The installation and service instructions in this manual are for use by qualified personnel only. This equipment is not suitable for use in locations where children are likely to be present. To avoid electric shock, do not perform any servicing other than that contained in the operating instructions unless you are qualified to do so. Refer all servicing to qualified personnel. This instrument has an auto-ranging line voltage input. Ensure the power voltage is within the specified range of 100-240VAC. The "~" symbol, if used, indicates an alternating current supply. Equipment must be connected to protective earthing by means of a power cord connected to a socket outlet. Equipment with an earthing terminal should be connected to a proper ground system with 20 - 14 AWG (0.5 - 1.5mm) wire.

User Warnings and Cautions

Important Safety Symbols

This symbol, whenever it appears, alerts you to the presence of uninsulated, dangerous voltage inside the enclosure - voltage which may be sufficient to constitute a risk of shock. Disconnect equipment from all power sources before any servicing of parts.

This symbol, whenever it appears, alerts you to important operating and maintenance instructions. Read the manual.

This symbol, whenever it appears, identifies the associated terminal as a protective earth ground for protection against electric shock in case of a fault. The terminal should be connected to a proper ground system with 20 - 14 AWG (0.5 - 1.5mm) wire.

This symbol, whenever it appears, indicates a fuse to protect against excessive current. When replacing fuses, use only the type and rating of the original fuse as indicated by the manufacturer. Never install a fuse with a higher current value.

Hazardous Voltages and Fuses

The instrument power supply incorporates an internal fuse. Hazardous voltages may still be present on some of the primary parts even when the fuse has blown. If fuse replacement is required, replace the fuse only with the same type and value for continued protection against fire.

Electrical Warnings

The product's power cord is the primary disconnect device. The socket outlet should be located near the device and easily accessible. The unit should not be located such that access to the power cord is impaired. If the unit is incorporated into an equipement rack, an easily accessible safety disconnect should be included in the rack design.

To reduce the risk of electrical shock, do not expose this product to rain or moisture. This unit is for indoor use only.

This equipment requires the free flow of air for adequate cooling. Do not block the ventilation openings on the rear and sides of the unit. Failure to allow proper ventilation could damage the unit or create a fire hazard. Do not place the units on a carpet, bedding, or other materials that could interfere with any panel ventilation openings.

If the equipment is used in a manner not specified by the manufacturer, the protection provided by the equipment may be impaired.

USA Class A Computing Device User Information

This equipment generates, uses, and can radiate radio-frequency energy. If it is not installed and used as directed by this manual, it may cause interference to radio communication. This equipment complies with the limits for a Class A computing device as specified by FCC rules, part 15, subpart j, which are designed to provide reasonable protection against such interferences when this type of equipment is operated in a commercial environment. Operation of this equipment in a residential area is likely to cause interference. If it does, the user will be required to eliminate the interference at the user's expense. Note: Objectionable interference to TV or radio reception can occur if other devices are connected to this device without the use of shielded interconnect cables. FCC rules require the use of shielded cables.

Canadian Class A Computing Device Warning

This digital apparatus does not exceed the Class A limits for radio noise emissions set out in the radio interference regulations of the Canadian department of communications.

Le présent appareil numérique n’émet pas de bruits radioélectriques dépassant les limites applicables aux appareils numériques (de Class A) prescrites dans le règlement sur le brouillage radioélectrique édicté par le ministère des communications du Canada.

CE Conformance Information

This device complies with the requirements of the EEC council directives:

• 93/68/EEC (CE marking)

• 73/23/EEC (Safety – Low voltage directive)

• 89/336/EEC (Electromagnetic compatibility

Conformity is declared to those standards: EN50081-1, EN50082-1.

Trademarks, Patents, and Licenses

Telos is a trademark of TLS Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

All versions, claims of compatibility, trademarks, etc. of hardware and software products not made by The Telos Alliance which are mentioned in this manual or accompanying material are informational only. The Telos Alliance makes no endorsement of any particular product for any purpose, nor claims any responsibility for operation or accuracy. We reserve the right to make improvements or changes in the products described in this manual which may affect the product specifications or to revise the manual without notice.

This document and its content are copyrighted by TLS Corporation and may not be copied, reproduced, or distributed in any form without expressed written permission.

Patent information can be found at www.TelosAlliance.com/legal.

Software Updates

The features and operations of most products and equipment are determined largely by software. Telos Alliance strives to provide the most stable and feature-rich software available, and we encourage you to check for software updates from time to time by visiting our website or by contacting us directly.

Feedback

We welcome feedback on any aspect of our products or this manual. In the past, many good ideas from users have made their way into software revisions or new products. Please contact us with your comments or suggestions.

We support you

By phone or fax: You may reach our Telos Support Team in emergencies by calling +1 216-622-0247. For billing questions or other non-emergency technical questions, call +1 216-241-7225 between 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM USA Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.

By e-mail: Non-emergency technical support is available at Support@TelosAlliance.com.

By web: A direct support request may be initiated via our website at https://www.telosalliance.com/support-request.

Our main product support page also has a variety of helpful information at www.telosalliance.com/support.

Service

You must contact Telos Alliance before returning any equipment for factory service. We will need your unit’s serial number, located on the back of the unit. We will issue a return authorization number, which must be written on the exterior of your shipping container. Please do not include cables or accessories unless specifically requested by the Technical Support Engineer. Be sure to adequately insure your shipment for its replacement value. Packages without proper authorization may be refused. US customers, please contact Telos Alliance Technical Support at +1-216-622-0247. All other customers should contact their local representative to make arrangements for service.

Warranty

For the latest Telos Alliance warrant information, please visit www.telosalliance.com/warranty.

Product Registration

Register your product today to get the full benefits of our warranty, support, and product updates at www.telosalliance.com/product-registration.

Company Headquarters

Telos Alliance, 1241 Superior Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44114 USA. Telephone +1-216-241-7225.

Pathfinder Core PRO offers you ultimate control of your Axia network. It is a toolbox that allows you to fashion your own custom workflows for your users. At its foundation it provides router control. By communicating with Axia devices on your network, it brings the sources and destinations together into a common user interface that can then be used to make route changes anywhere in the system.

It also offers control over console parameters, metering, audio levels, and many more parameters that an Axia system provides. Plus, it allows you to design your own user interfaces to display this information and provide your users with whatever degree of control and information over the system you deem appropriate. Building on the highly successful PathfinderPro product line, Pathfinder Core PRO strives to make the information about your Axia system more dynamic, visible, and accessible than ever before.

Web Browsers

Pathfinder Core PRO uses modern web browser tools to bring a rich and dynamic user experience to the product, including web sockets and HTML5. This comes at the expense of being unable to support older web browsers. For example, web sockets are only supported in Internet Explorer 10 and later. Most of our development work has been done using Google Chrome which should provide the most consistent and best user experience. If you find things that do not work or behave properly in a specific browser or do not update the data properly, please feel free to file a report with Axia support so that we can investigate the issue. We are always striving to improve the user experience across all browsers.

If data does not seem to display properly or if data is missing, refreshing the webpage is sometimes helpful. Many browsers also have a key combination that will force a refresh from the serving device rather than relying on cached data; for instance, holding the CTRL and SHIFT keys while clicking the refresh button in Google Chrome.

Navigation Bar

All links necessary to configure, control, and monitor your Pathfinder Core PRO system are on the left-hand side of the Pathfinder Core PRO web pages. This will be referred to throughout the manual as the Navigation Bar.

While the links on this bar are presented alphabetically for ease of use, this manual will skip from link to link as we go through a logical progression of using the system.

Network Connection Icon

The right corner of each web page displays a network connection icon. In normal situations it should look like:

This icon tells you whether the underlying web socket used to obtain and set information from the web page to and from Pathfinder Core PRO is open and communicating properly. If it is not, the icon will look like this, indicating a communication problem between your browser and Pathfinder Core PRO:

Check network connectivity between your browser and Pathfinder Core PRO and verify Pathfinder Core PRO is booted and functioning properly. An additional symptom of this problem may be that configurations look as if they were blank. Before panicking and assuming that your Pathfinder Core PRO has somehow been wiped of its settings, check to see if the network icon is in an unconnected state.

Lists: Searching and Sorting

Many of the configuration pages in Pathfinder Core PRO need to present lists of data. For example:

There are a few conventions that apply whenever you see a list like this in Pathfinder Core PRO. The first is the Search box in the right corner.

Typing in the search box will dynamically filter the list. These filters are also often stored by the browser, so if you return to a page and do not see the expected data in the list, check the search field to see if you have a filter on the list.

Next, notice that each column header has arrows next to the header names. Clicking on the header will sort the list according to the data in that column. The column that only has the single arrow represents the current sort column. Clicking on that column a second time will flip the arrow to the other direction and flip the sort from incrementing to decrementing and back again.

Many of the lists will have the hyphen sign in the last column of the list. Clicking this Delete icon removes the selected list item from the system.

Many of the lists will also have a plus sign at the bottom of the list. This sign indicates that items may be added to the list. Clicking the Add icon will usually open another dialog box with specifics for adding the new item.

When lists expand beyond what can be viewed on a single page, page navigation buttons will appear:

Event System Catch 22

Pathfinder Core PRO includes an event system called Logic Flows. Because Logic Flows can reach into almost every part of the system, they present a bit of a Catch 22 when it comes to introducing certain subjects in a manual.

There are certain subjects - such as Memory Slots - that are primarily useful in the context of Logic Flows, so you have to understand Logic Flows in order to make the best use of Memory Slots. However, the examples and discussions within the Logic Flow section of this manual also will refer to Memory Slots in order to present some of its examples.

Wherever possible, we have attempt to note this and refer to the relevant sections of this manual. However, as a reader, be prepared to skip around if necessary. If the manual is read from front to back, there may be points where we refer to subjects covered in a later section.

PathfinderCore PRO Scheduling Module

Overview

The Scheduling module is an additional module that may be enabled in PathfinderCore PRO through a license add-on. It works as an addendum to the Day of Week and Date/Time timers. Specifically, this module allows you to define resources and event templates and then apply them on an easy-to-use drag and drop calendar in order to easily schedule changes.

Scheduling License

This feature requires a scheduling license. For evaluation, we can also supply a 90-day demo license. Events created using this demo license will continue to function properly after the demo expires but without the ability to view them in the calendar. After demo expiration, the events will still be viewable and editable via the normal timers editor dialog. Because these timer events use a different object type, events created with the scheduling demo feature may not work if you downgrade the software to a previous version on PathfinderCore PRO software. In addition to the demo license, there is the ability to open a demo calendar that has non-functioning data so that the concepts may be evaluated; this does not require a license.

Calendar

The scheduling module adds an optional calendar-based scheduling system into PathfinderCore PRO. While scheduling of time-based events has always been possible, the scheduling module simplifies this process with a drag and drop calendar user interface and the ability to dynamically combine properties and values during that process.

The scheduling module is comprised of 4 objects:

• Resources: A container for a set of events which also may include properties and values that interact with templates that are dropped onto the resource.

  • AirChains1, 2, and 3 are resources in the picture above.

• Templates: An event template with duration and start and end actions.

  • Templates are displayed in the list of rectangles on the left side of the screen in the picture above and can be drug onto the calendar.

• Calendars: A calendar-based visualization of resources and their associated events along with drag and drop visualizations of templates.

  • This image above is a calendar with three resources, 4 currently displayed ResourceEvents, and 4 templates.

• ResourceEvents: An event with a start and end time and action to perform at the start and end. The action data may be comprised of information from both the resource and template used to create the event.

  • The events are displayed at the time values in the calendar.

The user workflow involves selecting an event template and dragging it into the correct resource in the calendar, then adjusting the time duration or placement by dragging the event or event bottom edge. Details of the event may be further manipulated if the user has the rights to do so by clicking on the event as shown below:

In the calendar shown earlier, each event makes a route change of the studio source defined in the template to the AirChain destination which is defined by the resource. So when we drop a studio onto the resource, the destination from the resource is combined with the source from the event template in a new event with the correct time parameters that we define by dragging the duration. This allows the scheduling of studio to airchain routing to be a simple drag and drop procedure.

It is also important to note that no changes take effect until the Apply button is selected. The apply and cancel buttons will flash when there are pending changes that have not been committed.

Creating a Resource

Let’s dig a little deeper into how resources, templates, calendars, and resource events are created and interact. As an Administrator to create a calendar such as the one we see above, we would first need to define the resources and templates. To do this, click on the Timers navigation bar link and then click on the Resources tab.

Click on the plus icon to add a new resource:

Each resource can have a name and description, a color, a start property and value, and an end property and value. The start property and value determine what happens at a newly created event start, and the end property and value set what happens at a newly created event end. In each case where the start and end property fields are used (resources, templates, and events), if an end action is not defined, nothing will happen at the end of the event time range.

It is important to understand that the values defined here are designed to be overridden by the template when a new template is dropped on the resource unless the template says to take data from the resource. We will see more of this when we get to the templates section below. So for example, we could leave all of the Start and End fields blank and define what happens only in the template. In the Studio and AirChain example above, we clicked on the ellipsis button and defined destinations and blank sources in these fields. The dialogs for property and value selections are the same as the Date/Time and Day of Week timers described in the Timers section of the manual.

Click on the ellipsis buttons for each field and select the air chain destinations. The sources can be set to none or anything you like as we will override them in the templates section below.

A color can also be picked. The clone resource link allows for quick duplication where you need to create several resources with only slight differences between them. Each resource requires a unique name.

Creating a Template

After creating several resources with different destinations for your Airchains, click on the templates tab and then use the plus icon to define a new template.

You will notice a checkbox next to several fields called Assigned by Resource. Enabling this checkbox indicates that the field will be obtained from the equivalent field in the resource when the template is dropped onto the resource. So for example, use the import from resource drop-down to import the settings for the properties and values from one of the Airchain resources you created earlier as it is easier than manually selecting them again. Then provide a name and enable the checkboxes on the start and end properties. The duration is the default duration that will be used when dropping the template in the calendar but then can be adjusted by dragging the event. The result will look like this:

Template to Resource Relationship

What we are saying is that when this template is dropped onto the resource, the template will provide the source values and the resource will provide the property (destination) and color values.

It is important to understand that if we had not turned on any of the “Assigned by Resource” checkboxes, all of the parameters from the template would be used. Why is it useful to split the parameters up in this way? If we look at our original calendar again we will see its usefulness.

Here if you drag studio 1 onto Airchain 1, then the event will have the airchain destination and the studio source. If you decide you made a mistake, you can drag the event to Airchain 2, and the routing destination for the event will update to reflect the change.

Creating a Calendar

Going back to our Administrative configuration again, we still need to actually create the calendar. To do that, click on the calendars tab and click the Plus button. The calendars dialog allows us to create a new named calendar and configure what resources and templates are allowed to be used by the calendar.

Supply a name and description for the calendar and then select the resources and templates that are available for use. It is important to note that the same resources and templates can be used on multiple calendars. Think of a calendar as a view of resource based events and the templates as the available events that may be applied. After applying the new calendar settings, it becomes available in the calendar list and the view button will allow a user to start working with it.

Zip One Dialer Example

While all of the examples so far have been to make route changes, they do not have to be. Any property in the system can be used in a resource or template and therefore scheduled. So for example we could change the resource and template to use ZipOne dialing parameters. When creating the resource after clicking the ellipsis button, use the Endpoints button to obtain the normal logic flows endpoint selector.

Therefore if we create our resource to look like:

And our template to look like:

In this instance the resource defines the Zip one Connect property as well as the Zip one drop property and value. And the template only supplies the dial location. Using this methodology we could create a calendar for scheduling Zip one dialing such as:

In this example our event templates are dial locations and our resources are the Zip One to use for the dialing.

Fusion Show Profiles

As one last example, we could create a calendar to schedule the loading of show profiles on a console:

In this example, the templates are show profiles and the only resource on the calendar is the fusion console on which they are being scheduled.

The point we are trying to make with these examples is that anything Pathfinder Core PRO knows about can be used for scheduling and multiple calendars may be created in order to schedule different types of things.

Timezone Selector

The calendar has a time zone selector in the top left corner. By default when the calendar is displayed, it queries PathfinderCore PRO for its current time zone and sets the calendar time zone to that time zone. Changing the time zone changes how the events are viewed. Adding events while in a different time zone than the Pathfinder Core PRO time zone will cause the event times to be converted to the Pathfinder Core PRO time zone when the apply button sends the changes to the system.

Calendar Controls and Views

Several controls exist across the top of the calendar. On the right hand corner, there are several buttons which change the view.

Clicking these buttons will change the calendar view to one of the following:

Month: Dropping templates onto the month view is prohibited as there is not enough resolution for time selection.

Week: Dropping a template onto a week view will always assign the template to the first resource assigned to the calendar. This can then be adjusted if necessary in the day view.

Day: This is the primary and default scheduling view.

List: This view is for informational purposes only and cannot be a drag and drop target.

On the left hand side is a today button that will bring the view back to the current day as well as left right arrows for navigating to the next day/week/month depending on the view.

The apply and cancel buttons apply or cancel any pending changes to the Pathfinder Core PRO timer engine. These buttons will flash if there are pending changes. Events which have not been applied will not exist or be acted upon by PathfinderCore PRO.

Colors

You can define colors in the templates, resources, and in the events themselves and there is some internal logic as to which color is used when an event gets created. If the template has the Assigned by Resource checkbox enabled for the color then the resource color will be used. This is the default because when viewing the calendar using a week or month view where the resource columns are not visible, events associated with a specific resource will all have the same color making it easy to tell which events belong to which resource. However you may prefer to have the color relate to the template that created the event, in which case deselecting the Assigned by Resource checkbox in the template will cause newly created events to use the template color. Finally, once an event is created it can be edited by clicking on the event and a color specific to that event instance can be selected.

Event Editing

After an event is created, if the settings generated by the resource/template combination are not what you want, you can click on the event and edit it to do whatever you wish.

This is basically the same timer editing dialog that is discussed in the timers section of the manual above. The only differences are the presence of the color, template, and resource fields and different options in the timer type field. Calendar based timers must be of type Resource Event or Recurring Resource Event. These two types equate to the DateTime event type and the DayOfWeek type but are designed to work with the calendar. You can change the name of the event from the default one that is generated, but the name must be unique within the timers in the system.

Recurring Events

When creating an event template or editing an event, it is possible to create it as a recurring event rather than a one-time event by selecting the Recurring timer type.

This will add fields for selecting the days of the week on which the event should occur.

Dragging a recurring template onto the calendar will cause it to appear at the selected timeslot on all days of the week for which the template is configured.

One thing that can cause confusion is if you drag a recurring event to a day view on a day of the week that the recurring event is not scheduled to take place. This will appear to have no effect, but if you use the week view to zoom out you will see that the event has been added and applied to the correct days.

It is also important to note than changing the length or any of the properties of a recurring event will make that change in the base recurring event and will therefore affect all days the event takes place. For example, in the week view above, if you grab the duration handle on the bottom of one of these events and make the event longer, all of them will change because they are all just views of a single recurring event.

Deleting an Event

When editing an event, you should also notice the trashcan icon in the bottom right corner.

To delete an event that has been added to a calendar resource, click on the event and then click on the trash can icon. The system will ask you if you are sure you want to delete the event. It is important to note that deleting a recurring event will delete all instances of that recurring event. There is currently no way to delete a single day of a recurring event. Instead you would need to disable that day in the event and then re-enable it afterwards if you want it to happen on that day in the future.

****

Status

When you first log in to the Pathfinder Core PRO web page, you will be presented with the System Status page. This is the same web page displayed when clicking the System link in the navigation bar.

This screen is primarily informational outside of the licensing configuration fields. There are four sections:

Version Information

This shows which of the two Firmware Banks is currently active and the version of software running in that Bank.

Licensing

This shows the current license in the system and its capabilities.

System Status

This shows graphs representing the current CPU, memory, Ethernet utilization, and available disk space. The graphs are updated automatically every two seconds.

Downloads

This section provides download links to the online documentation.

System Configuration

Under the System heading in the navigation bar is a Configuration link. If you've already referenced the Quick Start Guide, you will have already been introduced to this page.

• Access the web interface by typing in the IP address configured earlier in a web browser; an authentication window will appear; type the following values: Username = Admin Password = Admin

• Select Sign In to load the Pathfinder Core PRO control panel

• From the links in the left-hand navigation bar, click Configuration under the System heading

• Next to Livewire Endpoint Discovery, click Start

When a new device is discovered, the system will add it to its device list and add any route points provided by the device into the audio and GPIO router. This is one of the first options you will use when configuring a new system as it is how you will discover the equipment that Pathfinder Core PRO can control.

When discovery is enabled, the button will say Stop instead of Start; clicking the button will stop any additional automatic discovery.

Additional System Buttons

Network Configuration Options

Current IP address information is visible in the Network Configuration section of the System > Configuration page.

Livewire and Office Configuration

System IP options can be edited using the front panel display or through the web GUI.

• Click the Configure button to open the network interface’s Edit screen

• Type the IP Address, Netmask, and Gateway values and click OK, or click Cancel to leave this dialog without making any changes

DNS Servers Configuration

The DNS section lists the currently defined DNS servers.

With correctly configured DNS settings, the system can send emails to administrators and employees alerting them to network changes requiring attention. For example, you can send emails when critical sources or destinations such as air chains become silent. To do this, the system needs to be able to resolve email server names with the correct IP addresses to send the email through. The DNS entries can also be used when entering NTP server information. Talk to your network administrator if you are unsure of which DNS servers to use.

