AldousSystems

Welcoming in 2012

2012-01-14T11:35:00.000-08:00

The new year has hit with a bang at Aldous Systems. We started the new year by moving into our shinny new office. The new office is 2 doors down from the warehouse which is where our sales office was before. This new facility gives us a new training room, demo room and sales office and it allows for growth in the warehouse.

Aldous Systems is also pleased to announce the appointment of Jonathan Smith as our Southern Sales Manger. Jonathan was previously responsible for national sales for NaimNet so he has vast experience in sales related to the custom install industry. He is a welcome and valued new member of the team. We continue to try and fill our vacancy for Northern Sales Manager.

SpeakerCraft continues to keep us very busy with an ever increasing demand and an ever increasing product range. We now have the new Roots speakers in stock. This is an impressive range of satellite speakers and sub woofers in black or white and with a beautiful high gloss finish. They have also had some great reviews in the press and just sound fantastic.

SpeakerCraft have also rolled out more variations on the Profile range of speakers. These speakers are flangless and use magnets to hold the grills on. They look wonderful and are available in AIM form and the traditional CRS. You can also even buy square grills to fit your round speakers if you want.

As if that was not enough, SpeakerCraft have also brought out the new Seamless range of speakers. These speaker fit in the wall or ceiling and you can plaster over them for an invisible speaker. They have proper drivers so perform well at low end as well as top end. There is even a sub woofer available.

BitWise Controls have also been keeping us on our toes. Late last year we saw the introduction of the new Xenon templates which are spectacular. The icons are truly beautiful. As we come into the new year we also have the BC1 controller now shipping. This 1U rack mount controller offers 4 x RS-232, 8 x IR, 4 x IO and it accepts IR commands from legacy learning IR remotes. It is a fantastic addition to the BitWise Controls hardware.The other addition is the BC-IRI. This allows the BC4 to trigger macros from IR commands so you can also use the BC4 with legacy IR learning remote controls as well as the new BC1.

HAI have also been releasing new capabilities. They have developed a new Bluetooth Remote Input Module for the HiFi II multi room audio system making it easy to stream music from any Bluetooth enabled device. They have also launched the new HTX 2 and will soon be updating their iPhone app so it can also control your AV equipment as well as your temperature, security, audio, lighting, etc. They have also extended their wireless range of products by adding both Zigbee and Z Wave ability. HAI already introduced Zigbee thermostats and relays last year. They have now added compatibility with a range of Zigbee and Z Wave door locks for access control.

Aldous Systems will be exhibiting at ISE first week of February in Amsterdam at booth 5U88. Please drop by and see us along with HAI, BitWise Controls, Destination Audio, Forté A-BUS and our very own Aldous Home Networks. Of course you can see SpeakerCraft and Gefen on their own stands at ISE.

How To Setup a Wireless LAN

2011-02-08T11:26:00.000-08:00

The first thing to accept is that Wireless LAN does not have great range. Issue is that we are operating at quite high frequencies and high frequency signals can be quite lossey. As a result a wireless LAN signal loses a great deal of signal strength as it goes through walls. Therefore it is best to plan to have a couple of wireless access points in the network so make sure you have good wireless coverage. You can mix wireless accesspoints with a wireless router if you have one or you can have a non-wireless router and simply place wireless access points where you need to. As a rule of thumb I would plan for a wireless access point per floor. If it is a long building then you may need to budget for two wireless access points per floor, one at each end of the building.

There are a couple of parameters that need to be set correctly to get it all working. Firstly, you need to set a SSID or Wireless Network Name. It is critical that this is the same across all the wireless access points you install. That way the connecting device knows it is all the same network and the connecting device can hop from one access point to the next depending on what provides the strongest signal. It is a common mistake to name the SSID on each access point differently i.e. "Ground Floor", "First Floor", etc. This is a big mistake as a laptop computer will see these as different networks and do its best to hang on to the network it first connects to even though the signal gets weaker as you go upstairs. By naming them all the same the laptop will drop off the ground floor access point and pick up the first floor access point as you go up the stairs.

