AES 70

AES 70

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The OCA Alliance previews AES70-2021

AES70-2021 News Graphic
A raft of enhancements and new features improve accessibility and usability

Following the recent announcement of a ‘lightweight’ AES70 implementation that makes AES70 control solutions available to any that wish to implement it, the OCA Alliance is excited to offer a sneak peek of the latest version of the AES70 device control standard. The AES70-2021 release will be upwards-compatible from the current AES70-2018 and offers several significant enhancements for new and improved features along with a number of documentation upgrades for increased clarity, readability and precision.

The most important new features are as follows:
  • Datasets

This is a mechanism for devices to exchange data blocks (datasets) with controllers. Data block size is limited only by implementation. AES70-2021 will specifically define several types of datasets. Furthermore, manufacturers will also be able to add their own datasets as required.

  • Media files

Thanks to the new Datasets feature, controllers can now manage device audio file recording, playback and storage.

  • Logging

A new logging mechanism – also based in the Datasets feature – enables controllers to retrieve logs generated by a device, in any format and at any time.

  • Command sets

This is a new mechanism for storing predefined control command sequences in devices and executing them on request, at scheduled times, or at specified positions in media streams.

AES70-21 also includes some significant enhancements to existing functionality:

  • Streamlined media connection management

This is a major improvement – managing device media streaming connections is now more powerful and easier to program and implement than ever.

  • Connection negotiation support

There’s flexible new support for connection negotiation, the process by which controllers develop compatible transmitting and receiving settings for media stream connections.

  • New support for managing presets

A new mechanism for storing and recalling device presets has been implemented that is capable of handling complex devices with tens of thousands of parameters. It is easier for controllers and devices to program and supports much larger sets of stored parameters.

More powerful than ever

In total, the new 2021 release numbers around 40 new or enhanced features and 15 documentation upgrades, making it easier to implement and manage, and even more powerful.

According to Bosch Communications senior scientist and OCA Chair, Jeff Berryman, AES70-2021 will provide some welcome useability improvements, making the route to adoption easier than ever. “As with any standard, the wider the adoption and use, the greater the benefit to all concerned and the industry at large. The 2021 release offers several enhancements and upgrades to make it more accessible, easier to implement and also improve performance. Combined with our recent lightweight implementation, we now have AES70 control solutions for every part of the spectrum, from the simplest to the most complex systems.”

AES70-2021 is scheduled for release during the second half of 2021 and will be downloadable from the website.

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The OCA Alliance demonstrates lowest overhead control solution

Deuso control 1KB Challenge image

Implementation made easy

In a landmark demonstration, OCA Alliance member, DeusO GmbH, has created a control implementation that requires minimal processing and can be implemented in as little as a 1kB solution. This is a highly significant development as it puts AES70 control solutions within the reach of any who wish to implement it.

 

AES70 is a device control standard that offers a flexible, cost-effective approach to system control. It offers interoperable, standards-based control, free from any particular control system or user interface and works alongside any audio and video networking control protocol.

Scale systems up or down

“One of the fundamental design goals of AES70 and OCA (Open Control Architecture) is to allow scalability, both upwards and downwards. The initial implementations and systems using the standard were larger and more complex, so some perceive the standard as only being able to scale upwards, and thus better suiting applications where more heavyweight hardware with multitudes of processing resources are in place,” says Ethan Wetzell, Marketing Committee Chair for the OCA Alliance. “However, it delights me to to say that our friends at DeusO have put an end to that with a real-world demonstration of an implementation within a static device – in this instance, the Arduino UNO microcontroller board, as it is the smallest development device available with built-in Ethernet capacity – requiring just 1 kB of RAM on the microcontroller system.”

 

With this (very) slow microcontroller, limited RAM and 100Mbit ethernet, DeusO demonstrated the performance of their lightweight AES70 implementation via a ‘round trip’ web browser user interface connected with the AES70.js (a full controller implementation). The network packets for all control data make a round trip to inform the UI of parameter changes. The UI elements had both read and write widgets for each object in the device. Additionally, a read-only meter provided a general responsiveness example. There were no perceivable latency or performance problems with controlling the smallest AES70 device ever created.

 

“This new implementation of AES70 proves that any hardware can adopt and benefit from AES70 as its control solution with minimal impact on the rest of the device,” says Matt Hardy, Business Development Partner at DeusO GmbH. “The lightweight nature of AES70 allows manufacturers to use their own proprietary control protocol and implement AES70 over the top of it to allow for a transition to a fully AES70 control solution at any time.”