• Click the DNS Server Configure button to open the Dns Entries dialog, allowing you to add, remove, and reorder DNS server entries

• Click Add to add a new DNS server to the list and Remove to remove a DNS server entry

• To move a DNS Server up or down in the priority list, select a DNS server entry and click the << or >> buttons

• Click OK to save your changes or Cancel to leave the dialog without making any changes

Licenses

Each Pathfinder Core PRO system includes a base license allowing a 1000 license point pool to be allocated between both Axia Audio Sources and Logic Flow endpoints.

Virtual License Types

If you purchased a hardware-based Pathfinder Core PRO, the base license is pre‑installed. If you purchased a virtual machine license, there are three possible license types:

Additional Licenses

Additional licenses to add functionality may be purchased through your Axia distributer, with each additional licenses providing either an additional 500 (the Pathfinder Core PRO Add-On 500) or 100 (the Pathfinder Core PRO Add-On 100) license points.

Add-on licenses are shared between the Pathfinder Core PRO units that are participating in a clustered system. This means that if you need a redundant Pathfinder Core PRO system that supports 1400 license points, you will need to purchase two Pathfinder Core PRO systems (each of which comes with a base license or backup license) and a single add-on license to add the additional 500 sources. The add-on license allows both systems in the cluster to mirror and synchronize the full 1400 license point functionality.

• To view or add additional licenses, click the System heading on the navigation bar and then click the Edit Licenses link

• The licensing page will display your base license information; it will also provide a list of your additional licenses

• Click the New License line then type the new Request Code and License Key to add a new license

• Finally, click Submit Changes to add the license to the system; license changes may require a reboot to become effective; click the Configuration link under System to find the reboot button

Backup/Restore

The Backup/Restore page presents a list of all backups in the system. If this is the first time using this page, there will probably not be any backups present in the system.

To take a new backup, or to upload a backup from your local computer back into the system, click the plus icon.

Taking Backups

To create a new backup, type a name for the backup, select whether you want logs and/or the IP address to be included in the backup, and then click Take. Click Cancel to exit the dialog without making any changes.

The backup will include any configuration files needed to return your system to its current state.

If logs are included, the backup will also include all system and application logs currently on the system. The log information can be very useful to Axia support if they are trying to assist in troubleshooting an issue, and it is likely they will ask you to take a backup including log files and send it to them.

If you intend to restore the backup on a different Pathfinder Core PRO, you may not wish to include IP addresses so the restore process does not overwrite the IP addresses of the other unit.

Backups are stored in the software Bank. When you move to a new software Bank, you will not be able to directly access the backups from the previous Bank. However, if the backup is saved to your local computer, you can easily upload it back into a new Bank if desired.

Uploading Backups

To restore your configuration to a new system, a factory default system, or a system that has had the desired backup removed from the system, click Choose File.

Select a System Backup file on your local system, then click Upload. After the upload is complete, the backup will be available in the Backup/Restore list.

Removing Backups

The minus icon will delete a backup from the system.

Since there is limited space on the storage medium it is recommended to keep only a few backups on the system at a time.

Restoring Backups

Click the Restore link next to a stored backup. The system will request confirmation that you really wish to restore the system to that state.

After confirming the operation, the system will shut down active services, restore the configuration files to the state of that backup, and reboot.

Upload Update

One of the Pathfinder Core PRO Administrator’s most important tasks is periodic firmware updates. This project is undergoing a very active development lifecycle with many new features planned for future versions. That, in addition to fixes for any bugs reported to us by our users, will make occasional updates of the firmware in your Pathfinder Core PRO system necessary.

The system has two software Banks so that if there is a need to return to an earlier version, it will live in the preceding Bank. To upgrade your system:

• Take a backup of your system as explained in the Taking Backups section above; we always recommend backing up your system before making any major change just to be safe; the backup process generates its own backup as well, but it never hurts to have another copy stored on your local computer

• Download the new firmware version from the Axia Audio web site to your local computer; the file name extension will be .pfc_upd which stands for Pathfinder Core PRO update package; it is also a good idea to take a moment to scan the release notes to understand the changes between the version you are currently running and the version to which you will be upgrading

• Select the Upload Update link under the System heading in the navigation bar; this page will display the Bank on which you are not currently running, as the update will always load to the inactive bank

• Click Browse and select the file you downloaded from the Axia web site

• The File Upload bar will change to the name of the file which you have selected to upload and a status bar will appear with the Begin button; if the file is not correct for the type of system you have (for example, you attempt to install VM software to a Fanless Engine platform) a warning will appear

• Click Begin to begin the updating process

• A new page will appear with a progress bar that presents stages along with some additional information regarding what is taking place at that point of the update process; the update may take several minutes to complete

• Once the update is complete, you should receive a Processing Succeeded message; because you are updating the Bank which is currently active, the system should continue to run even if there was an error with the update

• If you receive an error message instead of Processing Succeeded, please contact Axia support

• To boot into the updated Bank and start using the new software, click the Bank Control link in the navigation bar

Bank Control

Bank Control displays the software versions in both Banks of the system and offers control over the currently executing software revision Bank. Click the Bank Control link under the System heading in the navigation bar to view this page.

The Bank button can be used to select which Bank will be used on the next reboot. It also displays the currently selected Bank as the next Bank that will be active at reboot.

After changing the Bank that will be used on the next reboot, a Reboot button will appear on the page.

Clicking Reboot will reboot into the newly selected Bank.

The information tables display the software version in each Bank. An asterisk will be present next to the Bank that is currently executing.

This also means that after rebooting into a new Bank you should return to the Bank control web page to make sure the boot was successful and you are executing on the desired Bank. If the boot fails, it could fail back to the previous Bank and you will only know that by double-checking this page.

Configuration File Between Bank Changes

Since configuration files reside within the executing Bank, if you are switching to a different Bank the configuration may be different. It is always recommended to take a backup of your configuration before switching Banks, and then restore that configuration on the new Bank.

If you are switching Banks immediately after upgrading the firmware, then this backup and restore have been already completed as part of the upgrade process. Otherwise, it is recommended to review the backup and restore procedures earlier in this manual. Conversely, this also means if you make a mistake in the configuration in a new Bank, you can boot back into the old Bank to get to an older and successfully working configuration, though using backups and restores is a more efficient way of doing this.

Services

Click the Services link on the navigation bar to view the Services page.

This page will only be used in conjunction with Axia tech support, but it is worth discussing what this page represents. To make Pathfinder Core PRO as robust as possible, the system has a sophisticated watchdog process. This process monitors the state of each of the services in the system and is responsible for sending ping messages to each service to make sure they are still responsive at the application layer. If a service fails to respond within a certain period of time, the watchdog will restart the service. In a rare and catastrophic situation where the watchdog is not able to achieve proper responsiveness of a service, it might also restart all services or even reboot the system after enough subsequent failures.

This screen shows each service, when it was last started, and the most recent ping and response time. If you watch this screen you should notice the pings changing at approximately 5-second intervals.

In many ways, this page is equivalent to the Services control panel in a Windows machine.

Time

Click on the Time link under the System heading of the navigation bar to view the Time settings. The System Time configuration page allows you to define NTP servers, set the system’s time zone, and sync the current time to that of your local PC.

Use the Current Timezone drop-down to select the correct time zone for the system.

Click Set time from PC to update Pathfinder Core PRO’s current time to that of your local PC.

Defining NTP servers in the Ntp servers list is recommended so that Pathfinder Core PRO can update its time automatically and always be as accurate as possible.

There are a number of reasons why it is important to keep Pathfinder Core PRO’s time accurate. The first is that the system has the ability to define events that happen at specific dates and times. Those events will, of course, fire at incorrect times if the system’s time is not up to date. Additionally, log files use the system’s time settings to keep track of when changes happen.

Finally, proper cluster synchronization relies on date and time settings to determine whether a specific piece of information is more up-to-date on one system or another and therefore whether synchronization of that piece of information needs to take place. Talk to your network administrator if you have questions about which NTP servers to use.

Email Settings

In order to send emails from Logic Flows, the server parameters must first be defined in the system in order to let Pathfinder Core PRO know which email server to use to send email messages. Under the System section of the navigation bar, click the Email Settings link.

These settings are like those used by any other email client application.

Once you have the parameters configured correctly, click Apply Changes to store them to the system. This button must be clicked before Send Test Email will use the new settings.

Use the Send Test Email button to generate a test email. The page will ask for a destination email address and will then attempt to send the message. Any errors will be reported. Once you can successfully send test emails, you are ready to create messages that may be used by Pathfinder Core PRO’s event system, Logic Flows.

Go to the Email Messages section of this manual for more details about creating email messages determine when those messages are sent.

A very common use of Logic Flows in Pathfinder Core PRO is to perform critical actions when an audio source or destination falls silent. For example, you could have a Logic Flow send you an email if the feed to the transmitter becomes silent. In order to accomplish this, you should use the Audio Alarms section of Pathfinder Core PRO.

Almost any audio source or destination in an Axia network can be monitored for silence, clipping, and audio presence.

Click the Audio Alarms link in the Navigation Bar to create, edit, and view audio alarms in the system.

Like other Pathfinder Core PRO pages, the Audio Alarms page updates dynamically as the alarm states change. Nine columns are displayed for each audio alarm.

Creating New Audio Alarms

Let’s create an example.

Click the Audio Alarms link in the Navigation Bar to create, edit, and view audio alarms in the system. On the Audio Alarms page, click the plus icon to add an Audio Alarm.

Complete the fields on the Audio Alarm Editor.

After clicking on the ellipsis button to open the Select IO screen (either Select Source or Select Destination, depending on how this alarm is configured), select the source or destination from the IO list and click Select.

Click Apply to save your changes to this alarm.

Monitoring Alarms from the Audio Alarms List

The Audio Alarms list view, like most lists in Pathfinder Core PRO, show alarm status changes in real time.

For example, the Timer State and Alarm State values will dynamically update in this list as alarm states change. This can be an excellent troubleshooting tool.

Using Alarms in Logic Flows

Once an alarm has been created, it is available for use in Logic Flows. In the Logic Flow below, we have created a Logic Flow that sends an email whenever the SilenceAlarm audio alarm has its Alarm State switch to Silent:

If we wanted to perform a different action when the alarm releases (audio returns), we would use the AudioPresent value in the translation list. For example, the following Logic Flow will light a button when audio is present and cause it to flash when there is silence.

More possible audio alarm Logic Flows examples are covered in the Email Messages section since that is a common action to be taken when things get quiet.

Pathfinder Core PRO provides a variety of different logging mechanisms as well as maintaining its own internal system logs. There are two kinds of log files created by the system: System Logs and User Logs.

• System Logs are created by the system’s internal services and primarily define information for use by the developers.

• User Logs are where you can define changes on your Axia network that you want to be entered into log files for later review.

Click on the Logs link in the Navigation bar to view the current logs in the system as well as to define logging options.

Creating New Log Writers

To see the list of Log Writers that have been created in the system, click the Log Writers link on the User Log window.

Each Log Writer in the system will be displayed on this page by Name along with its type and location.

• To create a new Log Writer, click on the plus icon on the Log Writers screen.

• Type a Name for this Log Writer in the Log Writer Name field.

• From the Log Writer Type drop-down list, select this Log Writer’s Type. There are four types of Log Writer that can be created:

• If you are configuring a TCP Listener or Client Log Writer, type the TCP Port associated with the TCP application.

• If you are configuring a Sys Log Log Writer, type the IP Address of the collector application

• Use the selection window at the bottom of this dialog to select what log options you wish to log.

Expand the tree and check the items you wish to log. The available items are:

AudioAlarms

• AlarmState: Generates a log message whenever an audio alarm state changes.

• LvlState: Generates a log message whenever the audio threshold for silence is passed for longer than 250 ms. This occurs before the countdown to an alarm state begins. It can be used to log the actual transitions being reported by the equipment but may also generate a large amount of log content depending on the type of audio content being monitored.

ConnectMessage

• Connected: Logs connections and disconnections from equipment. Use this log message to find equipment with which Pathfinder Core PRO is struggling to maintain a connection.

• Online: Logs changes to the online/offline state of the device. For a device to be considered online, proper communications must be occurring on all identified ports.

Devices

• VMIXGain: Logs changes to VMIXer gain settings.

• VMIXState: Logs changes to VMIXer On/Off settings.

LegacyPanels

• PanelPropertyChanged: Logs changes to properties of any of the controls in user panels.

LogicFlows

• CombinerOutputChanged: Logs changes whenever a logic flow translator changes its output.

• TranslatorOutputChanged: Logs changes whenever a logic flow translator changes its output.

MemorySlots

• MemorySlotChanged: Logs whenever a memory slot changes its value.

MessageLogging (Note: use with support or when trying to find a problem as these can increase CPU load. These are for troubleshooting only.)

• AccessViolations

• LoginFailures

• LoginSuccesses

• LwcpIncoming: Lwcp incoming messages.

• LwcpOutgoing: Lwcp outgoing messages.

• LwrpIncoming: Lwrp incoming messages.

• LwrpOutgoing: Lwrp outgoing messages.

• SapV2ExternalIncoming: SapV2 messages coming from outside the system.

• SapV2ExternalOutgoing: SapV2 messages being sent outside of the system.

• SapV2InternalIncoming: Incoming sapV2 messages between services.

• SapV2InternalOutgoing: Outgoing SapV2 messages between services.

RouterEvents

• GPIO State: Logs changes to GPIOs within the system.

• RouteState: Logs any route changes that take place within the system.

TimeEvents

• Elapsed: Logs whenever timers elapse.

• Enabled: Logs changes to a timer’s enabled state.

When all fields are complete, click Apply to save your changes and create the Log Writer.

Viewing Existing Logs

Clicking a log Filename in the User Logs window opens the log in a browser.

Log entries can be viewed in the browser window directly or copied to a text file for more robust searches.

Log File Maintenance

You may notice that some logs (such as the Silence logs in the screen shot below) have multiple copies with a period and a number at the end.

Due to space restrictions, Pathfinder Core PRO maintains an intelligent log rotation service which will rotate the log files as they become too large. Generally, log files are rotated four times with a new file created when the current log reaches approximately 4MB. When the fourth log gets too large, the oldest log is discarded and the filename reused.

There are some other rules which this service uses that might generate more aggressive log manipulation and/or deletion if space is becoming limited. For this reason, it is recommended that you use an outside syslog-based logging service to capture logs that you wish to store for longer periods of time. Review the Creating New Log Writers section for additional details.

Pathfinder Core PRO can emulate other routing systems. This can be particularly useful if you need to interface with an automation system that has not implemented any of the protocols that drive Axia routing systems.

Click the Device Emulators link in the navigation bar to display the list of device emulators currently defined in the system.

Creating a Generic Emulator

• Click the plus icon in the Device Emulators page to create a new emulator

• Type a unique Name for this emulator and select Generic Emulator from the Emulator Type drop-down list

• Complete the Connection Settings; the Generic Device Emulator is just a TCP/UDP connection that can be used to send and receive custom messages from an automation system or some other third-party system

• Type your initialization message in the Init Message field; this message will be sent when this Generic Emulator connects allowing the emulator to automatically send login or other initialization messages, including special escape characters (see the Escape Characters section later in this chapter) In the case of Listener types, this message will be sent to each client that connects to the listener. In the case of Client connection types, this message will be sent each time the client connects. Generic Device Emulators have a write-only property that can be used by Logic Flows called ToSend. This property allows you to create a flow to send any kind of data out of the Generic Emulator you wish.

• Generic emulators also have a Ping Message field and Ping Interval field which are optional.

  • For situations where you are using a TCP client and you want to check to make sure the connection is still alive, sending a periodic ping can force the network to validate that. Leaving the PingMessage blank will mean this feature is not used.

  • When a remote device closes its TCP connection normally, there is a handshake that takes place that tells us the connection has been closed. The emulator will then try to start re-establishing the connection. However, if the remote device loses power or the connection dies in a way that does not allow the handshake to take place, then the DeviceEmulator will not know the connection is dead until either a failed operating system keepalive packet failure (which might take up to an hour or two) or until we attempt to send a message to the remote device.

  • The ping message and ping interval allow you to define a message that gets sent every so often to make sure the connection is still working. These messages should be something that makes sense to the application on the remote end.

  • It also allows us to test not only that the connection is still intact but that the application at the remote end is still responding. Note that it still may take longer than the interval time to detect a failure (often 15 to 60 seconds). Therefore, it does not make sense to set the interval too low.

• Generic Device Emulator can trigger actions based on incoming data; to define these actions, we create Watchers. Each Watcher looks for information coming to the emulator port and when it sees that data, it briefly sets the Watcher’s Triggered property to True. To create a new Watcher, click the Add button and select the newly created Watcher from the list.

With the new Watcher selected, type a Name for this Watcher and the Value being watched for in the Name and Value fields directly below the Watcher list.

You can edit an existing Watcher by clicking on the Watcher entry in the list and updating the values in these Name and Value fields.

• When all fields are complete, click Apply to save your changes and create the Emulator.

Escape Characters

Both the ToSend properties and the Watcher values support several special character strings to represent special characters:

Therefore, a Watcher that is watching for "MyName\cr\lf" is looking for the string “MyName” followed by a carriage return and line feed.

In the case of double slashes, such as "MyName[\cr\lf](file:///C:/Users/arsen/Documents/Manuals%20to%20revise/Pathfinder%20EDIT/cr/lf)", the double slashes are converted to a single literal slash for the case where you actually want to send the value “\cr\lf.”

Using Watchers in Logic Flows

The Name of the Watcher is used to identify the Watcher in the system and will appear as an object underneath the Emulator in the Logic Flows property selection tree.

In the example above, we have created a single Watcher on this device emulator named Hello, and it is watching for the value Hello. When we see the word “Hello” come into this emulator, then the Watcher’s momentary Triggered property will be set to True and then reset to False until the next time the value “Hello” is registered.

We can create a Logic Flow where the Start Point is the Triggered property of the Watcher and do anything we like in the system when we see the string “Hello” come in through the Device Emulator port.

In this Logic Flow we have defined that every time we see the string “Hello” on the Watcher in question, we will activate the scene AllTo1.

Additional Emulator Properties for Logic Flows

Additional properties related to Generic Emulators that may be used in Flows include:

• Connected – This property will be True if there are any clients connected or if the TCP client is successfully connected and False otherwise

• ConnectedCount – This property will retain the number of currently connected clients to the emulator

• ConnectionLost – This property will switch to True and then back to False when a client disconnects

• ConnectionObtained – This property will switch to True and then back to False each time a client connects

• TriggeredValue - When the Watcher input is discovered, that value will be assigned to the TriggeredValue property momentarily and then the value will be set back to blank. It is momentary in order to raise changes when the same value enters the emulator repeatedly

Watchers and Regular Expressions

Generic Device Emulator Watchers also support the use of regular expressions or Regexes. Pathfinder Code PRO uses the Microsoft .NET variation of regular expressions—an advanced language used for pattern matching in textual information.

Regular expressions parse the Watcher’s input relative to the regular expression pattern, tripping the Watcher’s Triggered property to True in case of a match. Pathfinder Code PRO Watchers make use of two flavors of regular expressions:

1. Regex.Match(<expression_pattern>)

2. Regex.IsMatch(<expression_pattern>)

To add a regular expression to a Watcher, type the RegEx statement in the Watcher Value field:

Regex.Match Method

Regex.Match evaluates Watcher input against the expression, with valid matches resulting in the Triggered property being set to True. However, because a Regex can be used to match multiple different chunks of text, it is often also useful to have the exact chunk of text that was matched available to a Logic Flow. That is where the TriggeredValue property comes in.

Typing a Value like this Regex.Match(..ll.)will match any series of five characters where the third and fourth characters are l.

Watcher inputs like Yello, Hello, Mello, hhlll, hhllh, will trip the Watcher’s Triggered property to True and allow the TriggeredValue property to pass the input value that resulted in the match.

As another example, to extract a duration from a satellite message such as "CBS050", we could use this regular expression in the Watcher’s Value field:

Regex.Match((?<=CBS).{3})

This Regex would set the Watcher’s Triggered property to True any time it sees six characters where the first three are CBS and allow the TriggeredValue property to pass only three characters that fall after the CBS. In this example, the TriggeredValue property would equal 050. This expression makes use of the look-behind assertion of regular expressions.

A different Watcher could then be created for a different show from the same Emulator.

Regex.Match((?<=NBC).{3})

Regex.IsMatch Method

Regex.IsMatch() performs a similar function except rather than passing the value of the match, the TriggeredValue will output True if a match exists. This makes this method largely redundant since a match will also set the Triggered property to True, but there are times when this method can be useful in Logic Flows as discussed below.

Special Characters

Carriage returns and line feeds must be considered when the incoming data is a line‑based protocol. Failing to properly account for these special characters when parsing incoming data will cause incorrect results.

If your Watcher input will include carriage returns and line feeds at the end of each message, you could use something like (.*\r\n) or ((?s).*). The latter uses single-line mode.

Modifying Default Behavior

There are several options that can be used within the expression to modify the function of the pattern matcher. For example, by default, the dot or period character ( . ) matches any character except the new line. If you want it to match the new line character as well, you can enable the single line option to modify the function of the wildcard within the pattern matcher:

Regex.Match((?s).*)

The inline ?s modifies the regular expression engine to use the single line option when analyzing.

Or you could use the space or no space option to match any character including carriage returns and linefeeds:

Regex.Match([\S\s]*)

These modifying options are documented here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular- expression-options

Regular expressions are extremely advanced and can appear to be very complicated. One joke about regular expressions is that once you solve a problem with a regular expression you now have two problems. However, they can also be awesomely powerful for the situations where they are needed.