However, with all wireless technology you have to make sure they are opperating on difference frequencies or channels. The wireless spectrum has channels 1 through 11. Ideally stick to channels 1, 6 and 11 as these channels have no blead over. If you really need more access points then use channels 3 and 9.

All the wireless accesspoints should connect to the Ethernet LAN via Cat5e cables. Once this is all tested and clearly operaional then you can add your WEP or WPA security to prevent unwanted access to your network. Test it again and if all is well you are good to go.

If you have problems ten you can try using a tool called NetStumbler. If you search for this free download you can install this software on you laptop. This software tells you what access points are in range and what channels they are using. Very useful.

How to view your CCTV Cameras from the Internet

2010-08-14T00:51:00.000-07:00

First of all you need to understand the concept of the LAN and the WAN. The LAN is inside your house and all the IP addresses must be unique inside the house. The router manages the LAN IP addresses and they normally start with 192.168.XXX.XXX. When your devices boot up they declare their presence on the LAN and the router assigns them an IP address. Devices can be given different IP addresses when they boot up in the future but they are always unique within the house. The WAN is the public internet and your router gets an IP address for your house from the ISP and is unique in the whole world. When your router is rebooted you may get a new IP address assigned by the ISP.

As you can see IP addresses are dynamic in nature both on the LAN and WAN. This is a problem if we want to tunnel into the DVR remotely as we need to know the DVR has an IP address on the LAN that is not going to change and we need to know the house IP address on WAN and that is not going to change or if it does then we need to know how we can find out what it is. We will deal with these one at a time.

Fixed IP address for the DVR On the LAN
In order to ensure the DVR IP address does not change you must first of all let the DVR boot up and obtain an IP address from the router. You can then log into the DVR via a monitor plugged into the VGA output of the DVR and go into the network settings to see what IP address the DVR has been given. Then you need to log into the router and tell the router to always give that device the same IP address. The menu's to do this will vary from router to router. You might find a menu for PC Database or DHCP Table or something like this. Once you have selected the DVR you are looking to give it a fixed mapping or bind its IP address to its MAC address. Again the terminology may vary depending the router. Once this is done you can rest assured the DVR will always have that IP address no matter how many times it boots. At this point you can pull up a browser on a computer on the LAN and you can pull up the cameras by entering http://. For example if the LAN IP for the DVR is 192.168.123.115 then you simply enter http://192.168.123.115 and the browser should populate with the DVR user login screen. The default login is username - admin and password - 12345.

Open Up Ports on the Router
To be able to tunnel into the DVR from the outside world you need to access ports 80 and 37777 on the DVR. Port 80 is for the browser content and port 37777 is for the video stream. When you come in form the outside world the router will block these ports preventing you from accessing the DVR. To solve this you need to open up the ports. Again different routers may call this function different names but you are looking for Port Forwarding or Virtual Servers or Open Ports. You need to open two ports. With port 37777 you can just go ahead and open this port and direct it to the LAN IP address of the DVR at port 37777. However, port 80 is a well known port and you really should not open that port up. It would be more secure to think up an odd number like 52010 and open that port up on the WAN side of the router and direct that to the DVR at port 80. This port is then actually being mapped from port 52010 on the outside (WAN) to port 80 on the inside (LAN). This is sometimes called port translation.

WAN IP Address
The simple solution with regards to the WAN IP address is to pay the ISP to give you a static IP address. This will then allow you to connect to your DVR directly. For example if your WAN IP is 82.20.16.10 then you would connect to your DVR using the secret port (52010) by typing in http://82.20.16.10:52010. The router will then pass you straight through to the DVR on the LAN on port 80 and your browser should load up. In the background the browser also uses port 37777 for the video stream but since we opened up the same port on the WAN and LAN for this port then it should flow straight through.

However, you have indicated that you do not want to pay for a static IP address. In which case you have to use dynamic DNS to find the WAN IP of your router. This basically involves registering a new domain name with a dynamic DNS service provider and your router updates the DNS service provider with what its WAN IP address is every time it gets allocated a new IP from the ISP. An example of a DDNS provider is www.dyndns.org. First of all you have to go to their website and register as a user. You can then register a domain such as www..homeip.net. You then log into the router and look for the Dynamic DNS settings. In here you enable the feature and put in the DDNS service provider which in this case will be www.dyndns.org and you put in your username and password for your account. From then on the router will update the DNS server with its WAN IP address when it boots up. When you want to access your cameras you then enter www..homeip.net:52010. Using DDNS you never actually need to know what your IP address is as the DNS server works it out for you.

