This Developers Conference aims to provide a European forum for manufacturers, designers, consultants and prospective users; and to ensure that the adoption of these new standards achieves desired levels of interoperability and reliability.

The “Plugfest” is a hands-on opportunity for product developers to try their products and code implementations with products from a variety of other manufacturers, with support from their industry peers in an environment that encourages co-operation and improved understanding of the standards, and with the aim of achieving high levels of interoperability.

Typically, engineers participate in these events with the ability to code and debug aspects of their implementations on site, sometimes retreating to their hotel rooms to craft improvements before returning to the “Plugfest” to continue testing.

The sessions, despite their apparent informality, can be a valuable opportunity to learn how not to make the same mistakes, or misguided assumptions, as others may have done.

Participation is by invitation, and limited to registered delegates. The conference is designed to appeal to Lighting Designers, System integrators, Theatre Consultants, Production Electricians, Rental company technical staff and product development engineers. The focus for Thursday will be broad, and designed to appeal to all categories of participant. Friday and Saturday will be orientated towards product development engineers who are either considering or actively implementing these standards.

A single registration fee of UK£45 per person, payable in advance, covers participation and a buffet lunch. Delegates may attend one or more days as they think appropriate. The registration fee is fixed, regardless of the number of days you attend, but you are required to indicate your proposed level of participation in advance.

Full details and information on registration can be found on the PLASA website.

February 26, 2012

ANSI E1.37-1 (Additional Message Sets for RDM – Part 1, Dimmer Message Sets) has recently been published by PLASA.  This new standard is an extension to ANSI E1.20 (RDM) which provides a number of new RDM messages (PIDs) primarily geared towards dimming systems but also includes a variety of general purpose RDM messages that are useful in across a very broad range of products.

The full listing of new messages available and link to purchase ANSI E1.37-1 from the ESTA Foundation can be found at http://www.rdmprotocol.org/whats-next/rdm-additional-message-sets-e1-37-1/

With E1.37-1 now published, work has moved on to BSR E1.37-2 which defines additional RDM messages for remotely configuring network interfaces.  With more and more devices also using network interfaces BSR E1.37-2 provides a means to remotely configure these network settings.  BSR E1.37-2 is now in public review until April 23.  Anyone wishing to review and submit comments during the E1.37-2 Public Review may do so by downloading the draft document and comment review form from PLASA at: http://tsp.plasa.org/tsp/documents/public_review_docs.php

Some of the most important developments in the entertainment production industry in the last five years have been in the area of control and bi-directional communication, including Remote Device Management (RDM), a protocol for communicating bi-directionally between devices in a lighting or control system, Architecture for Control Networks (ACN), a TCP/IP-like protocol for bi-direct…ional communication over Ethernet, and Streaming ACN (sACN), a protocol for streaming DMX control protocol over an ACN network. Plugfest is designed to help implement these protocols in real-world devices in order to create the future of the industry.

Plugfest is a “must-not-miss” event for manufacturers and developers of control protocols and devices that use any of these protocols. The event is free to attend and participate and everyone is invited.
Each January and July, several manufacturers and members of the Control Protocols Working Group convene informally to test their newest firmware with other manufacturers and their gear. They methodically try to “break” their software by interconnecting it with a wide variety of devices and test equipment, which are conveniently brought by various attendees and laid out on a group of conference tables in a suite of the Marriott Solana Hotel in Westlake, Texas, the location of the bi-annual event. When they identify a bug, they can typically fix it on the spot and try it over again until it works properly. They usually work late into the night and begin again early in the morning, fueled by junk food and soft drinks.
The event was originally created to test and improve the Remote Device Management protocol (ANSI E1.20 RDM) but it has expanded to cover all of the CPWG protocols, including the popular ANSI E1.31 Lightweight Streaming Protocol for Transport of DMX over ACN.

Plugfest has grown every year, due to its popularity and success. The next Plugfest is from Friday, January 28 through Sunday, January 30 at the Marriott Solana in Westlake, TX. If you are interested in participating, please contact Scott Blair at sblair@rdmprotocol.org to register. Plugfest is open to all, but, with its growing popularity, registration is advised in order to make space accommodations.

The High End Systems connection
Much of the early development work of what became RDM goes to the credit of work done at High End Systems (HES). Back in 1999, the predecessor to RDM was created at High End Systems by Scott Blair while developing firmware for automated lighting fixtures. Scott has a long running interest in lighting communication protocols and after developing a few other bidirectional protocols that ran over DMX512 for management of onboard preset data in the fixtures, he turned his attention to developing the HES Talkback protocol. At the time Scott was the lead developer of the EC-2 outdoor fixture for HES. This project finally afforded Scott the time to explore his interests developing a protocol that would allow for the full remote configuration and monitoring of the fixtures across the primary pairs of the DMX512 datalink.

A key component of the HES Talkback protocol was the mechanism for discovering all the fixtures connected to the data link. The Discovery protocol had actually been in existence at HES since the release of Cyberlight back in 1994. The discovery protocol was developed by Status Cue Engineer, Shawn Dube, as part of a method for performing firmware updates in the fixtures. Based on a binary search algorithm, a popular Computer Science excercise, it’s application across a DMX512 datalink was quite novel at the time.