They are part of one of the most commonly used and advanced text pattern matching and manipulation languages across all programming languages used today. However, they will also be slower and more CPU intensive than the normal matches Pathfinder Core PRO performs because they have not been optimized at compile time in the same way as the native code. This is only one reason why they should be used with caution and sparingly. Use them only when you need them and not when Pathfinder Core PRO’s inherent pattern matching is a better option.

Also, test thoroughly. It is quite easy to design a regular expression that you think is correct but misses certain edge cases. The regex tester listed in the links below can be very useful in this case.

Again, this is an advanced feature and incorrect use can cause unpredictable results. But it is also a very powerful tool for certain situations.

Learn more about Regular expressions using these links:

• https://www.regular-expressions.info/

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular- expression-language-quick-reference

• http://regexstorm.net/tester

Probel General Router and General Switcher

There are two Probel routing protocols supported by Pathfinder Core PRO: Probel General Router and Probel General Switcher. The syntax of these protocols is different so it is important to consult the automation system’s manual regarding which protocol to use.

In both cases, the protocol provides routing control. As a result, after selecting this protocol type, the web page will present a drop-down list with the available routers so that you can choose which router the Emulator will control.

• Click the plus icon in the Device Emulators page to create a new emulator.

• Type a unique Name for this emulator and select either Probel General Switcher or Probel General Router from the Emulator Type drop-down list.

• Complete the Connection Settings.

• Type Matrix and Level values, and select a Router from the drop-down list. When all fields are complete, click Apply to save your changes and create the Emulator.

Clicking on the Routers link in the navigation bar will present a list of routers in the system:

Pathfinder Core PRO currently supports:

• Axia Audio Routers

• Axia GPIO Routers

• Imagine Routers

• Virtual Routers

• Sap Property Routers

The Axia Audio Router and Axia GPIO Router are automatically generated based on devices discovered in the system. These two routers will always be in the system and may not be removed. Imagine Routers, Virtual Routers, and Sap Property Routers may be created and removed from the Routers page.

Clicking on the Details link for any router will present a new screen with the routing status of the router:

This screen has three tabs on the top: Points, Routes, and XY.

The Points Tab

The Points tab simply lists sources and destinations in the router along with relevant information for each. The columns in each list are broken into two major sections:

1. Source/Destination: Details related directly to the source or destination such as the source’s name, Livewire channel, and availability.

2. Host: Information about the host device where a source or destination resides.

Source/Destination Columns

Host Columns

Since these lists can contain many entries, the search box can be used to narrow the list.

For users that have administrative rights to the router, some additional configuration tools may also be present depending on the type of router. For example, when viewing the Axia Audio router, a button will be present for adding AES67 sources to the router. In the Virtual router, controls will exist for adding additional virtual sources and destinations to the router. These additional controls will be discussed below under the section for each router type.

The Routes Tab

The Routes tab displays the current source-to-destination routing of the router.

Again, this screen is divided into two sides. The source information for each active route is on the left, and the destination information is on the right. The columns display information about each active route:

Source Columns

Destination Columns

Route Changes

Route changes may be made from the Routes tab by either:

• Selecting an entry in the routing list and clicking Change Route

• Double-clicking on an entry in the routing list

Either of these actions will present a dialog with a list of sources that may be assigned to the currently selected destination:

On the Select Source dialog, select the source in the source list and click Take to change the route or double-click on a source in the source list.

Click Cancel to exit the route selection dialog without making changes

Since this list can contain many entries, the search box can be used to narrow the list.

The search filter can persist as you navigate between pages so if you return to the route page and are not seeing sources or destinations that you expect to find, check to see if there is a search filter on the list.

Locking

Each route (destination) in a router can be Unlocked, Locked, or SystemLocked.

The lock state is represented by an icon in the Router’s Details table:

System Locked (except for virtual routers described below) indicates that the device itself does not allow route changes to be made on that IO. This is typically seen with console faders where source changes must be accomplished via a source profile load rather than a route change.

Locking or unlocking a route is as simple as clicking on the Destinations icon in the route list. Locked routes must be unlocked before they can be changed. In addition, it is possible to define whether a user has permission to change route locks. When defining a user, a field now exists to configure this:

Checking the Can Lock Routes checkbox will grant this user permissions to lock and unlock routes. This allows an Administrator to lock routes and make them unchangeable by normal users.

The Route locks do not apply option is reserved for future development.

The XY Tab

The XY tab presents an XY grid which allows the user to graphically make route changes. This tab also mirrors the functionality of the XY component available in HTML5 user panels.

Router Types

Axia Audio Router

The Axia Audio Router is created automatically by the system. As devices are discovered or manually added to the system, they are analyzed to determine what audio sources and destinations they provide, and those sources and destinations are automatically loaded into this router.

When you use this router to make a route change, Pathfinder Core PRO is reaching out into the destination device and sending it a command to change the source assigned to that destination. This happens in much the same way as you could make the change from the device’s web page except that you can see all of the audio IOs in one location with Pathfinder Core PRO. Pathfinder Core PRO can also execute scene changes where it can make hundreds of route changes across many devices at once.

You may notice in the points tab that some sources will carry an IP Address of 255.255.255.255:93, have nothing in the host name column, and have “To:” at the start of their Name.

These sources are Axia Backfeeds generated by the mixing engines. They are not assigned a specific host because they are the one and only type of source that can dynamically change which device (Engine) is currently hosting them so they do not have a formal home. To learn more about Axia Backfeeds, see any of the Axia Mixing Console manuals.

The points tab of an Axia Audio Router will also have an Add AES67 Source button. Clicking this button will present a dialog for adding AES67 sources to the system.

Type the name and description by which the source will be identified in the system in the Source Name and Description fields. The AES67 specification allows for sources to be defined using a Unicast/Sip or multicast address format. The information required to define the source is different depending on the selected format and so different fields will be present depending on which definition you select. The example above shows the unicast method. Define the number and the host IP address required to define the Sip path. The resulting address field will automatically fill with the address required for this source based on these parameters.

If you select the multicast option, the required fields will change:

In this case, fill in the multicast IP address and adjust the other parameters to reflect the AES67 source settings, then click add to add the source.

Once added, you will notice that in the list of points AES67 sources will have a minus icon to allow deletion of the source and an edit field to return to the editing dialog shown above.

Once these sources are added to the router, Pathfinder Core PRO can instruct any Axia device destination that supports AES67 streams to receive a specific AES67 stream in the same way as normal Axia route changes are made.

Axia GPIO Router

The Axia GPIO Router is very similar to the Axia Audio Router. As devices get discovered which have GPIO ports, those ports are added to this router. And in a similar fashion to the Axia Audio Router, when you make route changes, Pathfinder Core PRO is reaching into the destination node and sending it a command which tells a specific GPO on that device to follow the GPIs of the selected source device and port. Due to the nature of GPIOs on an Axia network, this routing becomes a little more nuanced and could use some explanation.

There are three ways to route GPIO closures across an Axia network. The Axia GPIO Router in Pathfinder Core PRO only uses one of these methods. It is still important to understand all of the methods however as attempting to use conflicting methods at the same time on a GPIO port can cause erroneous and unpredictable closures.

First, within the Axia device itself, you can assign a channel number to a GPIO port. When you do this, you are creating a special situation where you are telling the port to bind itself to Axia Mixing Console GPIO signals from whatever console currently has loaded that Livewire channel number.

Second, you can assign an IP address and port number of a GPI to a GPO. This is called "snake mode" and it is what the GPIO Router uses to tell a device’s GPOs to mirror another port’s GPIs. Therefore, when you make a route change in the Pathfinder Axia GPIO Router from Node 1 Port 1 to Node 2 Port 4, any GPI closures on Node 1 Port 1, will be mirrored as GPOs in Node 2 Port 4. These route changes can also be updated dynamically, just as with any other router.

The third way that GPIOs can be used is to leave both the Livewire channel number and the routing assignment unassigned, then directly trip the closures using Pathfinder’s (or some other automation system’s) event system by sending closure commands to the device.

The reason it is important to understand these three methods of GPIO closures is that it is possible to do multiples of them at the same time which is occasionally useful but more often just a mistake. For example, we often see users who think that the GPIO ports should have a Livewire channel number and so just arbitrarily assign them. This can lead to a situation where the user has created Pathfinder events to make and respond to changes on those ports, but those same ports are also being fired by changes on the mixing console causing confusion and generating calls to Axia Support. It is important to first understand how you intend to use a given GPIO port then configure it correctly for that task.

Imagine Logical Router

To add an Imagine Router into Pathfinder Core PRO, you first must add the Imagine Device to the Devices list. In Devices, click Add, type the IP Address, and select Imagine LRC from the Investigation Type drop-down list.

Once the device has been successfully added, click on the Routers tab and click Add a new Router.

Imagine routers have multiple levels and Pathfinder Core PRO can control full routes that route all levels at once by adding the {ALL} level. Any given breakaway level may also be added separately. Or, both may be added in different routers. This allows routes that should target all levels to be made on the router with the All target and routes of individual breakaway levels to be made on the breakaway routers.

Once added, the router will discover the IOs made available by the selected level and routes may be manipulated in the same way as other routers in the system

Virtual Routers

Virtual routers are a special kind of router. You can think of a virtual router as a way to make a subset of routes you wish a specific user to use. For example, you could create a router that only contains the routes from the Axia Audio Router that are related to a specific studio. Or you could create a router that only contains the routes that are relevant to the final air chains. This allows you to create purpose-driven routers that display only the routes that are relevant to a specific set of tasks and are therefore much easier to navigate than browsing every source and destination on the network.

However, virtual routers can also go much deeper than just subsets of routes. For any specific virtual source or destination, you can also associate multiple real sources or destinations with that virtual source. That sounds complicated but is actually relatively simple and extremely powerful.

For example, let’s say that every time you route a specific Audio Source to a specific Audio Destination, you also want to route a GPIO source that carries signaling information related to that audio source to a specific GPIO destination. An example of where this might be useful would be switching from a primary automation system to a backup automation system by creating a virtual source that contains both an audio and a GPIO source plus a virtual destination that contains both an audio and a GPIO destination. Now, when you use the virtual router to route that source to the destination, it will tell the underlying audio and GPIO routers to make both routes.

To create a virtual router, click the plus icon on the main routers page.

Provide a name and description for the router and click Add. The router id will autogenerate the next available router id number but can be overridden with your own id number. Be sure to use a unique id that is not already in use by another router.

After clicking Add, the virtual router will appear in the routers list but is currently empty as it does not have any sources or destinations. Click the Details button and select the Points tab.

The easiest way to populate a virtual router is to import some sources and destinations from a real router. In this case, we are going to select the Axia Audio Router from the import drop-down and then click Import Sources. You will then be presented with a list of importable sources.

Click on the sources you wish to import (Shift-click to select a range) then click the Import button. Repeat the procedure with the Import Destinations button to import additional destinations into the virtual router. Note that in general, you will leave the target id at -1. This will import the IOs to the end of the router. Setting a number other than -1 will try to import the new IOs at the number selected. This will fail if there are not enough open numbers at the target id to support the number of selected IOs.

At this point, you have a virtual router with only the sources and destinations you want available. This router can then be made available as the only router certain users have access to by using the user rights section, or it can be used to easily see and change certain critical routes without viewing the entire Audio router.

However, let’s dig a little deeper into each individual virtual IO. If you click the Edit link on one of the imported virtual sources, you will be presented with more details about the virtual source.

By default, when you import a source the name and description fields of the virtual source inherit the name of the imported source. But you can change this to any name or description you want using the name and description field. The Base Io Package allows you to define which real sources are a part of this virtual source. As mentioned earlier, it is possible to tie multiple sources together into a single virtual source package. For example, we could select the Gpio router from the Import From dialog, click Import, then select a gpio source to include in this package.

The Move Up, Move Down, and Renumber buttons allow you to change the order of the sources in the virtual source package. Once applied, this virtual source now has both a gpio and audio source and so routing that virtual source to a virtual destination will attempt to make both a gpio and audio route change underneath. The same process can be used to edit and manipulate the virtual destinations.

The Points tab on the virtual router also includes a Plus icon for manually adding virtual sources and destinations and a Minus icon for deleting a virtual source or destination from the router.

Deeper Tech: Packaging

For those who are interested in what happens under the hood with virtual routers, this section is for you. Every virtual source or destination is a package. Within that package is a list of pointers to real sources or destinations. When you make a route change, the system does a number of things.

First, it attempts to organize the package according to the IO types of the pointers in both the source and destination package. For example, it will lump all of the GPIO points together and all of the Audio points together in each package. Then it will try to make one to one routes based on the order of the routes in the package.

This also allows you to lump multiple Audio sources and destinations into a single package. For example, if you were using some sort of immersive sound configuration that required multiple channels of audio (7.1, 22.2) to be routed at once, you could package all of the sources together into a virtual source package and all of the destinations together into a virtual destination package. When the virtual route is made, Pathfinder Core PRO will step through each line in the source package and try to apply it to the same line in the destination package in the order which they exist in the package. If the count in the source and destination packages does not match, the system will go as far as it can to create the matches. For example, if the source package has 1 source and the destination package has 2 destinations, only the first destination will get a route. If the source package has 2 sources and the destination package only has a single destination then only the first source will get applied anywhere.

In the same fashion, the state of virtual routes gets updated automatically as base routes in the packages change. If an audio route changes and the source and/or destination exists in a virtual router, an analysis is done to determine if the current route states of any of the source packages match what would happen if the source were applied to the destination. If they do, the virtual route is updated to reflect that source as the current route. If multiple source packages match the destination, then the first one with the most matches is displayed as the currently routed source.

If no source package matches a destination package, the route may have two other states. The first is “None”, which means that none of the destination package's destinations are assigned to anything. The other state is “Other”, which means that some of the destination package’s destinations have some route applied to them but it does not match up with any of the source packages in the virtual router. This explicitly displays a differentiation between a destination that is cleared and one that might be in use in some fashion, but not one that the virtual router can represent given its existing configuration.

IO Ordering – Move Up/Down and Push Up/Down

The virtual router page also has a block of controls used for manipulating the order of the IOs in the router. These controls are only available to Administrative users. These buttons effectively alter the number of the IO in the virtual router. Since changing the IO numbering of a virtual router can have deeper consequences if the IOs are already in use by Logic Flows or device emulators, these buttons must be enabled by manually selecting the Enable Push/Move checkbox in order to prevent accidental changes.

It is recommended to sort by Port when using this feature as it manipulates up and down based on the port number and not the sort order. This is a design tool to create specific numbering for the virtual IOs and is most useful when those IOs will be exposed to emulated routing protocols that expect a number to be assigned to each IO.

Move Up – moves the IO up in the router effectively decreasing its IO number and swapping with its lower next-door neighbor if necessary.

Move Down – moves the IO down in the router effectively increasing its IO number and swapping with its higher next-door neighbor if necessary.

Push Up - moves the IO up in the router effectively decreasing its IO number and pushing any lower-numbered IOs it runs into up as well decreasing their numbers until it reaches a hole in the numbering or 0.

Push Down - moves the IO down in the router effectively increasing its IO number and pushing any higher-numbered IOs it runs into down as well increasing their numbers until it reaches a hole in the numbering or the highest value in the router.

Advanced Base IOs and the Enable Property

Each virtual source and destination’s base points in a virtual router also include an enable property which could be true or false. This can be used to disable the base point from being considered during route changes and route state analysis. This property is only available via the API tree in logic flows as it is considered an advanced property.

Here is an example of where this feature might be useful: Let’s say we are mixing audio for an airchain using a vmixer. We might create a virtual router with the virtual mixer destinations and the possible studio sources. However, what if for redundancy's sake we wished to duplicate the settings on a vimixer on a second engine thereby allowing us to feed the air chain off of either engine and take one or the other out of service? To accomplish this, we could create a virtual router with destination base points using vmixer channels from both engines and where the source points are the same source base point duplicated.

Destination (note the different engine paths):

Source:

If this virtual source was routed to the virtual destination, the same base source would get routed to the vmix destination on both engines, and the route would only show active if it was successfully made on both engines. However, if we wanted to take engine number 2 offline for maintenance, our route changes would still be sent to both engines, but the state would not be displayed since the offline engine did not show the successful route.

Using the enable property of the base points, we could create a scene or a logic flow that disabled the destination base points for the second engine while it is in maintenance. The virtual router would continue to work as if those base points did not exist in the destination. Then we could execute a second scene when the engine comes back online to re-enable those base points.

Advanced: Push Route on Base Io Enable

This feature works with the base Io enable/disable feature above. When viewing a virtual router on the points tab, there is now an Advanced button on the far right side:

Clicking the Advanced button will open a dialog for advanced options. Currently the only option is a checkbox for Push Route on Base Io Enable which by default is off.

This option defines what happens when a virtual source or destination’s base point was set to enabled=false and changes to enabled=true. If the option is checked, then the existing route state will be re-applied in order to update the state of the base point that was just re-enabled with the current source. If this option is not enabled, no change will be made when the base point is enabled. That is, the route state may change to something like Other since the newly enabled base point does not fit the current source to destination pairing.

Sap Property Router

By selecting the Sap Property Router type, any property that can be read from in Pathfinder Core PRO can become a router source and any property that can be written to can become a router destination.

For example, in the legacy Pathfinder Pro it was possible to create a router of individual GPIO pins instead of routing entire ports using the GPIOByPin router. This same functionality can be realized with SapPropertyRouter in Pathfinder Core PRO.

Creating a Sap Property Router

To create a Sap Property Router, browse to the Routers navigation link and click the Plus icon to create a new router.

Select the Sap Property Router from the drop-down list of available Router Types. Click Add to create the new router.

Adding IOs

To add IOs to your new router, click the Details link and then click the Points tab.

Like the virtual router, you will see Import Sources and Import Destinations buttons as well as a Translation button. However, clicking these buttons for this router will display the property selector used in Logic Flows.

In the example above, we are going to select a GPI PinState property.

Type a name and description for the IO (or use the default) and click Select. Repeat for other pins you want as sources, then import the destinations.

Note that if the ports you are using for destinations are on a Livewire driver or Pathfinder Core PRO GPIO node, you can use GPI pins as the destination and route GPI to GPI. When you are done, it might look something like this:

If you go to the Routes tab you will see the destinations with a "take table" of the sources where you can make route changes.

In this example, GPI pin 5 has been routed to GPO pin 1. Therefore, any closures that take place on pin 5 will be replicated on pin 1.

Translation Patterns

Clicking the Translation button on the Points tab will open the translation pattern used for any values that pass from the source property to the routed destination properties. There is a single translation pattern that is used between the source values and destination values.

In the example above, the translation pattern is *=*. Using this pattern, a pin low on the source side will cause a pin low on all destinations to which the source is routed. By changing this translation to l=h and h=l, lows on the source would generate highs on any destination to which that source was routed.

Translation patterns may be applied to other properties. Applying a translation pattern of l=5000 to the Pulse state would force the output to go low for 5000ms each time the input went low. Without defining a h= value, nothing would happen when the input went high.

While we could achieve similar results with Logic Flows, configuring a router allows the start point of a flow to change dynamically. For example, suppose we have a Vmixer assigned to each air chain with channel 1 representing the feed from the studio console. There is a GPI pin in the studio which turns the Vmix channel on. This is simple to accomplish with a Logic Flow:

What if we have 5 studios and any one of them could be assigned to the air chain? Using Logic Flows this becomes much more complex because we must build flows for each studio-to-airchain variation. However, this becomes easy with a property router. On the source side of the router we select the GpiPinState property, and on the destination side we select all airchain Vmix IN state properties:

Once the items are selected, we can change the translation to:

Now when we route a studio pin to the airchain Vmix, the low from the studio will control the Vmix state of whichever airchain that studio happens to be routed to.

We can extend this example by using a virtual router where the virtual source package includes the audio console program buss audio source and the pin source from the SapProperty router, and the destination package includes the Vmix channel input audio destination and the Vmix state property from the property router.

These signals get married together such that a single virtual route change will switch both audio and signaling seamlessly. That virtual router can then be controlled by a third-party application using something like Probel without that application needing to know that we are actually switching numerous things under the hood. This opens up a whole new world of routing possibilities.

Another interesting example uses many of the new features described above. What if we wanted to route a TCP stream of song data to different destinations depending on what is currently on the air? We could create generic device emulators for each destination and each song data source. Using the regex capability, we could then add a watcher to the emulators on the source side that looks like:

Regex.Match((?s).*)

This will match any data coming in. Then, we create a new property router and choose the watcher TranslationValues for the soruces. For the destinations, we select the ToSend property of the destination generic emulators. This will essentially pass any data that comes into the source emulator to the output of destinations to which that source is routed. Then we could also marry those points into the air chain virtual router such that audio, studio pin to Vmix state, and songdata are all married together as a single virtual route.

Another possibility might be to route memory slots. Or, we could use the duration regex example above to capture different satellite duration data as source points in a router that then gets passed on to countdown clocks.

The point is, you can now route anything Pathfinder knows about.

In each example above, all sources and destinations in a given property router are of the same type. While this is not strictly required, it is usually good practice. Once you start mixing IO property types in the same router’s sources or destinations, the translation table can become non-intuitive and it is possible to output the wrong data to devices.

As there is no route state in the equipment for this type of routing, in order to retain the route state between restarts, this router must store all route changes (not the values transitioning through the routes) to the backing storage. In the case of the fanless engine which uses compact flash for this storage, we have implemented some protections to reduce the write cycles, though it is not recommended to make recursive millisecond route changes on Property routers if it can be avoided; for example, a rotation circuit that continuously loops through changing property routes. This is less of a concern with the R2 platform which uses SSD and the VM version.

Virtual Mixing Router

The virtual mixing router can be used to dynamically add and remove sources from a destination that accepts multiple sources like a vmixer. It's usage will be become more clear as we work through an example. To create a virtual mixing router, browse to the routers page and click the plus icon to add the router. From the Router Type, select Virtual Mixing Router, provide a name and description, and click Add.

