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Medialon Control System Introduction
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MEDIALON Control System
 
PRESENTATION


The introduction of our first Audiovisual Control Software in 1999 was driven by our vision to develop innovative technologies to help creative people to achieve compelling entertainment and edutainment experiences.

From the original Medialon Manager Control software, Medialon Control System has evolved into a range of products:

Embedded controllers: Medialon Showmaster ST, Medialon Showmaster Pro and Medialon Showmaster iPro.

Open platform control software only: Medialon Manager Pro and Medialon Manager Lite.

All products share the Medialon Control Programming environment, based on our legendary graphical yet powerful user interface.

In our embedded controllers, programming is done through Showmaster Editor (free) software and then executed in the controller hosting Showmaster Runtime, while in the open platform, programming and execution is done in a PC running Medialon Manager Software.

The embedded controller bring the advantage of an all in one controller with all relevant hardware interfaces such as DMX, MIDI, Serial, Time-code, digital IOs and of course TCP/IP.

The software only version provides an easy integration in IT environment when link to databases or other IT resources are needed.

Both can be sized to your exact needs by adding Medialon or third party hardware interfaces.

Thanks to the easy graphical programming environment, application are programmed in much less time than with any other conventional control system, neither coding nor compilation is required.

The native synchronization capabilities and its legendary Timeline with drag and drop programming makes it the ideal choice for Show Control Applications. However, complex logical task programming is also available.

 
 
 
PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT
 
Click on the picture below to discover MEDIALON Control System's programming environment:
 

 

> Click here to enlarge

 
 
PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT COMMON FEATURES
 
A driver for virtually anything…
 


Medialon Control System uses Plug-in drivers called MxM (Manager X Object Modules) to control devices.

It exists a wide range of MxMs for most popular devices on the market connected through Serial, Midi, Time Code, Infrared, Modbus, OPC, TCP/IP, etc.

The Programming environment also includes a powerful tool to write your own drivers in Serial, TCP/IP, UDP and MIDI. These drivers can be shared on Medialon's website with other Medialon users.

   
   
Not just a device controller…
 


Medialon Control System includes MxMs plug-ins to add functionalities or control the new type of devices found in modern AV/IT installations: SQL Database for data management, FTP Site for media management and transfer, Email engine, Telephony engine to build up a DTMF server, etc.

Medialon Control System really uses the power of modern AV/IT (depending on the hardware used).

 

 

   
Device Synchronization
 


The legendary Timelines with drag and drop programming allows synchronization of virtually any devices to external or internal time-code with an accuracy of a 100th/sec.

Timeline offers a Medialon unique feature, the Positrack which locate any device at the position it should be at any given time when moving back and forth in the show. This makes rehearsal much easier and efficient.

The Timeline even offer the ability to record external signal such as DMX, MIDI or Serial for later playback in synch.

   
   
Logical Programming
 


Control programming always requires more than a Timeline.

Medialon Control System offers both the time driven programming, and the event or external condition programming capabilities.

Input on a touch screen or in IOs as well as complex data coming from controlled devices or variables can be used to perform complex logic programming.

 



 

   
An open network application…
 


Medialon Control System is network oriented from its original first version. It not only controls many AV and IT devices over TCP/IP, but it also communicates with other Medialon systems on the same network.

Medialon On Network (MON) protocol publishes tasks and commands to other Medialon Control products such as Medialon Scheduler for easy development of shared applications. MON is also available as an API offering powerful interoperability tool to communicate with third party software or develop add on module in C++ or C#.

   
   
Graphical User’s Screen Interface
 


Medialon Control System offers built in user’s screens while embedded controllers are compatible with Medialon Panel application to create user’s screens hosted by tablet PCs.

These user’s screens have multiple graphical objects such as buttons, sliders, video windows, leds, bar graphs, pictures, etc., for full customization of the control system.

Some examples (click on each example to enlarge):

   
   
Web Panel and Embedded Web Server
 
The user’s screens can also be published as live web pages accessible from any device with a web browser, including PC, Mac, iPad, Android and other tablet devices. Remote control is even possible through the Cloud without needing to set up a server or write any additional code.
   
   
Hardware independent
 
Independently from the plug-in drivers, Medialon Manager Software or Showmasters use resources to physically connect to the controlled devices.

These resources can be Windows serial or relay card for the software version, or serial over IP converter or even other control hardware such as Artistic Licence Artnet, Global Caché, etc., for both the Software version and embedded controllers.
   
   
   
MEDIALON, AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM
   
 

Every Medialon controller share their programming tasks and devices commands on the network. This allows other controller to have access to them and trigger them when necessary. It’s like having the entire program spread over several controllers.

These different topologies depend on the complexity or functionalities of the system to be installed, see some examples below:

 


 


Local controllers can perform local tasks and in the meantime can be slaved of a Master Controller and by this mean, they can be synchronized with other Sub Controllers.
   
 
     
   
 

 


A main Device Server controller can populate all its devices commands and perform maintenance task, while the show command will be initiated by several up-controllers.

   
 
     
   
 

 


Remote controller's tasks are dynamically posted on the network and can then be scheduled and triggered by Medialon Scheduler.

   
   
   
PRODUCT COMPARISON CHART

 


> Click here to enlarge