DMX512/2000
That was the working name at the time for the massive effort in ESTA that began in the late 90′s in updating the USITT DMX512 standard originally developed in 1986 which the entire entertainment lighting industry is built on. The original USITT DMX512 standard was elegant in it’s brevity of 5 pages. Being a communication protocol standard of only 5 pages though, it left many details unaddressed and contained much ambiguity. The DMX512/2000 project (which eventually became ANSI E1.11-2004) seeked to reduce the ambiguity by stretching that 5 page document into a hefty 70 pages, all while maintaining full backwards compatibility.

After a contentious early draft of the document was released in the Fall of 1999, Scott began attending the CPWG and DMX512 Task Group meetings in January 2000. One of the issues with this draft was that it prohibited bidirectional communication on the primary pair of the DMX512 data link, something HES had been doing for years already and a core requirement in the HES Talkback protocol. While bidirectionality was never mentioned in the USITT version, it did specify RS485 which is inherently a bidirectional link. When this subject was broached during the meetings that weekend saying the reaction to bidirectional communication over DMX512 was not well received would be a massive understatement. Saying the response was greeted with pitchforks and bats would be a bit more accurate. While the tar and feathers were avoided, the group slowly warmed to the concept as it was informally discussed over the next 2 years.

The Start of Something New
All those that were originally the most opposed to bidirectional communication over DMX512 became the biggest advocates of formally creating a new protocol. With the support from then HES CTO Mike Wood, the intellecual property for HES Talkback was put on the table for ESTA to use. In July 2001, the CPWG voted to officially begin work on the RDM project and the first RDM Task Group meeting was held in November 2001 following LDI. Using the HES Talkback protocol as the basis the group quickly began expanding the capabilities and preparing the first draft.

A New Standard is Born
By the time the group completed the 3rd Public Review cycle, the work was done and the new standard was released in 2006 as ANSI E1.20. RDM became the first new standardized lighting protocol released in our industry since DMX512 was released more than 20 years earlier. While RDM has come a long way from it’s beginnings as HES Talkback, the core components and guiding principals remain unchanged.

In 2010, a new revision of RDM was released adding a few improvements and making a number of corrections in the document discovered since it’s initial release.

Plugfest began in January 2009 as part of the ESTA (now PLASA) Technical Standards Programme by members of various Control Protocols Task Groups represent a variety of manufacturers. Twice a year, when they are all in the same place at the same time, they bring controllers, lights, analyzers, and various other tools and devices, and connect them all through a network to look for and resolve problems. People attend from all around the world in an effort to improve their products.

Plugfest was originally created to support the Remote Device Management protocol (ANSI E1.20 RDM) but now it has expanded to cover all CPWG protocols, including the popular ANSI E1.31 Streaming DMX over ACN protocol. As the scope has grown, so has attendance, and consequently, the space. It began in a small suite but this year Plugfest moved into a large suite with room to grow. Coffee, bagels, and scones serve to fuel the event.

Although the schedule runs until 10pm, the group can often be found working into the early morning hours. Most of the members of the E1.20 and E1.31 task groups, who wrote the standards, are there and they are happy to provide their expertise. They will answer your questions and tell you about protocols.

For more information or if you are interested in participating, contact Scott Blair at s.blair@ieee.org or sblair@rdmprotocol.org to register.

Simon Newton of the open source project (OLA) attracted a lot of interest in the development of an RDM responder test suite, running tests on equipment at the event as well as drawing on the experience of those present to enhance the tests. Ryan Fletcher of ARRI joined the world of RDM, bringing a studio luminaire, demonstrating the wider industry interest in and application of RDM.

Matthias Hinrichs of Martin Professional and Peter Kirkup of Zero 88 used the opportunity to start work on a website to promote and provide information to users of RDM enabled equipment. The website will provide general information about the functionality of RDM along with a categorised list of manufacturers’ products.

Having gone through a steep learning curve at the meeting last October in Las Vegas, the Technical Standards Committee (TSC) working group for the proposed E1.33 standard made great progress during the course of the event, toward a draft version of the standard. The E1.33 is essentially a way of carrying RDM over Ethernet in the same way that the E1.31 carries DMX512 over Ethernet.

The draft version will be soon be available and ready for public review in July this year. The new standard will give additional benefit to fixtures that support RDM, bridging the gap between network controllers and the DMX512/RDM daisy chained fixtures.

With the main focus of technology being RDM control, improvements were made to JESE interfaces to act as responders as well as the GetSet controller application to handle protocol exceptions in a more robust and informative way, says Dumbreck.

As a result of the continuing popularity and growth of the programme, the Plug Fest will fill a larger space at the Marriott, and the event will be lengthened by half a day, running Friday, 21 January from 16:00 to 22:00; Saturday, 22 January from 09:00 to 23:00; and Sunday, 25 January from 09:00 to 22:00. The event, originally created to support ANSI E1.20 RDM (Remote Device Management) two years ago has since expanded to cover all CPWG protocols, including the popular ANSI E1.31 DMX over Ethernet protocol.

The Control Protocols Plug Fest will be an informal event, with the only people around to see the equipment work or fail being engineers and technicians, not customers. The event will provide an opportunity for manufacturers’ engineers to see if their products will work with the products of numerous manufacturers, find out on the spot what is wrong, fix it, and try again. With all the members of the RDM and E1.31 task groups that wrote the standards on-hand, it also provides an excellent resource to get implementation questions answered and to learn from everyone’s shared experience.

For more information and to register, contact Scott Blair at sblair@rdmprotocol.org. Registration is important so that the logistics of the equipment delivery, setup, and removal can be organised. There is no charge for participation and the event is open to everyone.