The virtual mixing router is created and populated in the same way as a virtual router but it behaves differently. A virtual mixing router only allows a single base point for each source and assumes that the base points of a destination mix together. Therefore, you can apply multiple sources to the same destination up to the number of base points you have defined for the destination. Let’s see if we can make this clearer through an example. Let’s say you have 10 studios and 4 air-chains. However, some of these studios are news rooms which may need to be mixed in with the main studio. In this case you can use a vmixer on an engine to mix these together. And we could use the Virtual Mixing Router to dynamically route studios into the vmixer. To do this we would create the virtual mixing router like this:

Destination:

Source:

If we added additional sources and destinations where the destinations were comprised of multiple mixed (vmix) destinations and the source was a single source, we end up with a router that can look like this:

You will notice that the destination AirChain1 actually has three sources assigned to it and since under the hood the destination’s base points are in the same vmixer, these are mixed together. It is important to note that PathfinderCore PRO does not actually do any audio mixing. No audio passes through PathfinderCore PRO. Rather you are telling PathfinderCore PRO that these destinations are all a part of a mixer.

Routing a source to a destination in a Virtual Mixing Router is accomplished differently than in a normal router. In a normal router we assign a source to a destination using the CurrentSource or CurrentSourcePath property. With a Virtual Mixing Router we use a different set of properties called AddSource, RemoveSource, and SwapSource.

When you apply a source number to a virtual mixing destination’s AddSource Property, the system will review the destination’s base points. If the source is already assigned to one of the destination’s base points then no change is made. If it is not assigned and all of the base points already have a source assigned to them, then no change is made. If it is not assigned and once of the destination’s base points is cleared, then the source will be applied to that base point. Therefore, you can route as many sources to the destination as the destination has base points and they will be dynamically used.

Conversely, when a source number is applied to a destination’s RemoveSource property, the system will check to see if that source is applied to any of the destination’s base points, and if so it will clear that base point.

The SwapSource property checks to see if a source is applied to one of the destination’s base points and if not, it attempts the same actions as AddSource. If it is applied, then it executes a remove source. This is useful for toggle buttons that add and remove sources from a destination.

While this router’s sources can only have a single base point. It is possible to marry points together by putting the base points in a virtual router and then targeting the virtual router as the base points of a virtual mixing router.

Overview

Pathfinder Core Pro's memory slots provide a named location for storing data that can be used in Logic Flows. You can create and view memory slots via this link. You can also monitor the slot’s changes in real-time and alter the value of a memory slot directly from this page.

Add a memory slot by clicking the plus icon on the bottom-right corner of the memory slot list.

Select the memory slot type you wish to create from the Type drop-down. The available properties will change depending on the memory slot type. Several of the memory slot properties are present in all or most of the memory slots as described here.

Common Memory Slot Properties

Each memory slot may also have additional properties according to their type as described below.

Memory Slot Types

Pathfinder Core PRO has six different types of memory slots, each with its own options and properties.

Memory Slot

This is the traditional memory slot into which any kind of data may be stored. Its parameters are shown below:

All parameters for this memory slot are described in the common properties section above.

Latching

The Latching memory slot can only have a value of True or False. It has a write-only property called Trigger which will change the memory slot's value. Using a Logic Flow end-point, you can set the trigger property to true and the slot value will toggle from true to false, or from false to true depending on its current value. See the latching example in the Logic Flows section of this manual for more details. The configuration properties for this slot type are shown below:

All parameters for this memory slot are described in the common properties section above. However, note that the value property field becomes a drop-down that only allows a value of True or False.

Numeric

Numeric memory slots allow you to store, retrieve, increment, and decrement a numeric value. Its write-only properties are increment and decrement, and can be used in Logic Flows to change the value of a memory slot. This type of memory slot can also accept a range to specify what happens when the value increments or decrements outside of the range using the loop action option. Its parameters are shown below:

In addition to the properties outlined in the common properties section above, this memory slot type includes two additional properties: Range and Loop Action. If the range field is left blank, then the numeric memory slot may accept any numeric value. If you apply a range by filling the range field with a low and high value separated by a hyphen, then increment and decrement will not exceed the specified range. The Loop Action property only works in conjunction with a range and does nothing if no range is specified. The loop action field defines what happens when you try to increment or decrement beyond the specified range as follows:

• None = Incrementing beyond the max or decrementing below the min will do nothing and no change will be applied to the Value.

• Forward = Incrementing beyond the max will cause the value to loop back to the min, but decrementing below the min will make no changes.

• Backward = Decrementing below the min will cause the value to loop to the max, but incrementing beyond the max will make no changes.

• Both = Incrementing beyond the max will cause the value to loop to the min value, and decrementing below the min value will cause it to loop to the max value.

These properties make it easy to assert a valid range to a numeric memory slot as well as to implement things like paging functions where paging beyond the maximum number of pages will take you back to page 1.

SapProperty

SapProperty memory slots allow you to map the value of any Sap Property in the system to this memory slot's value. When this Sap Property value changes, the slot is updated with that value. Its configuration parameters are shown below:

In addition to the properties outlined in the common properties section above, this memory slot type includes two additional properties: Object Path and Property Name. The ellipsis button next to Object Path can be used to select the Sap Property to be used with this slot and when selected will present a property selection dialog similar to that of the dialog in Logic Flow endpoint editing. Once a property is selected, the object path and property name will be filled in based on the dialog selection. The value property is not present in the configuration as it gets filled dynamically over time according to the value of the selected Sap Property. This value is then available to be used with Logic Flows. It can also be used to create custom values when used in conjunction with the String Builder memory slot.

String Builder

The string builder slot allows you to build a string based on values in other Memory Slots. The parameters that will be presented when selecting this type of memory slot are shown below:

In addition to the properties outlined in the common properties section above, this memory slot type includes two additional properties; IncludedSlots and Pattern. The IncludedSlots field is used to enter a comma-delineated list of memory slot names to use in the builder. The ellipsis button will present a list of slots to select from. The order is important as described by the Pattern. The Pattern field is a text pattern with bracketed numbers used where slot values from the comma-delineated list should be inserted.

In the example above, case {0} will be replaced with the value of slot A and {1} will be replaced with the value of slot B. If Slot A’s value is "Fred" and Slot B’s value is "Telos Alliance", the value of this new memory slot called MyBuiltSlot would be: The Name is Fred and it is located at Telos Alliance. The value of this slot will update whenever Slot A or Slot B updates. This slot can be used to build text which is then used as labels on buttons or commands to generic emulators. When the included slot list contains slots that are Sap Property Memory Slots, this memory slot type can become even more powerful.

Time Stamp

The Time Stamp Memory Slot can be used to grab time stamps, which can be useful in displaying the last time something happened in a user panel. The parameters that will be presented when selecting this type of memory slot are shown below:

In addition to the properties outlined in the common properties section above, this memory slot type includes one additional property: Pattern. When you first create a time stamp memory slot, you will probably not apply a value. The pattern field can also be left blank. It can be used to specify the format of the time stamp which we will describe in more detail below. After creating the timestamp memory slot, it can be used in Logic Flows by applying an endpoint to the SetTimeStamp write-only property of the memory slot. For example:

This Logic Flow will set the memory slot to the current date and time every time the specified GPIO pin goes low.

The format of the date time stamp can be changed using the pattern field. If you edit the memory slot again you will see that the default format has been assigned to the memory slot:

The time stamp memory slot can also be used to convert values from one time format to the pattern specified in the time stamp memory slot. This is accomplished using the write only CalculateTime property. For example, you could assign a number with either m, h, or s to the end, and it would convert the value to the requested format in minutes hours or seconds. If the time stamp memory slot pattern was:

hh:mm:ss

and you passed in

100s

to the CalculateTime property, the value of the memory slot would become 00:01:40.

Passing other time values than just numbers will try to interpret the value as time, convert it, and then express it in the correct pattern.

Startup State Drop-down

The startup state drop-down applies to each of the memory slot types above and requires some explanation. This option allows you to determine the value of the slot when the system first starts up and before any flows are executed. It can be blank, a fixed value as defined when you create the slot, or last known. It is important to understand the last known option will attempt to store the state in the database each time the memory slot state changes. This can be more CPU- and time-intensive because of the compact flash storage within the Pathfinder Core PRO. As a result, this option should not be used in situations where the existing state of Axia devices will reset the memory slot to the correct state via the flows as the flows start-up anyway.

A Scene is nothing more than a list of property changes. A Scene does not have to be just a route change or even include a route change. You could create a Scene that sets memory slots to specific values or that includes memory slot changes, VMix changes, fader changes, and button state changes. Any property available in the system can be a part of a Scene.

To create a new Scene or view and edit an existing Scene, click the Scenes icon in the navigation bar to open the Scenes page:

Creating Scenes

Begin by clicking the Scenes link in the left navigation pane in the Pathfinder Core Control Center. On the Scenes page, click the plus icon to create a new Scene.

Type a Name for the new Scene. To add events to your Scene, click the plus icon.

On the Import Ios dialog, select the router from the Import From drop-down list to populate the Destinations list.

Select the destinations to import, using the SHIFT key to select multiple destinations. When all destinations have been selected, click Import.

After the import is complete, the Requested Value column in the Scene Editor will reflect the source that will be taken if that Scene item is executed. By default, it will be set to the current source routed to the destination. This can be changed by highlighting an item and clicking the RequestedSource link. This will open a list of sources present on the selected router so you can select an alternate source as the value for the route point in that Scene item.

Clicking the Destination link will allow you to select a different destination for the Scene item if you selected the wrong one and need to change it.

Clicking the minus icon will delete the item from the Scene.

Once all items for this Scene are set, click Apply to save the changes and return to the Scene list, at which point the Scene will be available for use.

Property Scene Items

In addition to Route Points, any property in the system can be a Scene item. After clicking the Add button to add a new Scene item to a Scene, you will also find an Endpoints button to switch the route destination dialog to a property selection dialog.

This is the same dialog used to select an endpoint in logic flows. In the example below, we are adding a program buss assignment property on a Fusion console to the Scene.

The Ios button will return to the route selection dialog.

The Select button will select the property and import it as a Scene item into the Scene. The system will remember whether the last item imported during a given Scene editing session was a property or route point and return to the last used dialog. You can switch back and forth using the Endpoints and IOs buttons from the corresponding dialog.

After importing a property, it will have slightly different links in the Scene itself. In this case, you will see a RequestedValue link and a Property link.

Click the Property link to change the property you selected if you selected the wrong one.

By default, the value used for the Property item is set to whatever it is at the time the Scene item is created. This can be changed by clicking the RequestedValue link.

This will open a value selector. The value selector may be different depending on the type of property you are manipulating. For example, if the item is a color property, it might present a color selection dialog. If the property requires text, a text box may be presented. Or it could present a drop-down of possible values. In the case above, the program buss assignment could either be on or off, so select the option you want the Scene item to set. Note this does not change the current state of the console in the system unless the Scene is activated. At this point, you are only editing what would happen if you activated the Scene.

Modifying Scene Order

The Scene editor also has “move up” and “move down” buttons.

These are used to organize the order in which a Scene sends its messages to the equipment when activated.

The order of items in a Scene is generally irrelevant because the system does not wait for a change to complete before sending the next change message. Changes are usually sent as a block so the actual changes may not happen in the equipment in the same order in which they were sent.

Inserting Pauses

If the execution order is important it is possible to add pause items into the Scene. This will cause the Scene to pause as it iterates through the items for a defined duration, measured in milliseconds. To add a pause, click the Scene editor plus icon. From the Import Ios dialog, click Pause.

Type the Pause duration in milliseconds and click OK to add the Pause item to the Scene.

Like all items in the Scene, you may select a Pause item and use the Up and Down arrows to manipulate the order of the Scene messages and configure when pauses occur in the Scene execution.

Saving Your Scene

Once all items have been added to your Scene and have been ordered correctly, click Apply to save your changes.

Current Scene State and Troubleshooting

Once a Scene has been created, the list of Scenes will show whether the Scene is active or not in the IsActive field.

If you expect a Scene to be active and it is not, you can see what items failed to change by editing the Scene.

The Requested Value column will show the expected value for each Scene item for it to be considered active, while the Current Value column will show the current value of the Scene item.

Scenes and Logic Flows

There are several properties that may be used with Scenes in Logic Flows. When an End point is selected each Scene has an ActivateScene property that can be set to true to cause all Scene items to be executed.

As a Start point, two properties are available: IsActive and SceneState.

The IsActive property will either be true or false depending on whether all items in the Scene are currently at their requested value.

The SceneState property extends this slightly with three options: All, Some, or None. This will change depending on the Scene items’ value, whether all items have their RequestedValue, some do, or none do.

Activating Scene Changes

Scene changes may be activated using Logic Flows using the ActivateScene property. This property is write-only and is only available when editing End points. For example, we could create a Logic Flow that executes a Scene change every time a specific LCD button is pressed.

Virtual Mixing Routers and Scene Property Selection

Virtual mixing routers are inherently different in how they function from other routers. For details on Virtual Mixing Routers, see their section in the Routers section of the manual. With Virtual mixing destinations you do not change the source that is routed to the destination. Instead you add sources that will be mixed together by the mixing destination up to the supported quantity of the destination. As a result it uses different routing properties than a normal router. For example, AddSource adds a source to the mixing destination, and RemoveSource removes a source from the destination freeing that slot up for another source. Therefore when importing a destination to a scene, you need to be able to define whether the change will add or remove a source. To support this, a drop down will appear in the import destination list when creating a scene item.

The Mixing property drop down allows you to select whether the operation will add or remove a selected source to/from the destination. For example:

In this example the scene will add Source 1 to the destination when the scene is executed.

The AddSource and RemoveSource properties of a Virtual Mixing Router destination are write only properties. You are applying a source to the property to change the underlying routing state, but the property itself will not have a value. Whenever you use write only properties in a scene, the state cannot be determined and therefore the IsActive property will never become true on such scenes. In a future version we may add some special code to handle the situation of virtual mixing routers such that the scene will detect if after the source is applied whether it exists on the destination and adjust the value of the scene line accordingly. But for now scenes will not become IsActive using these virtual mixing properties.

HTML5 User Panels

Pathfinder Core PRO allows you to create your own custom user interface that can be displayed and used in a web browser on any device. This allows you to define precisely how your users interact with your Axia system in a way that supports your organization’s workflow. Currently, Google Chrome is the recommended browser for this feature.

HTML User Panels may be used and edited from the User Panels menu item. The Panels list includes HTML5 Panels and legacy Panels created with the legacy Panel designer.

Creating a New Panel

• Click the plus icon to create a new Panel and open the new Panel in the Panel Designer.

• Click Save and type a name for your Panel to instantiate it before you begin adding components.

• After saving and giving the Panel a name, the name of the Panel should appear in the upper corner:

Selecting a Theme

User panel components in their default state will look differently depending on the theme selected for the panel. Currently, there are two themes available: Default and Dark. To select a theme, click the main Panel to select it:

The property window on the right side of the Panel designer will display properties that can be modified for the selected component:

Expand the style selection and use the theme drop-down to select default or dark, then click Save. To get an idea of the difference between the two theme styles, see the two example panel pictures below:

It is important to note that when changing between themes it is sometimes necessary to save the panel in the new theme before the style will be correctly displayed. Additionally, existing panels may require some adjustment when changing to the new theme. In particular, styles which you have overridden with you own settings will retain your choices which may or may not be appropriate to the new style. If you prefer a certain style to be the default theme for all new panels, see Theme Advanced Options. In the Component Reference we may display either dark or default theme, but the same components will work with either and will be styled accordingly.

Setting Panel Size

Next set the size of the Panel. Click the main Panel to select it:

The property window on the right side of the Panel designer will display properties that can be modified for the selected component:

Panel dimensions can be set to a standard preset, set to a specific height or width, or autoscaled dynamically.

Selecting a Size Preset

With the main Panel selected, click in the Property window’s Size field and select from a size preset.

The size of the Panel area in the Panel Designer should change based on your selection.

Setting the Panel Height or Width

With the main Panel selected, click in the Property window’s Height or Width field and set a new height and width in pixels. Pixel values may be typed in, or you may click on the spinner control to adjust the value.

The size of the Panel area in the Panel Designer should change based on your changes.

Autoscaling

Use autoscaling if you want the components in the panel to scale to the size of the browser window as it changes. With the main Panel selected, select an option from the autoscale dropdown.

While intuitively you might believe that height_and_width is the correct choice, it rarely is. This option can cause buttons and components to be stretched in strange ways.

On the other hand, scaling based on height alone will maintain the correct aspect of the component while just scaling it up and down:

In general, if the aspect ratio of the Panel objects is important and the Panel will be displayed on a widescreen monitor, it is best to choose scaling based on height. If it is a widescreen monitor turned sideways for portrait orientation, the best option is based on width.

If aspect ratio does not matter, for example when you are working only with square or rectangular buttons, autoscaling based on height and width may be used.

Testing Autoscaling Options

After creating your Panel, save it with one of the autoscaling options. Open the Panel in a browser and change the browser size to observe the autoscaling behavior and get a feel for which option is most appropriate.

As you evaluate the different autoscaling options, after resaving with a new option you must refresh your browser for the new option to be applied.

Adding Components

To add components to your Panel, expand the HTML and/or Custom sections in the left toolbar:

Hovering over any component will show a tooltip with the name of that component. We can illustrate adding and modifying components using a simple HTML button.

Click and drag the top-left HTML Button (the tooltip will say Button) from the toolbar into the Panel. After dropping the button in your Panel, it should be highlighted with a red box indicating it is the selected component.

To resize the component, click and drag the component’s red border. The border displays just inside the actual edges of the object by design so when aligning objects you can still see the object’s actual edges.

To move the component within the Pane, click and drag the center of the component. You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge the selected component in any direction. Each press of an arrow key will move the component one pixel at a time unless the grid is enabled in which case it will move by the grid amount. See the Grid topic in the Tool Bar section below for additional details.

Adjusting Properties

The property list on the right will update to include properties that may be adjusted for the currently selected component type. Clicking in a field and changing the property will make the corresponding change to the component. For example, with our button still selected, click in the Caption field and type a caption:

Expand the Style section and try adjusting the border>border-radius value or the font/text>font-size value.

As you can see there is a high degree of power to achieve exactly the desired design using the properties in the property grid.

Once you’ve achieved your design objectives, click Save to save your changes or click Cancel to return the Panel to its previous save state.

SHIFT Editing the Property List

Holding the SHIFT key while clicking in the User Panel property editor fields will bypass the usual helper dialogs and allow direct editing of the text. This can be useful for things like copying and pasting color values. SHIFT+click to highlight the text box without the helper dialog and then click again to edit the text for the property.

Tool Bar

The top Tool Bar has several tools to help with the component layout:

Cancel/Save

The Cancel and Save buttons may be used to save your work or cancel pending changes and reload from the last save point. Frequent saves while working on the design are recommended.

Cut, Copy, Paste

These are the standard Cut, Copy, and Paste tools. These actions can be performed on any currently selected components.

You can select multiple components by holding the SHIFT key while you click additional components.

Delete

Clicking the Delete button will delete the currently select components. Be careful with this function as there is no undo though you can click cancel to return to the previously saved state.

Alignment Tools

The alignment tools will only be available for use if you have multiple components selected. You can select multiple components by holding the SHIFT key while you click additional components.

To illustrate, drag three or four buttons into the Panel. Then, while holding the SHIFT or CTRL key, click each component until the red select box is around each of them:

Once you have selected more than one component, the alignment tools will become available. These tools are:

In each case the system will align to the most extreme edge. For example, with the four buttons selected in the example above, clicking Align top will align all buttons to the top edge of the button closest to the top of the Panel.

Clicking Distribute horizontally will spread the buttons evenly between the left and right buttons.

Magnet

The Magnet tool aligns and resizes items of like kind edge-to-edge. For example, create a new button and resize it. Then add a second button but leave it at the default size. If you then drag the small button so its edge meets the large button…

…the small button will immediately snap to the size of the large button and align itself to the large button’s edge.

This is extremely useful when trying to build a Panel with many same sized components lined up edge to edge. However, it can also be disconcerting when you want the components to be different sizes and/or not to line up. The Magnet tool is enabled by default but may be disabled by clicking on the tool.

Grid

If enabled, the Grid tool aligns a component’s location and size according to a grid of a specified pixel density. For example, if you enabled the grid with a pixel density of 10 pixels, you will notice that dragging components will jump by 10 pixels. This is useful when trying to evenly align components.

Page

Each Panel has an index page which is the default page that will be loaded when the Panel is first displayed, but additional Pages may be created using the Page tool. Buttons or events may then be used to switch between the pages as described in the changing pages section of this chapter.

To design a new Page, click the down arrow and select the [newpage] option.

After clicking the [newpage] option, click Save and type a name for your new page. Then you can design a new page as if it was any other Panel.

If a Panel has multiple pages, you can use this same dropdown to select the page to edit.

You can clone your work to a new page by selecting the page to be cloned and then selecting the [clonepage] drop-down item. The system will ask you for a new page name for the cloned page.

You can delete a page by selecting the page background and clicking the delete icon. The system will then ask you if you want to delete the page. You cannot delete the default index page.

Once multiple pages have been created you can use the change property along with buttons or property changes that will switch from one page to another. This is described in the Changing Pages section of this chapter.

Property Grid

You were already introduced to the property grid in the section on adjusting properties above. This section will go into some additional detail. Drag a button onto your Panel and select it so that the property grid displays the available properties of the button.

