As demands for control have become more sophisticated, people often use dedicated control systems. These are essentially computers that send commands to many items of equipment at once. One button from a controller can prepare a whole room for the next event, from audio settings to drawing the curtains. Modern control systems sometimes have libraries of code, so they know the commands to send to each receiving device without the programmer having to create everything from scratch.
Each system is programmed individually for each item in the system. Most control systems don’t know about the equipment that is connected to them, they have to be told. If you add more equipment, or change from one device to another you have to do some re-programming.
Control of Streams
Audio and video content is frequently sent over IP networks as streams, and this introduced a third type of control: the ability to change media streams. If you want to change what audio or video signal a device is receiving, this is often handled by a processor that switches the signal being received by the receiving device. Imagine lots of different roads from a number of start points to a variety of destinations but they all have to go via one big junction.
A newer approach is to use the network itself to sort out where the content will go. Using the road analogy, you have a ring road and cars just steer off to each destination as needed. You don’t use any specific equipment to switch the streams.
A more advanced control system should be capable of routing media streams as needed as well as providing traditional control of equipment.
OCA lets you control equipment centrally, device to device and lets you control the streams of content too.