Lesson Description
Part D: PA Router & Virtual Page Station
5m 47s
Monitor your Page Station in the router's control panel. Simulate a page station with the virtual page station.
Video Transcript
Part D: PA Router & Virtual Page Station
5m 47s
0:08
Welcome back to the final section of the Public Address system.
0:12
Now that you’ve got your Administrator configured the way you like it,
0:15
it’s time to let’s look at the component controls in the design Schematic.
0:20
As we mentioned earlier, the most important component is your PA Router.
0:24
This component routes all pages and messages from Page Stations to their appropriate zones,
0:28
it delays, queues, and sorts pages based on priority and zone availability, and mixes background music.
0:34
You’ll see that each Zone in your Router has a row with a number of settings.
0:38
The first area, Output, lets you Mute the Output to that Zone,
0:43
adjust the Output Gain, as well as choose a Squelch priority –
0:47
you select one of the Priority levels that we just established in Administrator,
0:51
and everything at that Priority or lower will be silenced.
0:55
During the break I created a low priority Play Message Command so we can see it in action
0:59
it’s going to play some music in substitute of an announcement,
1:02
but I just needed something that was going to last long enough.
1:04
So if I issue the command, the Squelch LED will illuminate to let me know that a message
1:08
is being squelched. If I lower my Squelch Priority then it will pass through.
1:15
You could create a Control Change Command and Schedule it to change a Zone’s Squelch Priority
1:20
to prevent certain messages from being played in your zone at certain times.
1:24
At the bottom of this section, you can see the Buffer which displays the amount of
1:28
PA Router audio RAM in use. The Status section shows whether a zone is Squelched,
1:34
whether it’s active, and if so it will show you the source pin number that is playing,
1:39
and the priority it is being played at. Here you can also Cancel All commands,
1:43
or Cancel all Queued Commands, which of course is everything that’s been queued but not the active page.
1:49
And remember that you could drag any control into the Named Controls bin
1:54
to make a Change Control Command, and you could initiate these functions from a Page Station.
2:00
The Page section lets you mute or adjust the gain of Pages in each Zone,
2:04
the Message section lets you do the same for Messages as well as displays the file name
2:08
of whatever message is being played. Let’s cancel this command,
2:12
and go to our Audio Player and play some Background Music.
2:19
You can see right now that both of my channels of my Audio Player are being sent to Zone 1,
2:24
so I’m going to send the right Channel to Zone 2, there we go.
2:27
You could also connect different Audio Players and have completely different music in different zones.
2:32
You can mute or adjust the gain for each zone, or you can mute
2:37
or adjust the gain for each background music source,
2:40
which would be applied to every zone that it’s routed to.
2:43
The BGM Ducker allows you to control how quickly and deeply the background music
2:49
is attenuated when pages are activated – you could think of the Attack knob as a fade-out time,
2:54
the Depth is how much attenuation is applied, with 60 dB basically turning it silent,
2:59
and the Release is how long it takes for the music to fade back in.
3:03
So let’s make a Page, and you’ll hear how the Background Music ducks out.
3:09
Attention everyone, this music is awful. Attention everyone, this music is awful.
3:17
Voila.
3:18
So let’s close the Router control panel and now look at how the Virtual Page Station handles
3:24
all of these features that you’re now familiar with.
3:26
The biggest difference is that you can choose the zones and priority for each command that you issue.
3:31
First select the Zones that you’d like – I’ll select Zone 1.
3:35
You’ll notice that these are still labeled Zone 1 and Zone 2,
3:38
but if you dragged them into a UCI you could relabel them to match your Zone names.
3:43
Next you choose your Mode – Live, Auto, Delay, or Message is to send a Message.
3:49
For all modes you can then select its Priority level ,
3:54
for Pages you can select the maximum Page Duration as well as select a Preamble,
3:59
in Messaging mode you would choose your Message here –
4:02
The first field is the subdirectory folder if you created folders within the primary folder,
4:07
and the second field is for the audio file.
4:09
All Modes have the same Split, Archive, and Retry options as you have
4:13
become familiar with in the Administrator. When you’re ready, hit the Play or Start button.
4:18
Left Ear. You’ll notice there isn’t a keypad or any Command buttons here,
4:23
but you could create buttons that do exactly what you want
4:26
and include them in the UCI you build for a Virtual Page Station such as this.
4:30
Finally, let’s disconnect from the Core and look at the Virtual Page Station’s Properties panel.
4:35
You can choose to hide the Zone buttons leaving only the Select All and Clear All,
4:42
you could create some Zone Group buttons,
4:46
which, if you load back to the Core, will allow you to select one of the Tags you
4:50
established rather than a single Zone, and Enable Robot Controls will allow you to use your
4:58
Page Station to command an army of battle robots to destroy your enemies,
5:02
at the ultimate expense of your own humanity.
5:05
Wait, hold on, I’m being told the battle robots are still in development,
5:08
so for now that button creates some controls you are intended for external or Lua scripting control.
5:14
But someday, that button will let you take over the world.
5:18
Alright, that concludes the Public Address tutorial. We’ve gone through almost every aspect, feature,
5:24
and component that you’ll run into while integrating a PA into your system,
5:28
and by now you should see how you have extensive customizable control over zones,
5:32
priority, queuing, and paging. If there’s anything you didn’t understand,
5:36
check out the help file on that topic. Thanks for watching,
5:40
good luck on the assessment, and we’ll see you next time.
Helpful Tips and Definitions
Part D: PA Router & Virtual Page Station
5m 47s
BGM Ducker: Controls the Atttack, Depth and Release parameters as they apply to the amount of attenuation applied to the background music in the event of a page or message.
Enable Robot Control : Creates buttons intended for external or LUA scripting Control
Downloads and Links
Part D: PA Router & Virtual Page Station
5m 47s