Different components may have different property sections and sub-sections as well as properties that are specific to that component, but this is an example of the property sections you will see. Expanding the sections will display additional sections and properties.

The majority of these properties are standard CSS style properties used by any web page designer. One of the best references we have found for CSS properties is w3schools.com: https://www.w3schools.com/CSSref/. This link will provide information about all of the CSS properties exposed in the property grid along with their meaning and usage information.

There are also some properties that you will not find in the CSS reference above because they are custom to our usage of that component. For example, in the case of the button component, caption, HwMap, and indicator are all properties that are not standard CSS properties. We will describe their usage more in the examples below.

Bind Button

Each property in the property grid has a button between the property name and the property value at the end of the property name side of the grid. This is called a bind button.

The bind button defines the properties that should be exposed to PathfinderCore PRO for use in Logic Flows. In some cases, there may be hundreds of properties for a given component, but there are only a few that you will want to dynamically change while the Panel is running. For example, once you position a button on a Panel and size it to the size you desire, it is unlikely that you will want that position to change while your end-user is using the Panel. Therefore, there is really no need for the left and top properties to be cluttering up the Logic Flow tree. Clicking the bind button for a given property will turn the button blue.

Saving the Panel will then identify to PathfinderCore PRO that this is a property that we expect to dynamically manipulate with Logic Flows and so should be tracked by PathfinderCore PRO and made available to Logic Flows.

Binding Flows

You may also notice that after enabling a property for binding that an image of a partial Logic Flow will appear at the bottom of the property grid:

This is a simple shortcut that allows you to generate a simple flow to bind values to the property without having to switch over to the Logic Flow designer. In addition, since these flows simply bind system states to Panel properties, the flows generated by this method do not count against your license count. It is an easy way to quickly add simple functionality. But it will be easier to understand with an example.

Let’s say we want the button we have dragged onto the Panel to trigger a route change. Select the button and enable the binding button on the mousedown event. We are defining what we want to happen when the button is pressed. Then double-click on the endpoint in the flow image.

This will open the normal property selection dialog used in Logic Flows:

Expand the Routers section, expand a router, and expand the destination you want to change when the button is pushed, and then click on the CurrentSourcePath Property. Then click select.

The system will automatically move to the translation dialog.

Click on the *=* item in the list and then select the True item in the left hand drop down and the source you want to route to the selected destination in the right hand drop down.

We have just defined that if the mousedown event is true, the sa_server_06 source will get routed to the TestTest destination. However, when you click Done you will get a pop-up message.

This message will only appear if you are generating flows on the mousedown or indicator properties of a button. In this case, it knows that since we are defining what we want the button to do, we probably also want some indication on the button that the requested action has been done. If we click OK, it will automatically turn the binding button on for the indicator property and open the flow definition for the indicator. In this case, it is smart enough to fill things in for us.

It is important to notice that the flow for the indicator property looks different than the one for the event.

The system also knows in which direction these flows should go. For example, with an event, the start point is not displayed in the flow because the event we have selected is the start point and the end point is what we are going to change. On the other hand, standard properties like the indicator are changed based on things that are changing in the system. So, you select what property in the system is causing the indicator to change. In that case, the partial flow shows the start point and the translation and the endpoint is the property of the Panel component we have selected. The rule of thumb is that events will display partial flows with an endpoint and other properties will display a flow with a start point. The missing part of the flow is the event or the property itself.

When we click OK in response to the message above you will notice the system will skip picking the start point. This is a special case for buttons where you are configuring the mouse down and indicator properties. Since we just defined what we want to change when mouse down is pressed, the pop-up message is asking whether we want the successful change of that route to be reflected in the indicator. So, if we click OK, the system automatically turns on the binding for indicator and fills in the start point with the destination selected, and then displays the translation settings.

You will also notice that the system is assuming you will want the indicator to be on if the selected source is routed to the destination and off if it is not.

Click Done.

You will notice that the flows are no longer gray and have turned blue to indicate they have been defined. Saving the Panel will cause the flows to be created and start working in Logic Flows. Flows created in this manner will be generated in a special folder in Logic Flows called _Panels. The flows in this folder may be monitored for troubleshooting purposes but they cannot be changed from within Logic Flows. They are only edited through the Panel designer.

To extend this example, turn on the binding for caption as well.

Now double click on the start point and select the same CurrentSourcePath property of the same destination. Now in the translation select what you want the button to say when the source is routed and what you want it to say when it is not.

Click Done and Save to save your changes. Executing the Panel should now display Routed or Not in the button’s caption depending on whether the selected source is routed to the destination.

A more useful change you can make with the caption property is to select the CurrentSourceName property of the destination in the Logic Flow property selector and use a *=* translation. You can change this by double-clicking the start point while the caption property is selected.

Now pick the currentSourceName Property instead of the CurrentSourcePath property and click select.

Change the translation to be *=*. Then click Done. Now the button’s caption will be tied to the name of whatever source is currently routed to the destination.

After saving the Panel and opening it up for use you should find that pressing the button will make the route change, the indicator will illuminate or go dark according to the back-color properties depending on whether the route is made, and the caption should display the name of the source that is routed to the destination.

By using these techniques, you can edit functionality into the Panel components in very easy and extremely powerful ways.

Complex Panel Flows

In many cases you may wish to create more complex flows than described in the examples above. For example, you may want your indicator state on a button to be the product of numerous conditions in the system. These kinds of Flows can still easily be created but must be created within the Logic Flows designer.

Simply enable the binding button for the properties these Flows need to manipulate without generating a Flow in designer. Save the Panel and then from within the Logic Flows property selector, these properties will be available for use:

Launching the Panel from a Desktop Icon (Windows)

If you are using Google Chrome, there are some command line options that will allow you to launch a Pathfinder Core PRO Panel as if it was an application. Copy and paste the following into a notepad or text editor:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app="data:text/HTML,<HTML><body><script>window.location='http://[Username:Password]@[IPAddress]/userpanelframemin.php?panel=[ttt]&page=[index]';</script></body></HTML>"

When copied, this should be one line in the editor. The quotes at the beginning and end are part of the text so do not remove them. After the word “location” there is an http link.

• Change [Username:Password]to match the credentials used in your system.

• Change [IPAddress]to match the IP address of your Pathfinder Core PRO.

• Change [ttt] to the name of the Panel you want to launch.

• Change [index] if you want to target a page other than the default index page

For example, these values…

• [Username:Password]= Admin:Admin

• [IPAddress]= 172.16.1.56

• [ttt] =YAPanel

• [index] = Its_a_New_Page

…would result in a shortcut like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app="data:text/HTML,<HTML><body><script>window.location='http://Admin:Admin@172.16.1.56/userpanelframemin.php?panel=YAPanel&page=Its_a_New_Page';</script></body></HTML>"

Once you have the edits made, select the entire text again and copy it to your clipboard.

Right-click on your desktop and create a new shortcut using your edited shortcut text. Double-clicking on the shortcut should now launch the Panel as its own application.

If you always want the Panel to launch in the same place on the screen you can add another option: window.moveTo(580,240). For example:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app="data:text/HTML,<HTML><body><script> window.moveTo(580,240); window.location='http://Admin:Admin@172.16.1.220/userpanelframemin.php?panel=ttt&page=index';</script></body></HTML>"

In the future, we will investigate a way to generate the shortcut (or at least the shortcut text) automatically.

Component Reference

Each component has many available CSS properties and component events. Many of these properties can be understood after some basic study that starts with a basic internet search for CSS property descriptions.

This section will describe each component, including custom properties beyond the standard CSS style properties.

We have included default images of the components below, but it is important to note that the CSS properties can be used to make the components look much different than the examples included below. Feel free to adjust border, color, and shadowing properties to achieve the design desired.

HTML Components

Button

The Button component can control and indicate changes in the system. In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

Wherever this button can be used, a Console Button could also be used. The difference is that the Console Button has a slightly more elegant look.

Label

Labels can be used to generate textual label information in the system. In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

Input Box

Input boxes allow user input. In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

In addition to mousedown and mouseup events, Input Box events include:

Both change and input events raise the current entered value.

To learn more about this feature visit: http://pathfinderpc.com/pfcorepro_downloads/panelinputboxes.mp4

Web Page

The Web Page component is an HTML iframe which allows you to embed a web page from another site into the Panel. This component can be used to display video streams and other web page content.

In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

If you intend to use this as a background component with other components on top, you may need to manually adjust the z-index property of this component or the overlaid components to get them to display properly.

The Web Page component includes this event:

Especially during testing, it is important to note that some sites (notably, Google) prevent their content from being displayed in an iframe.

Image

The Image component allows you to embed an image in a page. This component can be used to create background borders around a set of components.

It is recommended to use the background-image property rather than the src property to assign an image to this component.

Before you use an image component, remember most elements also support the background-image property. For example, you can apply a background-image to the Panel itself or to buttons and labels.

(In true radio fashion, the KRUD logo was lifted with no regard to the copyright owned by Jim Radcliffe and Brian Wilson. Their work is genius. Check it out at www.krud.com. Even better, embed it in a Panel using the Web Page component.)

Custom Components

Meters and Faders

HTML5 User Panels support two different kinds of meters (providing visualizations of Audio IOs that support metering) and two different kinds of faders (allowing gain manipulation of Audio IOs.)

Gradient Meter

This component can be tied to Audio IOs that support metering in the system. See the Setting the IO Property topic in this chapter.

In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

LED Meter

This component can be tied to Audio IOs that support metering in the system. See the Setting the IO Property topic in this chapter.

In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

Fader

This component can be tied to Audio IOs that support gain manipulation. See the Setting the IO Property topic in this chapter. The Fader can also control non-audio control points. See the Setting the Control Property topic in this chapter.

The control displays the Fader value as you hover over the Fader. Fader values can be manipulated using the mouse wheel, dragging with the mouse, or touch and drag on a touch screen.

In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

Additional Default Fader style properties:

Additional Simple Fader style properties:

Console Fader

This component can be tied to Audio IOs that support gain manipulation. See the Setting the IO Property topic in this chapter.

The control displays the Fader value as you hover over the Fader. Fader values can be manipulated using the mouse wheel.

The Console Fader is a smart fader capable of displaying different properties depending on the type of IO assigned to it.

In the example above, this Console Fader has been assigned to a Fusion console input. When loaded, the component updates the controls according to the type of IO to which it has been assigned. In this case it shows the name of the source profile, a meter obtained from the input stage of the fader (see note below), the program buss assignments, a fader which maps to the Fusion fader, A and B user buttons, Talk and Preview buttons, and ON and OFF.

This component will dynamically adjust what it displays depending on the type of IO it is associated with. Those changes will only be shown when the Panel is executed. That is when the capabilities of the assigned IO are analyzed. For example, after dragging a console fader onto the Panel and assigning IOs, when the Panel is executed you may see controls that look like:

In this case the first Fader is tied to the channel input of an Axia console. The second fader is tied to a VMIX channel input so the component changes to show the time up and down parameters. The third shows an XNode source.

Many of the properties discussed above in the Fader object have also been exposed in the Console Fader so that the color and style of the slider within the larger console fader object may be manipulated. These styles correspond directly to the styles.

In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

Additional Default Fader style properties:

Additional Simple Fader style properties:

Setting the IO Property

Meters and Faders may be tied to an Audio IO using the component’s IO property. For example:

• Drag a Gradient Meter into a User Panel and resize it to an appropriate size

• Click the IO property to open the IO Select Source dialog box

• The link at the top of the page will display whether sources or destinations are currently being displayed. Clicking the link will toggle between the two

• Click an IO whose metering you want to be tied to the meter and click select

• You can use the Search box to narrow down the list of available sources or destinations

• The IO field will fill with the path of the selected IO

Since we are in the designer, no metering will be displayed. It will only display when the Panel is executed.

Setting the Control Property

Console Faders may also be assigned to their control and metering points using the control property. This is recommended for control over physical mixer faders. It will intelligently deduce metering and control locations according to the console type and fader type selected.

To enable the control property of an existing Fader or Console Fader control:

• With the Fader or Console Fader control selected, click the control field in the Property window

• In the Select Gain Control Point dialog, click on the device to control and click Select

Controlling Numeric Properties

If the fader is a standard fader rather than a console fader, you can alternatively set it to control any numeric property in the system.

• After selecting the fader and the control field, Click the Endpoints button to change the Select Gain control Point dialog to the Property selection tree. From there you can connect to any numeric property in the tree

• If you select a non-numeric property, the system will give you a warning. Avoid using non-numeric properties with the control property. See Controlling Non‑Numeric Properties below

• Accept the default Translator properties

• Save your Panel. The Fader will now control and update based on the value of the memory slot

For this to work properly there are several other properties that can be used:

Controlling Non-Numeric Properties

Another option is not to use the control property to bind the functionality and instead to bind the displayvalue and valuechange properties directly to properties. This can be useful in situations where a translation is necessary.

For example, we could connect a Fader to a true/false or GPIO value.

• In this case we do not use the control property but would instead enable the binding on the slidervalue property and the slidervaluechanged event.

• Set the min property to 0, the max property to 1, the step property to 1, and type to linear

• Set the slidervaluechanged event to the GPO pinstate of a GPIO port

• For the translation, set 0 to Low and 1 to High

• Set the slidervalue property to the same GPO pinstate as the slidervaluechanged event

• Reverse the translation. That will make sure that if something else changes the GPIO pin that it will be updated in the fader:

For this example, you may also want to turn the metrics off since there are only two valid states.

This is probably not the best use case for this functionality, but it shows how you can use the Fader control to manipulate any value in the system either directly using the control property if it is a numeric property or via translation and the slidervalue and slidervaluechanged property and event.

Console Knob

The rotary Console Knob may be used in the same way as the Fader above. The same properties for numeric and non-numeric control as well as min, max, step, etc. properties also apply to the console knob object.

This control can also have its control property used to select a console fader or other numeric property in the system to control in the same manner as described for the fader control above. In addition, this component also shares the indicator property with button objects so that the knob color may be changed based on some indication state.

Console Button

The Console Button component can control and indicate changes in the system. This button works the same as the HTML button but has a more interesting look.

In addition to standard CSS style attributes, customizable properties include:

Console Monitor Section

The Console Monitor Section acts as a monitor section for consoles. It is important to note that the clock and timer functionality are controlled by Pathfinder Core PRO and not the console and so will not be in sync with the console timer and countdown clock. This is because those control points are not currently available in the control protocols.

Dragging this component onto a Panel will present a monitor section for a console:

The picture above shows the monitor section in both default and dark themes as well as differences when attached to different types of consoles. The component will change its control layout when executing depending on the type of console it is attached to. For example, the monitor section shown in the center in the picture above is attached to an iQx, whereas the one on the right is attached to a Powerstation with Fusion console.

• To assign the component to a specific console, select the component in the Panel and click the control property

• In the list of available control points, you will find one for each Console; select the console you would like to associate with the monitor section

iQ Fader Processing

The iQ fader processing is a component that accesses the eq and dynamics section of Qor, iQx, and iQs faders. In order to use it, select the console from the control property and then assign a number 1 through 24 to the fader-number property to use it with a specific fader. This assignment can be automated using the menu button in the console fader object. Turn the binding of the fader-number property on. Then within each fader in the panel, use the menu assign and menu unassign event to assign the correct fader number to the component. A fader number of 0 can be used to make the component not have any effect. It is a good idea to hook the menu indicator to the eq/dynamics section fader-assign property as well so the menu button will only light if the current fader is selected in the component.

Console

The console component can be used to create a control mechanism for a full console. After dropping this component onto a panel, use the control property to select from a list of consoles. When the panel with the component executes, it will automatically display and layout the controls according to the type of console it has been attached to. Increasing or decreasing the height of the component will adjust the height and size of the components within the console. Changing the width of the component will present or hide paging buttons for the fader list depending on how many faders the console has. The fader count is not correctly displayed in the designer and is fixed to 8. The fader list is only populated with the actual fader count when the console is initialized in a running panel.

Console Fader Dock

This component will present a list of consoles in the control property in the designer. When executing the panel connected to a console, the dock will auto-fill with all of the faders the console has. It will present page left and right buttons automatically if there are more faders than can be displayed in width designed in the console component.

Console Meters

The console meters section presents metering for program busses 1 through 4. It will present a list of consoles through the control property in the designer that will allow you to map the control to a specific console. Like the updated console fader, it will automatically figure out the correct metering paths (lwrp/lwcpss) from the console it is attached to it. In addition this module has a logo property which will allow you to upload a logo image which will sit between the top and bottom meters. The size ratio of the logo must be designed in order to display correctly. The height should be approximately one fifth of the width. The example svg we have used had dimensions of 6774x1452 and is then scaled up and down accordingly. This may take some experimentation to get correct.

Router XY Matrix

This version adds a Router XY Matrix component both as a User Panel component and as an additional tab on the Router-Details page. It can be added to a Panel using the Router XY Matrix component.

After adding the component to the page, resize it and use the select a router to use with it.

• With the component selected, click the router property

• Click the desired router in the list and click Select

The component will not populate with actual router data while viewed in the Panel Designer. This means that the actual column and row header size may be inflated since the default designer example population only has ten sources and destinations. It is useful to view it in the actual executing Panel to see how it will function.

Action Properties

Events

One of the interesting things you can do with the hover and preset events is to bind the path to the IO field of meters. This allows you to create a Panel where hovering over a cross-point also shows metering for that cross-point. Note that metering does not yet support IO binding to virtual router IOs.

Style Properties

Using the XY Matrix

Once a matrix has been added to a Panel, a router assigned to it, and the Panel saved, view the Panel to see how it functions.

Since this component mirrors the functionality of the XY matrix presented on the XY tab in Routers, refer to the Routers chapter for details on how the end-user can use the routing matrix once it is deployed on an HTML5 User Panel.

Analog Clock

This component displays the current time using an analog clock style. The style may be changed using the clockstyle property between classic (shown above) and quasar (shown below):

The color palette in the default theme is designed for the default theme. In addition, a variety of properties may be modified when the clock is in the quasar style in either default or dark theme so that you can adjust the colors to whatever you desire.

• Under background

  • quasar-clock-hours-color: changes the color of the background outside circle.

  • quasar-clock-elapsed-hours-color: changes the color of the elapsed hours in the outside circle.

  • quasar-clock-minutes-color: changes the color of the background inside circle.

  • quasar-clock-elapsed-minutes-color: changes the color of the elapsed minutes in the inside circle.

  • quasar-clock-marker-color: changes the color of the gaps between the mark points in the hours and minutes circle.

  • quasar-clock-second-hand-color: changes the color of the second hand.

• Under font/text

  • quasar-clock-ampm-color: changes the color of the am/pm text in the clock.

  • quasar-clock-time-color: changes the color of the time text in the clock.

  • quasar-clock-date-color: changes the color of the date text in the clock.

Analog Countdown

This component allows you to define and trigger a countdown. The clock will display the countdown value.

Custom properties include:

Additionally, this component also has the same color styling properties when used in quasar mode as listed in the analog clock above.

Currently, the timer does not automatically reset when the countdown completes. If that functionality is desired, it can be obtained by using the property bindings to hook the elapsed event to the reset state such that when the timer elapses, reset is triggered. This can be accomplished either by using the Flow in elapsed to change the reset or by using the Flow in reset to change based on the elapsed start point.

In both cases, the Panel must be saved with the binding buttons for these properties/events turned on to surface those options in the Flow property tree.

For example:

• Enable the binding buttons for both elapsed and reset have been enabled and save your Panel

• Select the reset property field and click the start point in the bottom corner

• Browse to the User Panels group, locate the digital countdown control in your specific Panel, and select the elapsed Value property

• Select True=True for the translation

• Click Done. After saving the Panel if the countdown elapses the timer should automatically reset

Digital Clock

This component displays the current time using a digital clock style.

Digital Countdown

This component allows you to define and trigger a countdown. The clock will display the countdown value.

Custom properties include:

Currently, the timer does not automatically reset when the countdown completes. If that functionality is desired, it can be obtained by using the property bindings to hook the elapsed event to the reset state such that when the timer elapses reset is triggered. This can be accomplished either by using the Flow in elapsed to change the reset or by using the Flow in reset to change based on the elapsed start point.

In both cases, the Panel must be saved with the binding buttons for these properties/events turned on to surface those options in the Flow property tree.

For example:

• Enable the binding buttons for both elapsed and reset have been enabled and save your Panel

• Select the reset property field and click the start point in the bottom corner

• Browse to the User Panels group, locate the digital countdown control in your specific Panel, and select the elapsed Value property

• Select True=True for the translation

• Click Done. After saving the Panel if the countdown elapses the timer should automatically reset

List Selector

At this point in time, the list selector component should be used primarily by advanced users that understand the API. In a future version, we will add options for simplifying the selection of list content and data. This component provides a drop-down list for selecting elements in the system. For example, it could be used as a source selector for a virtual router or a show profile selector for a console. Unfortunately, until we finish a more intuitive configuration user interface, some knowledge of the API and inner working of PathfinderCore PRO are required to configure this component. A thorough understanding of SapV2 (Appendix A) will help in the configuration of this component. Also, feel free to reach out to support for guidance.