The future is now

Certain manufacturers adopt this approach – Focusrite being a case in point – whose products run a combination of AES70 and their own control solution. The advantage for manufacturers is that they don’t have to wait for next-generation products in order to implement AES70. Therefore, they can start their transition with their current offering and benefit from the flexibility and interoperability offered by an industry-wide protocol without losing the unique benefits of their own solution.

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The OCA Alliance takes control with new learning resource center

Open Control Architecture Resources image

Our mission

The OCA Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association that exists to promote and support the AES70 standard for Open Control Architecture (OCA) as a universal media networking system control standard for professional applications. As part of a larger rebranding exercise, the Alliance inaugurates a new website with better, more easily accessible information and a wealth of new resources for anyone interested in adopting or using AES70 in their projects.

“Our mission is to simplify the lives of AV professionals everywhere by encouraging and facilitating the adoption of AES70 as a universal, standards-based control and monitoring protocol,” says Bosch Communications’ Platform Strategist, Ethan Wetzell – also Marketing Committee Chair for the OCA Alliance. “It’s a complex subject and knowledge levels vary enormously, so our first task was to distil the key messages so that the benefits are immediately clear to all. Then, we direct people to the information and resources they need according to their level of interest and type of application. Our aim is to ensure that the messaging is clear, so that people can find what they need easily, whilst remaining the definitive resource for all things AES70.”

Control for everyone 

Whether you are a manufacturer seeking to learn more about adopting AES70 into your products, an engineer or systems integrator looking to find a better way to control audio systems, or an end user requiring information on control solutions, let us quickly guide you to the information you require. The site offers details about the standard itself, lists of AES70 products, software and even links to the code. There is also a comprehensive tutorials section, where you can find out how AES70 works and its real-world uses.

Adoption of the standard is now easier than ever! The journey is  straightforward, connecting parties directly to the required resources. OCA Alliance membership has also been revised and offers three tiers including a basic Community Membership tier aimed at specifiers and users. This is free to join and offers regular news and updates plus access to more downloads.

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OCA Alliance promotes AES70 control standard upgrade at ISE

AES70 control standard logo

OCA Alliance promotes AES70 control standard upgrade at ISE

Alliance supporting release of latest AES70-2018 standard revision with new developer tools and resources, making implementation “easier than ever before”

OCA__ISE2019_DRAFTKGaREV1.3
OCA Alliance, Bothell, Washington, USA, 31 January 2019. The OCA Alliance – the AV trade association formed to promote awareness, implementation and development of the AES70 open network control standard – is once again fulfilling its mission at ISE (booth #7-H250), supporting the release of the latest revision of the standard.

The result of several years of collaborative work within the OCA Alliance and the AES, AES70-2018 is an evolutionary upgrade to the original AES70-2015 standard. The revision provides a number of new and improved features; principal among these are:

  • An improved connection management mechanism for more powerful, flexible, and efficient control of modern media transport systems using AES67, SMPTE ST-2110-30, AVB, and other standard and proprietary protocols.
  • WebSocket and UDP support; AES70-2018 can now run over WebSocket, UDP, or TCP connections.
  • Improved support for proprietary extensions to AES70 classes and other elements.
  • A new feature for defining common device configuration elements, assisting developers reuse and share frequently recurring designs.
  • A new mechanism for managing and executing pre-stored tasks that allows advanced programming of device and system behaviour.

Other significant improvements centre on object functionality, with search features, to help controllers discover AES70 device configurations using object names, more flexible object locking, to improve performance in systems with multiple controllers, and a new physical position object, to support object-based audio, advanced loudspeaker array control, geo-aware equipment and robotic features.

The new standards documents are available from the AES Standards site. Links to the relevant AES pages are on the Developer Resources page of OCA Alliance Technical Site, while more details on the 2018 changes may be found on the OCA Alliance website.

Supporting developers

Key to the OCA Alliance’s mission is supporting developers become more familiar with the AES70 standard, providing assistance in its implementation. The alliance extends that activity this year, producing and providing additional new tools and support resources free to the industry.

Particularly useful should be OCTT, an open-source tool for testing devices’ conformance to the minimum AES70 implementation specification, defined in Part 2 of the AES70 standard. While not a full-blown formal test suite, OCTT is a Windows-based programmer’s tool, intended to confirm that devices under development fulfil the minimum requirements for AES70 compliance.

