manufacturer, Model, and Type—
03:06
they'll help you organize and sort through your devices within Enterprise Manager.
03:11
The component has a single input pin,
03:13
which is a Status Input to receive the data from your Lua scripting component or Block Controller.
03:19
The status information sent from your script will display here in the Proxy’s “Status” field,
03:25
which is what gets delivered to the Enterprise Manager.
03:28
But if you are not up to speed on these tools yet,
03:31
don’t worry—you can still perform some basic monitoring without any custom scripting.
03:36
After all, for most third-party devices,
03:38
the critical thing you need to know is simply whether or not there’s a valid connection
03:42
between that device and your Q-SYS Core processor.
03:45
If there is, then your script is probably functioning fine …
03:48
but if the Core can’t communicate with that device, well then that’s a failure you want to know about.
03:54
An easy way to check if the Core can communicate with a device is simply to Ping it.
03:59
You might be familiar with sending a Ping command from a Windows Command Prompt,
04:04
which is a very basic test of whether a particular IP address can receive data from your source device.
04:10
Your PC is querying the network for a response from a specific location.
04:16
You might also know the word in regard to submarine sonar,
04:20
in which you send a ping out into the world to see if there’s anything out there that will reflect it back to you.
04:26
This is the same idea.
04:27
But, you don’t want to ping your third-party device from your PC, you want to ping it from your Core.
04:33
You can do this using the Ping Component.
04:36
Go over to the Monitor Components branch of your Schematic Elements library
04:41
and drag the Ping component into your design.
04:44
In its control panel, all you need is the IP address of the destination device.
04:50
Once you start the Ping, it will send out a test packet once every interval.
04:55
If the device acknowledges the test packet,
04:57
then you know your connection between the device and your Core is good.
05:01
If not, then something’s wrong–
05:03
maybe the network switch between those devices is down or not configured properly,
05:08
maybe your device is unplugged—
05:10
either way, that’s exactly the kind of information you want to know about
05:13
when managing a system remotely using Enterprise Manager.
05:17
To make this happen, we simply need to expose the Status Control Pin of this Ping component,
05:23
and wire it to our Monitoring Proxy’s status input.
05:27
That’s it! If you switch over to Enterprise Manager,
05:31
you’ll now get confirmation that this device has a healthy connection to the Core.
05:35
If I were to yank the power cable on our device, well then the Ping will fail,
05:40
send that information to the Monitoring Proxy, and notify us in Enterprise Manager.
05:46
One more thing: you may have noticed some Log Entry controls in the Monitoring Proxy’s control panel.
05:52
These allow you to publish custom messages to your Core’s Event Log,
05:56
as well as decide at which severity level it should be categorized.
06:00
While you can decide these manually,
06:03
most people would control these from their Lua script or Block Controller
06:06
based on their interactions with the device.
06:08
For instance, you could use this to report your projector’s lamp temperature,
06:13
or which source is currently selected on a video switch.
06:17
This is useful information for your Event Log, and when using the Monitoring Proxy,
06:22
those additional Events are synchronized up to the Enterprise Manager Eventlog.
06:27
And that’s it!
06:29
The Monitoring Proxy is a simple to use tool for monitoring 3rd party devices in Enterprise Manager.
06:34
Thanks for watching.
Lesson Description
Monitoring Third-Party Devices with Enterprise Manager
6m 39s
This section will teach you how to use the Enterprise Manager to monitor third-party devices using the Monitoring Proxy component. Learn how to get your custom script that’s controlling a third party device to send Status updates and Eventlogs to Enterprise Manager.
Downloads and Links
Monitoring Third-Party Devices with Enterprise Manager
6m 39s