There are 4 primary properties that are used together to describe the list options and another two for event and state:

• Listsearchpath: This holds a SapV2 object path and optional property value for the root from which all objects in the list will be obtained; for example:

  • Routers#0.VirtualRouter#4 SapObjectType=VirtualSource

    • This specifies that we will be filling the list with data from virtual sources in virtual router number 4

  • Devices#0.Qor#[tcp://172.16.1.59:93].LwcpInterpreter#0.LwcpRoot#0.AppControl#0 ObjectName=ShowProfile

    • This specified that we will be filling the list with data from show profiles on the Qor at 172.16.1.59

• Listsearchdepth: The number of branches below the listsearch path root to look for elements; many times, this will be 1 for one level deeper than the root selection, but it could be higher or -1 for infinite For Example:

  • Devices#0.Qor#[tcp://172.16.1.59:93].LwcpInterpreter#0.LwcpRoot#0.AppControl#0.ShowProfile#0

    • This is one branch deeper than the search path in the last example above

• ItemDisplayProperty: This is the property that will be used as the display data for each object; this is what the user sees; in both of the examples above this would likely be the name property

• Itemselectvalue: This is the property whose value will be used in the change and current value events. In the examples above it would be the Id and/or ObjectId properties

• CurrentValue: this can be used by logic flows to select the displayed value

• Change event: this can be used to make a change when a different item in the drop down is selected; the value that will be available in the translation is defined by the itemdisplayproperty

Let’s work through two examples.

List Selector Example 1

For example 1 we will use the selector to present a list of sources from a virtual router. When the user selects a different source, it will change a specific destination on that router. Make sure you have a virtual router in the system. In this case, we will use VirtualRouter 4. Set the following property values:

• Listsearchpath: Routers#0.VirtualRouter#4 SapObjectType=VirtualSource

• Listsearchdepth: 1

• Itemdisplayproperty: Name

• Itemdisplayvalue: Id

This means that we are looking for objects up to 1 level deep below the Routers#0.VirtualRouter#4 path whose SapObjectType=VirtualSource. The last part of this is important so that the selector does not also show destinations. For each source that is found the selector will create an item in the select list whose display value is taken from the name property and whose select value is taken from the id property. This will display a list of sources by name from virtual router 4 and the value used when a selection is made will be the source’s id.

Next, enable the binding on the currentvalue and change properties. For the change property select Destination 1’s current source property in the virtual router.

And use *=* for the translation. This will make sure that any time a new selection is made in the list, the number of that source will be passed to the destination’s currentsource property thereby affecting a route change.

For the currentvalue property, select destination 1’s current source again as the start point. Translation would again be *=*. This will ensure that if the destination route changes even by some other means that the drop down list will change to show the correct source.

In this way, we have created a route selector from a drop-down list.

List Selector Example 2

In example 2 we will use the selector to present a list of show profiles for a qor/iq. When the user selects a different show profile for the qor/iq, it will change the show profile. Set the following property values (modifying for your own device):

• Listsearchpath: Devices#0.Qor#[tcp://172.16.1.59:93].LwcpInterpreter#0.LwcpRoot#0.AppControl#0 ObjectName=ShowProfile

• Listsearchdepth: 1

• Itemdisplayproperty: Name

• Itemdisplayvalue: ObjectId

This means that we are looking for objects up to 1 level deep below the Devices#0.Qor#[tcp://172.16.1.59:93].LwcpInterpreter#0.LwcpRoot#0.AppControl#0 path whose SapObjectType=ShowProfile. For each show profile that is found the selector will create an item in the select list whose display value is taken from the name property and whose select value is taken from the ObjectId property. This will display a list of sources by name from Qor/Iq in question and the value used when a selection is made will be the show profile’s id.

Next enable the binding on the currentvalue and change properties. For the change property select the console’s appcontrol ShowProfId property.

And use *=* for the translation. This will make sure that any time a new selection is made in the list, the number of that show profile will be passed to the console’s showprofid property thereby affecting a show profile change.

For the currentvalue property, select showprofid property again as the start point. Again use *=* for the translation. This will ensure that if the show profile changes even by some other means, that the drop-down list will change to show the correct show profile.

In this way we have created a drop-down list for selecting a new show profile.

We realize that until more intuitive user configuration user interfaces are created, this component may be challenging. If you need to understand how to use it for a specific task, please reach out to support and realize that currently this is an advanced feature and may require some time for them to obtain the correct parameters for your task.

In addition to the primary properties discussed above which are required to make the list selector work properly, there are several additional properties that require explanation:

blankvalue

Each item in the list has a display value obtained from the display property and an actual value that gets used when the item is selected obtained from the itemselectproperty. If the current actual value is blank, there may not be an item in the list which matches a blank value. This allows you to define a value to use in the list selection if the current value is blank. For example, when using a virtual destination list, the none route source may return a currentsource value of blank rather than zero. The id value for the none source is zero. By entering 0 in this field, the 0 value will be used when selecting the current item in the list whenever a blank value is returned from the system. Without this setting, the list might display the last known selection rather than none.

disabledvalues

This field can accept a comma delineated list of values which if they exist in the list will display in the drop down list but be disabled and unselectable. Use the value from the itemselect property in this list not the display value. For example if the drop down list was showing the virtual sources of a virtual router, using an entry of:

-3,-1

Would make the Other and Previous sources disabled.

hiddenvalues

This field works exactly the same as disabledvalues except it will hide the entries presented in the comma delineated list.

sortby

This option allows you to sort the items in the drop-down list by the original inbound order, alphabetically by value, or alphabetically by the display name.

--option-background-color

This allows you to define the background color of the drop-down menu that pops up when you try to select a new item.

--option-color

This allows you to define the font color of the items in the drop-down menu that pops up when you try to select a new item.

Hardware Mapping Buttons

HTML or Console Buttons may be mapped to physical LCD buttons in the console or rack mount button panels. Hardware mapping makes the physical button mirror the behavior of the software button. To define this:

• Click on a User Panel Button and click the HwMap fiel

• A dialog will appear listing the known hardware buttons in the system

• The Mapped To field will display a value if the button has already been hardware mapped as each hardware button can only be mapped to a single software button. Physical buttons do not have to be hardware mapped. They can also just be used directly with Logic Flows

If the button you want is not shown, make sure the LCD Panel or console is in the devices list. If not, it needs to be discovered. See the Discovery topic in Chapter 1 for more details on discovering devices.

LCD Panels must be manually discovered in devices using the add and Lwcp discovery. If a console device exists in the system but is not showing the LCD buttons, try pressing a few of the LCD buttons and then refreshing the web page.

• Select the button you want to hardware map and click Select

Button Indicator PULSE Values

PULSE0 through PULSE10000 will flash an HTML or Console Button for the specified number of milliseconds (PULSE[ms])and then return to the last requested state. If the indicator state is changed while the pulse flash is in progress the new state will be returned once the flash time is complete. PULSE0 may be used to cancel an in-progress pulse. This allows the easy binding of state (ON/OFF) conditions while allowing an additional Flow to control flashing.

For example, if we want a GPI to cause a button to flash for 5 seconds and then turn on or off depending on the state of VMIX 1, we could build a Flow like this:

This type of Flow is useful for situations where you need to flash a button as an alert but retain a known state after the flashing is complete.

With the addition of PULSE, we can achieve the same functionality with a much simpler Flow:

In this case, the button indication is tied to the VMIX state but setting Pin 1 to Low will cause a 5000ms (5-second) flash. It will then return to whatever state the VMIX is currently in even if that state has changed during the duration of the pulse.

If the button is an HTML5 button this can be made even simpler by binding the indicator to the VMIX state within the User Panel and only implementing the PULSE (flash) flow in Logic Flows.

Theme Advanced Options

If you decide you prefer one theme to the other, you can set an Advanced option to make it the default theme for new panels.

The only two options that can be used for the DefaultTheme advanced setting are default and dark. Setting this option to any other setting may prevent you from creating new panels until it is fixed. A reboot is required before any advanced setting takes effect.

It is also important to note that the theme just presents you with the default styling of the components. All properties for customizing that style to your own liking and design are still available in both themes.

Changing Pages

Creating additional pages is described in the page section of the toolbar documentation earlier in this chapter. In this section, we will explore how to switch between panels and pages. Switching between multiple Pages can be accomplished by using the ChangePage property. Let’s build an example set of linked pages. This example will create a map with an alarm state that can be clicked to obtain more details on the alarm from a second page.

• Create a new Panel and click Save. Name the Panel TestMap

• Click on your new Panel to select it. In the property grid, expand the style>background section and click the background-image property. A dialog will appear for selecting and uploading images

• For this example, we will upload an image of a map of Ohio; click Choose File, select your stored image, and click Upload; the image will appear in the selection list. Click on the image and click Select; the background of the Panel will now display the image of Ohio

• Drag a button into the Panel and position it next to Cleveland

• Click on your new button to select it. In the Properties grid, modify the button’s Properties:

Your Panel should now look something like this:

• Enable the binding for the indicator state of the button

• Click on the Start Point and select a SilenceAlarm AlarmState

• For the Translation, select AudioPresent as indicator OFF and Silent as ON

• Click Done; when the system asks about the mouse down action, click Cancel; in this case, the mouse down is going to change pages and has nothing to do with the property we are picking for the indicator so we will set it separately

• Turn on the binding for the Caption property

• Click the Flow’s Start Point; select the same AlarmState property and click Select

• For the Translation make Silent convert to Err and AudioPresent to OK. Click Done

• Save the Panel; at this point, if we were to execute this Panel, the button next to Cleveland should be cyan and OK if the silence alarm has audio presence, and Err and Red if it is silent

• From the Page drop down, select [NewPage]; save the new page with the name Cleveland

• Drag a new button onto the new page and set its caption to Return

• With the button still selected, enable the mouse down binding

• Click the End Point. Expand the UserPanels section of the Logic Flow property selector. Expand UserPanel#TestMap>TestMap.Cleveland section and select the ChangePage property. Click Select

• In the translation set True=TestMap.index and click Done

• Click Cancel when asked about updating the button color properties

• Save the Page. We have just defined that when we click the return button on the Cleveland page it will set the ChangePage property of the Cleveland page to TestMap.index, effectively returning to the index page

• Use the Page drop down to select the index page again

• Click the OK button to select it. Turn on the binding for the mouse down event

• Click the End Point, select the UserPanels>UserPanel#TestMap>TestMap.index ChangePage property

• In the Translation set True=TestMap.Cleveland then click Done

• Click Cancel for the binding button color question and save the Panel

• Launch the Panel; the button on the main map should switch caption and color based on the silence alarm state; clicking the OK button should take you to a new Page called Cleveland, while clicking the return button should take you back to the main map index page

You are always selecting the changepage property of the current page and defining the Page you want to move to in the button’s translation dialog.

Another interesting point is that the changepage property is also available to normal Logic Flows. For example, rather than binding this to the mousedown event, we could create a flow in Logic Flows that automatically switches the Panel page to the Cleveland Panel whenever a silence alarm occurs and back again when audio presence is restored. Additionally, the changepage property is not limited to pages within the same Panel. You could switch to a completely different Panel.

In a real use case, we would fill the Cleveland page with more information than just a return button. For example, we might create a system flow chart page with meters and buttons and silence alarm states of various parts of the chain to more easily determine where the failure occurred.

SubPanels

HTML5 Panels include a web page component which is essentially an HTML5 iframe component that can be used to embed other web pages and components (for example from a corporate page or video link) into a Panel. It can also be used to embed a different Panel into a parent Panel. For example:

• Create a new Panel. Save the Panel and name it SubPanelTest

• Drag two buttons into your new Panel

• Drag in a web page component

• Enable the binding on the src property of the web page component.

• Click the left-hand button to select it, enable the binding for both indicator and mouse down, and save the Panel.

• Select the mouse down property Flow diagram endpoint and select the iframe src property as the endpoint.

• For the translation make the mousedown true equal to:

/userPanelframemin.php?Panel=shared&page=page1

Replacing the Panel name (shared) and page name (page1) with the name of the Panel and page you wish to display as a subPanel.

It is important to use the framemin.php page rather than the frame.php page so that the full Pathfinder Core PRO header and menu system do not appear in the subPanel.

• Click Done and allow the reverse binding to be set up so the indicator will light when the selected page is loaded in the iframe.

• Repeat the procedure for the right-hand button, referencing a different page in your Translator statement.

• Save your Panel.

When the main Panel is executed, the web page component will load with the Panels specified by your buttons as subPanels. In this way we can create shared content that can be loaded in multiple Panels as shown below:

SubPanel and shared content problems

The example above works great for many kinds of shared content. For example, we could create a Panel for each studio where one of the selection buttons loads a clock and meter subPanel, and another loads an airchain display subPanel.

The challenge comes when the shared subPanel needs to target different things depending on the parent Panel.

For example, what if the subPanel buttons in the examples above were source selectors but needed to target a different destination depending whether they were loaded in Studio 1’s parent Panel or Studio 2’s? The subPanel could be a specific and even paged set of selections common across all studios, but would need to target the fader on which ever studio the subPanel was loaded in.

The temptation to solve this problem would be to create some sort of Logic Flow that changes what happens depending on which Panel last loaded the subPanel (Studio 1, 2, etc.) However, this approach does not allow for the subPanel to be loaded in both at the same time. Also, the subPanel itself has no knowledge that it is loaded as a subcomponent of another Panel.

The only way to solve this problem is to introduce messaging internal to a given instance of a browser, allowing the subPanel to communicate with the parent Panel instead of with a specific destination and vice versa. That kind of messaging is the purpose of the Panel SetLocal and PanelMemorySlot.

Panel SetLocal

Each HTML5 Panel includes a write only property called SetLocal. Selecting the overall Panel will display this property in the property tree:

This property sends messages to set another property on the running instance of the Panel, its parent, or a subPanel. Like the PanelMemorySlots property, this property operates inside a single, specific instance of a Panel rather than upon all running instances of a given Panel.

In general, this property’s value will not be set in the Panel designer. Instead, the binding will be enabled and then can be used or bound to other items in the Panel via the Panel’s internal flows. The syntax that makes this possible is:

<target>|<elementId>|<propertyName>=<PropertyValue>

For example, you could enable the binding of this property and then when a button is pressed you can set the value of this property to:

iframe_1|MyButton|Indicator=ON

The target portion can either be:

• parent = assumes this Panel is loaded as a webbrowser (iframe) subPanel of another Panel and we wish to send a property change to the parent Panel.

• local = tries to set a property on the local instance of the Panel

• name of a web browser (iframe) element in the form = tries to set a property on an element in a Panel running in a web browser element in the existing Panel. This variation looks for an iframe in the current Panel of the correct name and then passes the property message to the web page running in that iframe.

Examples:

• parent|MyButton|Indicator=ON

  • Attempts to turn the Indicator property On for a Button named MyButton that is expected to reside on a Panel in which this Panel is running as a subPanel.

• local|MyButton|Indicator=ON

  • Attempts to turn the indicator property On for a button named My Button that is expected to reside on this instance of the Panel.

• Iframe_1|MyButton|Indicator=ON

  • Attempts to turn the indicator property On for a button named MyButton that is expected to reside on a Panel loaded in a web browser (Iframe) element called Iframe_1.

It is important to understand that SetLocal sets properties only in this instance of the browser.

If you have the Studio 1 Panel loaded on two different computers and you perform an action that uses the SetLocal property to change an element’s property, that change will only happen on that computer’s instance of the Panel unless other external bindings are also in use.

If the change is bound to a component inside the Panel it will remain inside that instance of the Panel, but if it is bound to something like a route change that is outside of the Panel it will likely happen on all. This can be seen because using this property as a binding to a component inside the Panel will not generate a Panel based Logic Flow and binding it to something outside the Panel will. The nuances of this are a bit subtle but should become clear as we work through the example below.

Panel Memory Slots

Panel Memory Slots are like normal memory slots except that they only live inside a browser instance of a Panel. They can be thought of as a javascript variable that also raises a change event inside the running instance of the Panel.

The item can be found in the custom tool section. Dragging it onto a Panel will create a dotted component. This component will be invisible when the Panel is actually executing.

Like the SetLocal property above, if this is bound using a Panel Flow to an item inside the Panel (button, iframe, etc), no flow in the larger pathfinder will be created. Instead the value will just be changed or affect change within the running instance of the Panel only. If the Flow is bound to an item outside the Panel (for example a route change of console fader state), then a Flow will be created.

The Panel Memory slot has three important properties/events in the property grid:

Shared SubPanel Example

Returning to our example above:

In this example, what if the four buttons in the SubPanel are tied to sources on destinations dependent on which studio’s parent Panel the subPanel is loaded in. To accomplish this, we are going to use three Panel Memory Slots: two in the Studio1 parent Panel, and one in the SubPanel. Our configuration might look like this:

Studio1 Panel

In addition to general Panel settings, we need to create two Panel Memory Slots: currentsource and selectsource.

Memory slot: currentsource

This memory slot will pass the currentsource value of a virtual router destination to a specific subpanel instance. This is accomplished using these bindings:

• panelmemoryslotvalue will be bound to the currentsource property of a virtual router destination using a Panel flow and a translation like this: *=*

This means whenever the currentsource property of that virtual router destination changes, the currentsource value will be assigned to this memory slot.

• panelmemoryslotchange will be bound to the setlocal property of the Studio1 Panel using a translation like this: *=iframe_1|currentsource|Panelmemoryslotvalue=*

This means whenever the currentsource value changes, it will attempt to also set the same value on whatever Panel is running in the subPanel loaded to iframe_1.

Memory slot: selectsource

This memory slot will change the route on the destination whenever its value changes.

• panelmemoryslotchange will be tied to the same virtual router destination’s current source property.

• raisetoserver needs to be set to true.

General Settings

• setlocal needs to be enabled.

Shared SubPanel – page 1

In this shared SubPanel, in addition to general Panel settings, we need to create one Panel Memory Slots: currentsource.

Memory slot: currentsource

This memory slot will receive and match the current source from the parent’s currentsource panelmemoryslotchange change event. This is accomplished using these bindings:

• panelmemoryslotvalue must be enabled.

• panelmemoryslotchange must be enabled.

*** General Settings

• setlocal needs to be enabled.

• We will bind each of the button indicators to the value of currentsource with a translation like:

  • 1=On

  • *=Off

  • Where 1 is the source whose button indicator we want to light

• When the Panel is running, this will cause the subPanel to light the correct button depending on which source number has been fed to it from the parent.

• Last we will bind the button press to the Shared Panel’s setlocal property with a translation that looks like:

  • True=parent|selectsource|panelmemoryslotvalue=1

  • Where 1 is the source whose button has been pressed.

• This will allow the button press to pass the source selected to the parent Panel’s selectsource memory slot. Which if we remember is bound via its change event to the actual destination’s currentsource.

The interesting part of the steps above is that we can now clone Panel 1 to Panel 2. In Panel 2 we change the bindings on currentsource and selectsource to a different destination for Studio2. And we make sure that the Panel selection buttons point to studio 2’s iframe rather than studio 1’s. But the shared Panel does not need any changes. It will just start working for studio 2 and studio 2’s destination. More importantly if we need to add functionality to the shared component it will work for both studios.

The key thought process that needs to be utilized is that if the shared content manipulates something specific then none of these steps are necessary. But if the shared content needs to manipulate something different depending on the parent Panel it is loaded in, then we need to pass messaging between the internal Panel and the parent to accomplish that.

This is one example of how these features may be used. It could be expanded greatly. For example, the src property of the iframe could be assigned using a setlocal so that it does not need to be updated for each studio page. Or we could add additional Panel memory slots for manipulating other destinations or even dynamically selecting the destination at the parent level.

Additionally, there are future features planned for embedded routing components that may make this specific example less necessary. However, even if we add such components there will always be situations that are custom and do not work with our preconceived components.

It should also be pointed out that in many situations it is probably simpler, easier, and more understandable to just clone. Because this is a more advanced feature it is also more advanced to understand. However, for the times when the embedded content is duplicated in too many places and needs to be periodically changed, this allows for that kind of reuse.

Legacy User Panels

Prior to Pathfinder Core PRO’s HTML 5 Panels, User Panels could be created using a variation of PanelDesigner from the original Pathfinder PRO product. As this functionality is deprecated, we would urge all users to migrate to the much more powerful HTML5 Panels.

The Panels created in the original Pathfinder PRO are called Legacy User Panels and are not interoperable with the new HTML 5 Panels. For example, you cannot open an HTML5 Panel in PathfinderPC/Mini and you cannot open a Legacy User Panel in a web browser.

The Devices link in the navigation bar displays a list of all devices discovered by Pathfinder Core PRO.

Each device entry in the list includes the following options:

Manually Adding Devices

Some devices cannot be discovered automatically. These include Axia OLED and LCD rackmount button panels. Additionally, you may want to add a device into the system without enabling the full network discovery engine. To add these into the system, click the Add button on the Devices dialog.

A dialog box will appear that allows you to define a range of IP addresses to scan and the investigation method to use.

Virtual GPIO Node

Pathfinder Core PRO includes a virtual GPIO node which may be accessed by browsing to the GPIO navigation bar link under the System items.

This virtual node behaves very much like the GPIO portion of an Axia Livewire driver except that the number of ports is dynamically adjustable and includes a few additional features as described below.

When you first open the GPIO link it will recognize that the internal GPIO node has not been added to the devices table and will ask if you would like to add it. The node may only be used and/or configured after it has been added to the device list.

Click OK to discover and add the internal GPIO node into the device list. This will also discover the GPIO points into the GPIO router as well.

GPIO Refresher

It is important to understand the various ways GPIOs may be used in an Axia environment.

• Software GPIOs with no source address assignment will simply allow closures to be directly tripped on either GPI or GPO by Pathfinder Core PRO

  • Example: SRCA:””

• If a source address field for a GPIO port uses a Livewire channel number in its address field, it will listen to and generate closures to and from an Axia Console over multicast

  • Example: SRCA:9501

• Finally, if the source address uses an IPAddress/port format it means that the GPIO port should use TCP to connect to the device at that IP Address, monitor the GPIs from the selected port on that device, and mirror those closures on this port’s GPOs; this is the method used by the PathfinderCore PRO GPIO router to route GPIO data across a network

  • Example: SRCA:”172.16.1.23/8”

Pathfinder Core PRO GPIO Properties

By default, Pathfinder Core PRO’s GPIO node works in the same way as described above; clicking Edit in the GPIO table allows advanced users to manipulate advanced properties

RestApi

PathfinderCore PRO also allows for the addition of Rest API devices which can be used to send rest api commands to a rest api enabled device. In order to add a rest api device, click on the devices link and then click the plus icon. This will display the Address to Investigate dialog.