OCTT supports AES70-2015 and AES70-2018 devices. The control file is a free open-source offering that users can extend, to add their own specific tests. It is possible to access OCTT without Alliance membership, and there are no commercially difficult licensing conditions. Architecturally OCTT is an AES70 controller, hence its source code may also be a useful starting point for development of commercial AES70 controllers. OCTT is available via the OCA Technical Site downloads page.

Additionally, the AES70.js javascript library for controller applications has been updated. The new release of AES70.js now supports AES70-2018, is available under the GPL, and supports both web browsers and NodeJs. AES70.js is available from GitHub

Implementing feedback

The OCA Alliance Technical Committee is now operating a public discussion list for AES70. Anyone can post to the list; even without Alliance membership. Feel free to ask questions and comment on any and all AES70-related topics. All levels experience and knowledge are welcome. The list’s email address is aes70support@lists.ocalliance.com.

Posts will be read and, when required, answered by members of the alliance’s Technical Committee. All posts are saved in a searchable public archive.  The archive, which will grow into a useful knowledge base for all, is available at https://lists.ocaalliance.com/pipermail/aes70support/.

Signup here to monitor list traffic: https://lists.ocaalliance.com/mailman/listinfo/aes70support.

Links to other related pages are on the OCA Alliance Technical Site home page.

During ISE OCA Alliance members will give technical demonstrations and presentations, and will be on-hand to answer questions and provide additional information on the recent developments in the standard.

“ISE has always been an excellent show for the OCA Alliance, due to the diverse manufacturer, industry, and technical audiences in attendance,” says OCA Alliance Marketing Committee Chair Ethan Wetzell. “2019’s ISE will be particularly exciting with the new tools and offerings that the alliance has prepared for the industry. This year, more products shipping with AES70 than ever before will be shown alliance members’ booths, so we can look forward to talking about the growing product ecosystem that is available today, and showing people how they can be part of that.”

About AES70

AES70 is an open control and monitoring standard for professional audio and AV media network devices. From a single device and controller, to networks with almost any number of devices and multiple controllers, AES70 provides for powerful, high speed, low cost, robust system control and monitoring of devices from different manufacturers.

AES70 works in conjunction with any available transport protocol (Dante, MILAN, AES67, Cobranet, etc.). Offering interoperability across different media transports and manufacturers’ devices, it enables whole new levels of complex system integration and options as to how and where network devices are deployed. The architecture operates on commodity Ethernet networking hardware, or via standard 802.11 Wi-Fi.

Control functionality allows system professionals to change and monitor all operating parameters of a network device, including the creation and deletion of signal paths, parameter adjustments for signal processing objects, network device firmware updates and management of access control. Control can also be limited to provide simpler ‘operator’ functionality; for instance, providing just level, mute, power on/off and fault indication.

AES70; the standard upon which the Open Control Architecture ecosystem of devices, software, development tools, and technical resources is based.

AES70 is not itself a media transport, or a means of programming a network device or system control, or generating a user interface. AES70 is available free of charge to manufactures, system integrators and designers, to implement with their own and third party network devices, as they require.

About the OCA Alliance

OCA Alliance is a non-profit corporation that exists to promote the AES70 standard and Open Control Architecture (OCA) ecosystem, as a control solution for professional media networking applications. The OCA Alliance’s purpose is to actively promote the development and adoption of the OCA ecosystem of hardware, software, and developer tools that support the AES70 standard. The OCA Alliance’s activities support the AES70 standard and OCA ecosystem as a media networking system control solution through marketing, education and training. They develop future standards and other documents that augment or extend the primary AES70 standard. This enables and promotes increased interoperability and reliability, for a variety of transport standards.

For more information, visit:

ocaalliance.com
ocaalliance.com/membership
ocaalliance.github.io/

Editors’ contact:
Keith Grant
KGa marketing & media
Mobile: +44 7977 410 444
Skype ID: kgamarketing
E-mail: oca-alliance@kgamarketing.com

OCA Alliance booth contact:
Tina J. Lipscomb
Administrator
OCA Alliance, Inc.
Phone: +1 425-870-6574
E-mail: tina.lipscomb@oca-alliance.com

The OCA Alliance is a not-for-profit corporation formed to promote and support the AES70 standard for Open Control Architecture (OCA) as a media networking system control standard for professional applications.

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