From the Investigation Type drop down, select Rest API. The dialog will change to show a name and a URL field.

Enter a name for the device and the http address to which to send rest api commands. Alternate ports may be used by adding a colon and the port number:

After clicking Investigate, the device will be added to the system.

You will notice that for rest api devices, you will see an edit link instead of a web page link. The edit link will bring up a dialog for customizing the message header used by each rest api command:

The <UsernamePassword> chunk will be replaced by a basic authentication conversion of the user name and password. If no user name and password is defined, the Authorization may be removed. Currently this device only supports basic authentication. You can use this dialog to add custom header messages if they are needed by the rest api device.

The ChangeLogin link allows you to assign a username and password to be used by rest api commands in the Authorization portion of the header.

Sending a command to the Rest API device

Once the device has been added to the system, it will be available in logic flows.

The SendToRestApi property needs to be structured in a specific way. The property value to send needs to have an operator (usually GET or PUT), a path, and optionally, some data. Note that the path portion should be only the data after the device path. For example:

PUT /my/path/url hello

When the device sends data it will prepend the device path when it sends to the device so that the http command becomes:

PUT http://172.16.1.97:4013/my/path/url hello

The data portion is optional and depends on the specification of the api you are trying to communicate with.

For example, a logic flow that sends to a rest api device when a button is pushed might look like:

SAP property memory slots and string builder memory slots can also be useful to build rest api commands according to the device’s specification and then pass the command through to the device whenever the memory slot changes.

Receiving data from the Rest API device

Please review the rest api technical details for more information on the pitfalls of using rest api to capture information from a device. In this case you would use the example above to send a request to the device probably using the GET operator. The information that is returned can be found in three read only properties (only seen if a start point is selected):

Response code returns the http response code that results from the last message sent. For example, it might return 200 if the request succeeded. Or it might return 404 if the path was not found. For more information on http response codes, see: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status.

The response data property will contain the actual data returned from the command. In many cases you may need a regex to filter the data for what you want to match in the logic flow.

The Response Success property will return true or false depending on whether the last rest api command was successful or not.

Rest API technical details

While rest APIs are currently very popular (thus the reason we are adding them to PathfinderCore PRO), we regard them as generally ill-suited for many broadcast applications.

For example, we recently did some work with a product whose control protocol was exclusively Rest API. One of the first things our customer wanted to do was have PathfinderCore Pro do an action whenever a user pressed a button. The problem is that in order to detect that button push we would have needed to poll at 2.5 times the minimum amount of time the button might be held down. For computers, this is not difficult until you start considering 25 buttons to a device and deployments of 600 to 700 devices. Now you have a situation where you are spending massive amounts of compute cycles on messages which basically say "nothing has changed".

The point of that story is to say that applications that need low latency responses to state changes do not scale well with non-event driven protocols like Rest API. The consumer of such protocols needs to be cognizant of the CPU load ramifications for what they are doing. Currently, if the user wants to poll, they would need to use an interval timer and a logic flow. We may at some point add a way to pre-program parameters that should be polled which would simplify that task, but we opted not to in this incarnation because of the potential abuse possibilities described above.

If all you care about is triggering a change and perhaps getting a response back that the change was made, then Rest APIs work well. But if real-time state change information is required, then care needs to be taken and other options employed if available.

This article provides a great analogy using a General and his army to illustrate the differences between REST and a socket-based architecture:

https://www.pubnub.com/blog/websockets-vs-rest-api-understanding-the-difference/

In short: Use this feature with care.

One of the powerful features of Axia Audio mixing engines are their virtual mixers. The Element and Fusion mix engines include sixteen virtual mixers which can be used to create mixes of various audio streams. These virtual mixers can be controlled using Logic Flows to dynamically create mixes of audio content based on changes in the system. Additionally, there is a web page for managing these virtual mixers, in effect creating on-screen mixers. To access this user interface, click the Vmix Control link on the navigation bar.

When you first open this web page, the faders will be dimmed out and none of the buttons will function as you first need to define which engine and which Vmixer to control. Select the mix engine from the Select Engine drop down, and then select one of the 16 virtual mixers from the Select Virtual Mixer drop down.

The interface will update to display the state of the selected virtual mixer. You can use the drop-down lists to switch between different Vmixers.

Each Vmixer has five input channels and a master fader. The master fader is labeled as Master and has the red slider. The input channel meters display the real-time metering of the source assigned to each fader. This metering is pre-fader, showing the level of incoming audio. The meter next to the Master fader displays the level at the output of the virtual mixer and is therefore post-Master fader.

Dragging a fader’s on-screen slider up or down will adjust the VMixer channel’s gain.

Clicking the On/Off buttons will turn a fader on and off. Turning a virtual mixer fader on or off is subject to the fade up and fade down time parameters. These can be changed by clicking on the fields next to the up arrow or down arrow in the Fade Time section. Times are entered in seconds. So if you have a fade up time of 1.2 seconds, when you click the On button the audio will fade in to the level defined by the fader over the course of 1.2 seconds. Then the fader control will dynamically allow you to control the level. The same is true when turning the fader off. Clicking the off button will fade the audio out dependent on the fade down time.

Finally, clicking on the source name at the top of each fader will allow you to select a different audio source for the fader. A list of available sources will appear.

Highlight the new source and click take to select the new source for the fader. Or, click cancel to return to the mixer web page.

Vmixer Shortcuts

It is also possible to generate direct links to a particular Vmixer. This can be useful if you wish to create a shortcut on a user’s desktop that will present a specific Vmixer. In order to create such a shortcut in Windows, right click on the desktop and select new shortcut. For the location type:

http://172.16.1.221/vmixcontrol.php?engine=172.16.1.63&vmixer=1

Replace the 172.16.1.221 with the IP address of your Pathfinder Core PRO. Replace the 172.16.1.63 address with the address of the mix engine you wish to control. And replace the 1 at the end of the link with the virtual mixer number within the engine you wish to control. Then click next and provide a name to create the shortcut. And finally, click finish. Or, just enter the address into the address bar of the user’s browser and then add it to favorites.

When you create the link this way, the user will not see Pathfinder Core PRO’s navigation bar or the drop downs to select a different engine or Vmixer. The web page will only present the specified virtual mixer.

When you first log in to Pathfinder Core PRO, the username and password you use is: Username: Admin Password: Admin

However, this can be changed and controlled using the Users link on the navigation bar.

Click edit to change a user’s password or click the plus icon to add users to the system. Use the minus icon to delete users from the system. The system will not allow you to delete all users. At least one user must always exist in the system or there is no way to use it. Therefore, the user interface will show an error message if there is only one user left and you try to delete it.

After creating a new user, that user’s credentials may be used to log into the Pathfinder Core PRO’s web pages or using PathfinderClient, PathfinderMini, or PanelDesigner.

Users may be Administrative users who have access to everything or standard users. It is very important never to delete all of the Administrative users or you may lose access to the system requiring support to get access to the operating system to reset things. If you select a standard user, additional options will appear for defining what rights the user has. The CanLockRoutes defines whether the user has the ability to lock and unlock routes. The Route locks do not apply option is for future use.

The arrows next to each section may be expanded to specify the user rights. By default a standard user will see all navigation menu items but will have no rights in the API so most or all of the menu items will not populate with any data.

The menus section allows you to define which navigation bar menu items are available to the user.

The menus listed are the same as in the navigation bar on the web page. By setting items to hidden they will no longer appear in the user’s navigation bar.

The allowed APIs section defines in much more detail what the user may access via the web pages, port 9600 login, and the client applications:

Each item in the displayed list has several options:

• Inherit means that branch in the tree inherits the rights of the parent branch. In the case of root level objects such as Logic Flows the inherited state is No Access. No Access explicitly denies access to that branch.

• Display allows the user to display the resource but not change or use it. For example, if you wanted the user to be able to view the route states of a router but not make any route changes, then selecting display for the router access would be a good idea.

• Change/Use allows the user to do normal operations with the resource but not change the definition of the resource. For example, in the case of routers, selecting change/use would allow the user to make route changes on the router but would not allow them to add sources or destinations to the router.

• Full access allows the user to have complete control over the resource including the ability to add to or delete the resource. This is the equivalent of Administrative rights to the resource.

It is important to note that by default, branches below a specific branch inherit the parent’s properties. So, if you set the Routers branch to display, all routers will be displayed. You can then set no access on routers you do not want the user to see and/or Change/Use access to routers you want them to be able to use.

Logic Flows can be used to send e-mails when conditions exist in your system that require attention. For example, it is common to send e-mails to the station’s engineers when silence is detected at a transmitter site.

To send e-mails, you must first configure the e‑mail host settings under the System navigation section. If you have not configured these settings, please review the Email Settings section of the System chapter.

Once the e-mail host has been configured and test e-mails can be sent successfully, click the Email Messages link in the Navigation bar. This is where you can create e-mail messages that can be sent when specific actions take place in the system.

Adding a New Email Message

• Click the plus icon to create a new email message

• Complete the fields on the Email Message Editor

• When all fields are complete, click Apply to save your changes

Using E-mail Messages in Logic Flows

Once created, e-mail messages become available for use in Logic Flows. In the following example, we will send the AudioFailure email message whenever MyAlarm’s AlarmState becomes Silent. We accomplish this by setting the write-only property Send to the value True.

You can also change the body of the e-mail message as a Logic Flow end point. This becomes especially useful if you have several conditions that could cause an e-mail alert. For example, we could create a generic e-mail message making sure that the AutoSend on body change checkbox is engaged. Then we could create multiple Logic Flows, each of which alters the body of the message depending on the start point. For example:

Here we use two Logic Flows to send four different messages to the same e-mail recipients.

• First Flow

  • If “AlarmA” is Silent -> Set the body of the “AudioFailure” message to be “My Alarm is Silent.”

  • If “AlarmA” has audio -> Set the body of the “AudioFailure” message to be “My Alarm is fine.”

• Second Flow

  • If “AlarmB” is Silent -> Set the body of the “AudioFailure” message to be “AirChain Silent.”

  • If “AlarmB” has audio -> Set the body of the “AudioFailure” message to be “AirChain OK.”

Since we engaged the option to send the e-mail each time the body property of the e-mail changes, this is all that we need to do to handle four alarm conditions using one defined e-mail message.

SapV2 stands for Software Authority Protocol Version 2. It is the glue that provides all the communication between the services insider Pathfinder Core PRO. It is also available for control and troubleshooting purposes on port 9600 for those who wish to take the seriously deep tech dive into Pathfinder Core PRO.

In order to interact with SapV2, open a telnet session to port 9600 on the Pathfinder Core PRO.

In order to work with the system in any way using the protocol, you first must log in:

Replace the bracketed username and password with a valid user and password.

For example:

Message Overview

SapV2 syntax is based on Axia’s Lwcp specification for syntax, but with some additional features that allow for object and property discovery and listing. As such, the Lwcp documentation can be a useful precursor to reading this appendix.

All messages in SapV2 are case insensitive and end with a carriage return and line feed. Each SapV2 message may consist of an operator, object path, list of properties, and list of system items. The operator and object path are required. For example:

In the message above:

• Operator = get

• ObjectPath = Devices#0.AnalogNode#[tcp://172.16.1.81:93]

• Properties = Name, Description

• System Items = $TXID=555

The list of possible operators is listed and described later in this document.

The object path represents branches of a tree like a file system path where the separator between each branch is a period. Each branch consists of the branch type followed by the pound sign and the unique identifier for the branch. In the example above, there are two branches:

• Devices#0

• AnalogNode#[tcp://172.16.1.81:93]

The branch type of the first branch is Devices and the identifier is 0. The second branch type is AnalogNode and the identifier is [tcp://172.16.1.81:93]. The identifier for the second branch is wrapped in square brackets because the identifier includes symbols that are reserved for object path segregation – namely the period. If a branch identifier includes periods or the pound sign, the identifier must be wrapped in square brackets. Spaces are not allowed within branch identifiers and therefore are not allowed within the object path.

Commas between properties are optional. Commas should not be used between system items.

System items always come at the end of a message and system items all begin with the dollar sign. Therefore, when parsing a SapV2 message, the system item section begins when you encounter an un-escaped space followed by a dollar sign. Since any property value that includes a space must be enclosed in quotes, dollar signs after a space may exist in a property value if they are enclosed in quotes. If a double quote needs to be embedded within a property value, it needs to be escaped with the backslash - \”. If a carriage return and linefeed is to be embedded in the value of a property use the %BeginEncap% %EndEncap% as defined in the Lwcp specification.

For example:

In the example above the property value of Name is:

AAND-001-081 $Hello

The parser does not start parsing the system items when it reaches the space and dollar sign because it is enclosed in quotes as part of the property value. Instead, the system item list begins at $TXID.

In the following example, we needed to include a carriage return and linefeed as part of the value of a property, so we use encapsulation:

In this example, the value of the memory slot will be set to “My Name is Freddy” with a carriage return and linefeed between Is and Freddy. Some properties in the system also accept escape values to represent carriage return and line feed. For example, the generic protocol translator accepts \cr\lf for its ToSend property.

Discovery

Unlike the current version of Lwcp, SapV2 has been designed to extend Lwcp to allow for the discovery for all objects and properties in the system. As in Lwcp, by using the get operator, you can specify an object path and a property and retrieve the property’s value:

However, in SapV2 if you do not specify a property, that means you are requesting a list of all the properties and values that the object has.

Additionally, if you place the object path separator at the end of the object path (the period), it means you are requesting the list of sub objects of the requested object.

In this way, it is possible to walk the tree and discover all objects and properties in the system.

If you wish to know when a list has been completely returned, you can add the $DONE system item.

By using the $DONE system item, the last item in the list carries the $DONE item.

If you only specify the period as the object path then you will get all of the root level objects.

$MAX_DEPTH System item examples

Rather than walking the tree to discover all of the objects, it is also possible to use the $MAX_DEPTH system item to define multiple layers of returned branches at once.

Every branch that is up to two levels beyond the specified object path is returned in this case. If you leave off the ending period, it will return all of the same object paths above but it will also include all of the properties for each object path.

Using the $DONE in addition will return $DONE on the last message item in the list.

The value -1 is special to the Max_Depth system item as it represents infinite. Therefore, using a Max_Depth value of -1 returns everything below the current branch. For example, the following command would return all of the objects at any branch level underneath Devices#0:

This command would return all of the objects and their properties at any branch level underneath Devices#0:

Use the $MAX_DEPTH with some caution as it can take a bit of CPU power to generate some of these large lists. It is better to subscribe to changes of a certain branch and then cache the results of MAX_DEPTH rather than polling large lists.

It is also possible to use a property name with the MAX_DEPTH system item. For example:

Would list every instance of the PinState property that exists below Devices#0.WinDriver#[tcp://172.16.1.254:93] with the $DONE at the end. The response (abbreviated) below might look like:

Multiple properties may also be returned in which case only objects that contain both properties will be returned. For example:

You can also specify a value in a property and then only items where the property matches that value will be returned.

Subscription Examples

All of the examples above also work with subscriptions. For example:

This will not return anything immediately. Any time any property beneath Devices#0 changes, it will get returned.

If you wanted to subscribe to all GPIO changes you could send:

Init Examples

Most object may also be created and destroyed using the INIT and DEL operators. The arguments required to create an object can be obtained by sending a get command to the object path of an existing object with the special hidden property called Constructor. See Hidden Properties for details.

In this case, the final object in the path does not have an ID associated with it because the constructing parameters will define the ID as part of the construction process. If we were subscribed to MemorySlot changes, we should see the results of this creation returned as a NEW message.

Delete Examples

Objects may be deleted from the system using the DEL operator and an object path. Properties are not valid in a Delete message.

If the connection has subscribed to changes that match this deletion, there will be a response:

The LED operator is the response for a DEL operation but will only be returned if a subscription has been made that matches the deletion object path.

Request for syntax

The RFS operator stands for Request For Syntax and the server will respond with SFR which stands for Syntax For Request. The RFS operator allows you to discover what a specific property expects for its value.

We get a variety of information about the property from this command. We know that the property is read/write, that it expects an option and the valid options are l or h. We know that it is a stable property which means that its syntax should not be expected to change in future versions of PFCore unless carefully noted and/or with backward compatibility handling. We also know that the l or h may be displayed in a more user-friendly fashion in a UI as Low or High. And we know that this property is one that should be displayed in the simple tree of logic flows (IsSimpleUi).

The list of syntax types that will be returned is documented in the RFS/SFR notes later in this document.

Routing Paths

It should be noted that in some places in the system (specifically underneath the Routers#0 root object), object identifiers use a URI type syntax. For example:

Routers#0.AxiaAudioRouter#1.AxiaAudioSource#[tcp://172.16.1.71:93?l=SRC&d=src&i=66&t=aaudio]

This identifier (tcp://172.16.1.71:93?l=SRC&d=src&i=66&t=aaudio) is called a PathIo and uniquely identifies an IO in the system. It may be broken up into its relative pieces as follows:

• tcp://172.16.1.71:93: This is the uri of the ip address and port of the device on which the IO was discovered.

• l=SRC: This stands for Level and could contain SRC, DST, GPI, GPO

• d=src: This stands for Direction. This seems redundant to level but it is not. This defines whether the IO is a source or destination irrespective of whether it is a GPIO

• i=66: This is the IO port identifier as reported by the equipment

• t=aaudio: This is the type of IO which could include

  • aaudio: AxiaAudio

  • agpio: AxiaGpio

  • virt: Virtual

Operators

Each operator is comprised of up to 8 characters and are always terminated by a trailing whitespace.

• SET: Request to update information on the system.

• GET: Request for information from the system.

• INDI: Indication that information on the system has changed.

• SUB: Request to receive indications from an object path on the system when changes occur.

• UNSUB: Request to stop receiving indications from an object path on the system.

• RFS: Request for property formats of an object on the system.

• SFR: Response to property format requests.

• INIT: Request to create a new object.

• NEW: Response message for a successful init if subscribed.

• DEL: Deletes an object from the system.

• LED: Response message operator for a delete message if subscribed.

• NOP: No operation.

• SYNC: Used to pass a message for cluster synchronization purposes.

• LOGIN: Login to the system.

• ACK: Acknowledgement from the system to a request tagged with the $ACK system item.

• PUB*: Request to anchor the object path or paths.

• UNPUB*: Request to un-anchor the object path, or paths.

• ATCH*: Attaches to an object (macro for SUB then PUB on the object).

• ATTACH*: Weak alias for ATCH.

• HELP*: Request for helpful information about an object or property.

• LINK*: Request to create a link between an object and a host object.

• UNLINK*: Request to remove a link between an object and a host object.

* For Future use. Not currently implemented.

Untargetted Operators

There are a couple of operators that break the rules about requiring an object path. These operators stand on their own as complete commands:

• LOGOUT: Logout of the system.

• EXIT: Request that the system breaks the current connection.

• QUIT: Alias for Exit.

Operator Examples

LOGIN

LOGIN {username} {password}

Example:

Returns:

GET

GET {Object}.{Object} {Property}

Example:

Object may be a specific object. Object may be terminated with a full stop (.), which indicates that a listing of all descendent Objects is being requested.

Object may be terminated with a pound sign (#), which indicates that a listing of all objects matching that type is being requested. * * For Future use. Not currently implemented.

Property may not be specified, in which case it is a request for all of the properties for that object.

SET

SET {Object}.{Object} {Property}={Value},{Property}={Value}

Sets a property value in the system. Use RFS to determine what the property expects and whether it is writable.

Example:

INDI

INDI {Object}.{Object} {Property}={Value}

This is a response from the server for a get command or for a change that is within the bounds of a subscription request.

Example:

SUB

SUB {Object}.{Object} {Property}

Subscriptions can be to an Object Path, an Object, or a Property. $MAX_DEPTH may also be used to subscribe to property changes at different depths.

Example:

INIT

INIT {Object}.{Object} {ConstructorProperty}={Value} {ConstructorProperty}={Value} ...

Creates an object which is defined as initable within the system.

Example:

DEL

DEL {Object}.{Object}

Deletes an object which may be removed from the system.

Example:

NOP

NOP {Object}.{Object}

This operator stands for No Operation. The rest of this message should be ignored, but it should still be structured as a valid SAPv2 Message. This can be used in configuration files that store SapMessages and essentially will act like remarking out the message. This allows you to leave the message in the file for future use. The system will read and parse the message, but will not act upon it.

Example:

SYNC

Sync {Object}.{Object} Property

This operator stands for Synchronize. It is used exclusively for internal clustering synchronization messages.

Example:

RFS and SFR

RFS {Object}.{Object} {Property}

SFR {Object}.{Object} {Property}=[{Read/Write},{Syntax},{DirectSubscriptionOnly},{IsStable},{SyntaxUsage}],{Property}=[...]

RFS is a request for syntax request and SFR is the server’s response.

Example:

The SFR response may carry multiple pieces of information about the property including:

• Read/Write Values

  • RO: Read Only

  • WO: Write Only

  • RW: Read and Write

• Syntax Values

  • BOL[[true,TRUE,t,1],[false,FALSE,f,0]]: Boolean value with True and False specifics

  • ENU[Value,Value,Value(Display)]: Enumeration

  • LST[Separator,Syntax Type]: List

  • TBL[Header,Header,Header,Header,Header]: Table

  • NUM[Minimum,Maximum,Increments]: Numeric value

  • TXT[Restrictions]: Text value with Restrictions on what type of text

  • BIN: Binary value

  • HEX: Hexadecimal value

  • BMP: Bitmap value

  • PNG: Portable Network Graphics value

  • URI: Uniform Resource Indicator value

• IsSimpleUi: True or False

• IsStable: True or False

Notes on RFS implementation.

• Plain Text: SyntaxType=TXT

• Boolean: SyntaxType=BOL

• Number: SyntaxType=NUM

• Number range

  • SyntaxType=NUM[<Miniumum>,<Maximum>,<increment>]

  • SyntaxType=NUM(1,10,1)

• Enum

  • SyntaxType=ENU[value(display),value(display),value(display)] *

• IP Address: SyntaxType=TXT[Ip]

• Netmask: SyntaxType=TXT[IpNetmask]

• Mulicast IP: SyntaxType=TXT[IpMcast]

• StaticOptionList

  • SyntaxType=OPT[Single:optvalue(display),optvalue(display)] *

• MultiSelectStaticOptionList

  • SyntaxType=OPT[Multi:optvalue(display),optvalue(display)] *

  • StaticSapOptionList 
 SyntaxType=OPT[SapSingle:(sapPathForList),valueProperty,displayproperty] *

• StaticSapOptionList

  • SyntaxType=OPT[SapMulti:(sapPathForList),valueProperty,displayproperty] *

• DateTime: SyntaxType=TIM

• Color: SyntaxType=COL

• Vb6 OLE Style Color: SyntaxType=OLE

• URL: SyntaxType=URI

*display is optional - if not present uses the optvalue

Object Path

{ObjectType}#{ObjectId}.{ObjectType}#{ObjectId}.{ObjectType}#{ObjectId} . . .

An Object path is comprised of a list of branches similar to a folder structure where the period is used as the separator. Each Branch is comprised of a type and an Id separated by the pound sign.

Example:

Devices#0.WinDriver#[tcp://172.16.1.254:93].LwrpInterpreter#0.LwrpRoot#0.Gpo#6.GpioPinState#4

If the id contains any characters that are reserved for the path architecture (. or #), the id must be enclosed in square brackets. Spaces are not allowed in object paths.

Properties

Property Names may not include spaces and must not begin with the dollar sign. The equals sign with no spaces is used between the property and its value where a value is relevant to the command usage.

Lwrp STAT Properties

This version includes data obtained from the STAT command in Lwrp for devices that support it. These read-only properties may be found in the API tree in logic flows under the device branch that supports it.

There are four types of STAT objects described below:

Also note that while turning the SubscribeToSync option on for a device will be saved between restarts, the state is not currently cluster synchronized.

Because the API matches the object layout of the device’s Lwrp protocol some of the new settings can be found in a variety of places. The new paths include:

• LwrpInterpreter#0.LwrpRoot#0.Decoder# LwrpInterpreter#0.LwrpRoot#0.Encoder#

• LwrpInterpreter#0.LwrpRoot#0.Cfg#0.Enc# LwrpInterpreter#0.LwrpRoot#0.Cfg#0.Dec#

For example, the destination properties for a decoder or encoder are available via the LwrpRoot#0.Cfg#0.Enc and LwrpRoot#0.Cfg#0.Dec paths whereas the encoder algorithm and bitrate settings are available via the LwrpRoot#0.Encoder and LwrpRoot#0.Decoder paths.

IPort Control

The LwrpRoot#0.Cfg#0.GPIO path controls whether the GPIO ports are enabled or disabled in the system. The actual GPIO port may or may not be present depending on whether the encoder or decoder are active. All of these paths are available for use in Logic Flows via the API tree, however, some are read-only and so will only appear when using a start point.

To figure out which properties match config options in the Iport UI, open a TCP connection to PathfinderCore PRO using Putty to port 9600 and subscribe to changes on the device in question.

Then you can make changes in the IPort’s UI and see the changed properties in Pathfinder Core PRO. This can be useful to see where certain properties are located in the API tree.

Hidden Properties

The Constructor property will return Init messages required to recreate an object that supports that property. However, it will not show up in the general list of properties for an object. It must be queried directly.

Property Values

If the property value is to include a space, it must be surrounded by quotes.

If the property value is to include a carriage return and/or line feed, it must be encapsulated using %BeginEncap%%EndEncap%.

If a double quote needs to be included in the value, it needs to be escaped using the backslash.

System Items

• $ACK: Request Acknowledgement to Operation.

• $TRXID/$TRXI/$TXID: Transaction ID to track response to Operation.

• $IND/$INDI: Request Indication from SET without needing a subscription.

• $DONE: Requests that the DONE system item be applied to the last message returned from a request.

• $PROPATTR: Specifies that the properties in the GET/RFS messages are Syntax Format properties - such as getting all properties that are Readwrite=RO.

• $OP: Operation. Used in ACK Operation responses to denote the Operation that was sent with the $ACK System Item. Also used in Subscription operations where you want to specify only messages with a specific operator. For example DEL or LED messages. (eg. sub MemorySlots#0 $MAX_DEPTH=-1 $OP=LED).

• $MAX_DEPTH: Used to specify the Depth of the subscription or return. -1 equals all object paths below the request.

• $UNSORTED: Return messages do not need to be sorted for easier readability. Used when querying large lists where order does not matter.

• $CONTAINS_PROP: Indicates a request for objects that contain the specific property. If message ends with object separator (.) then it will just return objects. Otherwise, it will return all properties of the objects that include the requested property. This is not valid for subscription messages. It is only valid for Get. Please note that this can cause heavy cpu load as it requires walking the object tree and iterating all properties in each object. Use sparingly and cautiously.

• $EXCLUDE_PROPS: Exclude certain properties from the return.

• $SHOW_CLUSTER: Certain objects related to clustering are hidden and not returned in subscription and get responses unless this system item is included

• $CLUSTER_CHANGES: Subscribe to only changes that are related to cluster synchronization. Returns will carry this as well.

• $CLUSTER_QUIET: This has special meaning to Set and Init messages. It means the message is the result of a Change on another server and is being set to keep in sync. And therefore the change should not be broadcast to other servers that have subscribed to cluster changes to prevent numerous duplicate messages.

• $LAST_UPDATE: Used in conjunction with $CLUSTER_CHANGES to show the date/time stamp of the most recent update.

• $INCLUDE_MOUNTS: This will also follow and include mount points from an object to a mounted object. For example, from a route point to the mounted device IO. It applies to Get, Set, and Sub operator. Mount points are currently used sparingly within PathfinderCore PRO so this option is only useful in come situations.

• $STATUS*: Response status code

• $COUNT*: Request for number of objects below the current object path

• $DEPTH*: Request for an operation to be iterated to a specified depth. Default is 1, and a non-positive integer depth will result in infinite depth.

• $TSTAMP*: Time stamp.

* For Future use. Not currently implemented.

Additional System Item Notes

$PROPATTR is the system item for Property Attribute. It can equal AND or OR.

$PROPATTR=AND <Default> $PROPATTR=OR

If this attribute is set it means that the properties defined in the property list of the Get/RFS message are not literal properties. Rather, they are requesting objects that have properties that have formats described in the property list.

For example:

The pipe allows listing multiple options for a format value. The And/OR in the PropAttr defines whether a match is made if either of them matches or only if all match when multiple properties exist in the message.

After clicking on the Timers navigation link, you will be presented with 4 tabs underneath the Timers section:

The timers tab can be used to create interval, date/time, and recurring timers which can either execute changes at specific times or after an interval. They can be used by assigning property changes in the time event and/or by hooking the timer to a logic flow. The resources, templates, and calendars tabs are for use with the additional scheduling license.

Timers Tab

Timers allow Flows and or property changes (such as a route change) to be executed at specific times. This list shows the Timers that have been created and may be used in Logic Flows. The page shows up to date information as the Timer states changes.

Additionally the cleanup timers link can be used to specify what should happen with non recurring Date/Time timers that have already elapsed. Clicking the cleanup option link will present the following dialog:

By default, the value will be -1 which means DateTime timers which have completed their execution will not be deleted from the system. Setting a number of days into this dialog and applying that number will cause single execution datetime events to be deleted from the system after the requested number of days has passed after the timer has completed executing. A value of 0 will cause the timer to be deleted sometime within the hour or two after the timer has completed execution.

Timer Types

To create a new Timer, click the Add icon on the Timers dialog to open the Timer Editor.

Three types of Timers can be created in Pathfinder Core PRO: Interval, Day of Week, and Date/Time.

Interval Timers

If you want to create a Logic Flow with a delayed action, you could use a delay directly in the Flow, or you could create an Interval Timer. An Interval Timer raises an Elapsed property after a specified number of milliseconds.

Interval Timers can also be programmed to autoreset. An autoresetting Interval Timer will set the Elapsed flag to true after the Interval, and then immediately set it back to false and restart the countdown.

Leave the Autoreset and Enabled properties as false. Type a name for this Timer and apply it.

Now we can use this Timer in Logic Flows:

For example, an Interval Timer can be used in a Logic Flow so when GPI 1 goes low, it enables the Timer. Then the Elapsed property 5-seconds later causes GPI 2 pin to be set low:

Interval Timers have three additional write-only properties:

1. Reset: If the Timer is enabled, this property will disable and then re-enable the Timer to start the countdown over. If the Timer is disabled, this will set the elapsed property to false.

2. ResetStart: Stops the Timer (if it is running) and then starts the Timer to reset the countdown.

3. ResetStop: Disables the Timer and changes the elapsed state to false.

These are available in the Logic Flows simple tree when an Interval Timer endpoint is selected in the Logic Flow. Since these are write-only properties they will not be shown when Interval Timer start points are selected – only endpoints.

All three properties accept true/false values and setting any of them to true will initiate the reset. They do not need to be set to false again afterwards as passing the true value is just a trigger to initiate the reset. The value is not retained. These properties can be thought of more as actions than traditional properties.

Day of Week Timers

If we want something to happen at a specific time every Monday, we could create a Day of Week Timer. With this type of Timer, you can specify a time and the days of the week on which the Timer should set its Elapsed property to true.

Each Day of Week timer actually represents a range of time. It has a start time and an end time. And in logic flows there is an Elapsed and an ElapsedEnd property to match the start and end times. If you only want to execute a single action at a specific time, you could just use the Elapsed property and ignore the ElapsedEnd property. The end time must be specified as later than the start time when configuring the event however.

Instead of or in addition to using this with logic flows, you can also specify a change directly in the event itself. Clicking the ellipsis button next to the start property will open a route selection dialog where you can select a destination.

The import from button allows you to select the router you want to pick a destination from. Additionally the endpoints button in this dialog will switch to the property selector similar to the one in Logic flows so that you can select some other property like a gpio or console show profile load property:

The Ios button will take you back to audio io selection. Since many times audio routing is what will be used with date/time events we present both dialogs for ease of selection. Once the property is selected, the value field will be filled with the current value of the destination's source or property value. Selecting the ellipsis button next to the value will allow you to change the property value that will be applied. If you only want a change to happen at the start, then do not select a property and value for the end. In the example below, a studio source will be routed to air at the start time of the event and then the airchain will be cleared at the end of the event.

The Switch Fields To Advanced button should only be used by advanced users. It changes the input boxes to the literal API commands associated with the selections for manual adjustment.

Note that the clock option buttons will be described below as they apply to both the Day Of Week and Date/Time Timers.

Date/Time Timers

If we want something to happen on a specific day and time, we could create a Date/Time Timer. The Timer’s Elapsed property will be set to true at that day and time.

Clicking the calendar icon will present a user-friendly calendar for configuring the date and time. This event has the same parameters as the Day of Week event above for selecting properties to change at the start and end time of the event. The primary difference is that this event executes it's start and end times only once at the specified date and time. It will then be deleted or retained according to the settings in the cleanup options above.

Virtual Mixing Routers and Property Selection

The Mixing property drop down allows you to select whether the operation will add or remove a selected source to/from the destination. For example:

In this example the timer will add Source 1 to the destination at the start of the event time range, and it will remove it at the end.

Clock Time and Fixed Time

In both the Day of Week and Date/Time Timers, it is important to understand the difference between clock time and fixed time. Within Pathfinder Core PRO, all times are stored with a UTC offset. Clock time means that the event will happen at a specific time (say 7PM) according to the clock regardless of the UTC offset. If you want an event to happen at 7PM according to what the clock shows both before and after a daylight savings shift, you should pick the clock time option.

However, if you are picking up a satellite feed and the region from which the feed originates does not shift their clock to daylight savings time, then you should select fixed time because the event will happen at a different time (according to your wall clock) before and after the daylight savings time shift. In this case, it is fixed to the time and UTC offset.

UTC Offset

Previous versions of the PathfinderCore PRO would use the browser’s UTC offset when creating a new clock based Date Time or Day of Week timer. This also caused odd display issues when editing events from a Core PRO in one timezone while using a browser in another. This version will always display the offset of the event, and the specific time as it is set in Core PRO. Additionally, new events will be created using the offset defined in Core PRO by its current time zone rather than the browser’s offset.

Using Timers in Flows

In addition to specifying an action to take place directly in the event, you can also hook the event to a logic flow. And in fact this is the primary way to make use of an interval type timer. To do that, you would need to create a Logic Flow with a start point that uses the Timer’s elapsed property to then change some other property in the system. For example, if you wanted to execute a scene change every Monday at a specific time, you would create a Logic Flow that uses the Day of Week Timer shown above.

In this way, we can use Timers to cause delays, do repetitive operations (using the autoreset property of Interval Timers), or execute actions at specific days/times and/or on a recurring daily schedule. This particular example could also be accomplished by selecting the Activate Scene property directly in the event, but if you wanted to create more complex logic using logic gates, then you would need to build the logic in a logic flow. Both options are available. However, property changes that are defined within the actual event (as opposed to a logic flow) so not count against the logic licensing of the system.

Pathfinder Core PRO clustering is designed to address concerns over hardware failures. Clustering allows you to connect multiple networked Pathfinder Core PRO systems, so that they automatically and dynamically share configuration data and states. They also monitor each other, taking over processing events if one system fails.

As you prepare to configure your cluster:

1. Begin with a single Pathfinder Core PRO

2. Create the routers and add other required events and components

3. Take a backup of your configuration and download it to your local computer. See the section on Backup/Restore for more information. This will guarantee you can get back to your current operational state if you make a mistake when setting up your cluster.

4. Click the Clusters link in the navigation bar

Four buttons are available at the bottom of the Clusters page; Create, Join, Leave, and Manual Sync.

Creating a Cluster

First, click Create to create the cluster. The system will ask you to create a cluster administration password. This password is important because it will be used throughout the cluster so that the Pathfinder Core PRO units can log in to each other and synchronize data. When you provide this password, the system will create a special ClusterAdmin user for this purpose. You will be able to see this user when you view the Users navigation link and a severe warning will be issued if you try to change the password of that user since it must be identical across all systems. Once the cluster has been created, the Clusters link should look something like this:

The system is now part of a one node cluster. This display will show the hostname and IP address for each node in the cluster. When there is more than one systems in the cluster, the IsLocal field will show which of the systems you are currently logged into. It will also display the state of each Pathfinder Core PRO system in the cluster. The minus button should only be used in the rare situation where you need to forcefully remove a non-functioning node from the cluster. The preferred method is to go to the node to be removed and click the Leave button.

Joining a Cluster

Now it's time to add the second system into the cluster. It is important to note that the second system’s configuration will be overwritten during this process. If the system is new, make sure you first assign an IP address using the front panel. The IP must have network access to the first unit in the cluster, so pay attention to the network configuration. You do not need to enable Livewire discovery on this second system.

On the second system, browse to the clusters link on the navigation bar, and then click the Join button. The system will ask for the IP address of any Pathfinder Core PRO system that is already a part of the cluster. It will also ask for the cluster administration password you provided when you created the cluster.

The system will now pop up a progress message box as the system joins the cluster.

The join process involves telling the first system that the new node is joining the cluster. It will then ask the first system to generate a special backup. The second system will download that backup and restore and then reboot. At that point, the cluster should be created, and you should be able to see both systems on the cluster page.

A successfully synchronized cluster should show all node states on the web page of all systems as SyncNewerChangesComplete. If that is not the case in your cluster and it does not resolve to that state within a few minutes after a restart, then contact Axia support to help determine why the cluster is not synchronizing properly.

Follow this procedure with subsequent Pathfinder Core PRO systems you wish to have join the cluster.

Once the cluster is created, changes to the configuration and state information are automatically synchronized across the Pathfinder Core PRO systems in the cluster. Additionally, in the case of a failure of one of the Pathfinder Core PRO systems, one of the other systems will begin processing the events. See the section on Events and Timers for more information.

Manual Sync

Sometimes it may be desirable to force the cluster into synchronicity if there is some doubt that it is properly synchronized. In order to do this, browse to the system that is incorrect (out of sync) select the cluster menu item and select the manual sync button. This will ask for confirmation and then will request a backup from the other (known good) system, download and restore that backup and then reboot. This is usually a procedure that would be performed in the context of an Axia support session.

Leaving a Cluster

If you wish to leave a cluster, make sure that the system is connected to other nodes in the cluster. Then click on the Clusters link and click the Leave button. The system will revert back to a stand-alone system. It is important to note that after leaving a cluster, the configuration will still be the same as it was prior to leaving the system. It is recommended to quickly remove the system from the network and/or factory default the system. Otherwise, the system may start trying to process events that the rest of the cluster is also trying to process.

Events and Timers

There are a number of elements of a Pathfinder Core PRO system that should only execute on a single system at a time so that a cluster is not requesting duplicate changes from a device. Examples of this are Logic Flows and Timers. Those will always execute on the system that is currently active and has the lowest IP address. Heartbeats are constantly sent and monitored between the systems so that if a system stops responding the next lowest IP address system will take over those responsibilities.

Clustering and SapV2

SapV2 is the protocol that is used both for cluster communications and for internal communications. This protocol is available on port 9600 and is described in more detail in the appendix of this manual. If the cluster does not seem to be working properly there is a great deal of information that can be collected about the clustering process using this protocol to try and solve the problem.

GPIO Node Clustering

The Pathfinder Core PRO GPIO Node in a cluster is synchronized as well. Port additions, removals, and configurations applied to either Pathfinder Core PRO of the cluster will be replicated to the other Pathfinder Core PRO in the cluster.

Pin closure states will also be replicated in most cases. If the port has been configured with a multicast GPIO channel or snake routing assignment (IP/port), replication becomes a bit more nuanced. Closures that are directly tripped will still be replicated. However, closures that are sensed from the mcast or unicast snake (GPIs from the other snake port) will not be replicated. This is because it is assumed that both cluster nodes are monitoring those changes directly from the third piece of equipment and will pick up their states directly from the other end of the snake. Therefore, cluster replication of that state would in fact be redundant and could lead to race conditions.

When dealing with unicast snake mode (IP/port assignments), there are some additional clustering nuances to be aware of. These are most easily discussed via an example.

When you route a GPIO node to the Pathfinder Core PRO GPIO port, the address field in the GPIO port on both cluster nodes will get filled by IP Address/port. For example:

• Pathfinder Core PRO A = 172.16.1.241

• Pathfinder Core PRO B = 172.16.1.242

• GPIO XNode = 172.16.1.85

If you route (using the Pathfinder Core PRO GPIO Router) the XNode GPIO source 1 to the Pathfinder Core PRO A or B destination 1, the destination port on both Pathfinder Core PROs will look like:

• CFG GPO 1 SRCA:”172.16.1.85/1”

In this example both Pathfinder Core PROs are monitoring the GPI changes on port 1 of XNode at 172.16.1.85 and making matching changes on their GPO pins. This is straightforward.

However, if we route either of the Pathfinder Core PRO servers to the XNode GPIO things get a bit more interesting. We can only apply one IP Address to the SRCA field on the XNode destination. Therefore, Pathfinder Core PRO will use the Axia livewire address of whichever Pathfinder Core PRO in the cluster currently has its event system active. In the example above Pathfinder Core PRO A would typically be the active server in the cluster. When you make the route change on either Pathfinder Core PRO, the system will use the active server IP address on the XNode destination. The XNode destination would look like:

• CFG GPO 1 SRCA:”172.16.1.241/1”

If Pathfinder Core PRO A Server were to fail or get shut down, the B Server will loop through its routes and find any destination that Pathfinder Core PRO A’s GPIO ports were routed to and switch them to Pathfinder Core PRO B’s external livewire ip address.

• A Fails

• XNode port gets reassigned:

  • CFG GPO 1 SRCA:”172.16.1.242/1”

If A comes back online the port will switch back to use the A server when the event system comes online again.

One important note about this is that the XNode GPIO clears its pin states to be all high each time a route change happens and then reassigns them to the new values based on the new GPIs. This means that if a snake route is held low on the XNode based on a low GPI on Pathfinder Core PRO, during a cluster failover those pins might flicker to high and then back to low. This is usually a virtually instantaneous flip.

This should only cause an issue if you have a Pathfinder Core PRO GPI that is unicast snake routed to an XNode (or other Axia GPIO device) GPO and that closure is both normally held low and you have an activity (such as an automation advance) that happens on the flip from high to low and you fail over to the secondary node in the cluster. But this is also similar to what would happen if a device supplying that same closure were to be restarted. Note that this is not an issue for multicast snake routing.

In the future we may address this issue by using floating IPs where the ip route would not change but rather the ip address used for the external routes would float/move between the Pathfinder Core PRO devices.

We highly recommend that users do some testing of this functionality to fully understand how it works. For the vast majority of use cases it should be seamless.