Why EDID Management In HDMI Is So Important

2010-07-27T02:38:00.000-07:00

A large number of issues seen in HDMI networks are related to EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) management and when you understand how this function works you quickly realise why this can go wrong. Firstly lets explain what happens.

When a source such as a DVD player or Satellite set top box is switched on and it has something connected to the HDMI port the source will request information about the display. The display will then respond with a manufacturer identifier such as Sharp or Sony etc and capability information. This capability information defines what the screen can do. For example, one screen might only be able to handle a maximum resolution of 720p but another screen can handle a resolution of 1080p. Since HDMI contains audio as well as video there also needs to be capability information about what sort of audio signals the screen can handle. For example a typical TV might only be able to handle two channel audio as it only has 2 speakers whereas a surround sound system will be able to handle full 5.1 or 7.1 digital audio. Once the source has received the manufacturer and capability information it will then set the video and audio signal up accordingly. The manufacturer and capability information is know as the EDID.

This all seems straight forward and will normally work fine when you have a single source connected to a single display. The complication comes when you try to build more complicated HDMI networks with multiple displays. Take the situation where you may want to send your DVD signal to two locations. In this example you would use a HDMI splitter to allow such connection. This is where things start to become interesting as you now have two lots of manufacturer and capability information going back to the source and they may be different. Which set of information should the source use to set up its signal? You may well have a 1080p capable screen in the main lounge but only a 720p capable screen in the second location. If the main lounge capability information is used by the source then the source will send a 1080p resolution signal but the second location display will not be able to handle this and will show a messaging saying "Out of Range" or something similar.

Another example may be where you want to send your HD signal to multiple locations and one location is a surround sound zone with a 5.1 surround sound amplifier and the other zones are TV's that can only handle 2 channel stereo. If the source sets up the audio format based on the EDID from the surround sound zone then the 2 channel TV displays will typically have a picture but a nasty buzzing noise for the audio as they cannot handle the digital 5.1 channel audio signal.

These two examples show how you easily get into trouble when trying to build HDMI networks. I stress the point about building HDMI networks as when operating point to point between source and screen you will probably never hit any issues. It is only when you start to build HDMI networks that some of these issues come to play. This is not a limitation of the splitter or the HDMI protocol, this is an example of what happens when ever you try to build a network. No matter what technology you use, when you start building networks of devices the complexity always increases compared to a simple point to point system. As specialists in our field we need to understand how the protocols work so that we are aware of the behaviour and can engineer the system accordingly.

So how do we do that? Now that we know what is going on it is simply a matter of taking control of the EDID information that is being fed to the source device so it configures itself in a manner that meets our requirements. Clearly in the first example above I need the source to set the video output at a resolution which is the lowest common denominator of the two screens, i.e. 720p in our example and we will want 2 channel audio. If we can ensure this happens then we will get video and audio on both our displays. Sometime this can be achieved by making sure the the screen with the lowest capability is plugged into output port 1 of the splitter as some splitters use the EDID from the display plugged into output port 1 when the source requests the EDID. Some splitters may have an "Internal/External" switch on them. When switched to "Internal" the splitter will use a generic EDID that has been designed by the manufacturer rather than actually going out to the screen to get the screen EDID. This is typically a generic EDID that has a capability information stating it can do everything. Other splitters may have physical switches on the them allowing you to set the EDID up manually by selecting the right switch locations. More advanced HDMI networking equipment have an HTML user interface where you can log into the device and inspect the EDID coming back from the display and override it with something different and even create your own EDIDs.

All the above techniques are valid and may well allow you to engineer your HDMI solution successfully. However, only the last option above gives you total control of the situation. An example of HDMI networking equipment that has full EDID management built in and configured via an HTML user interface is the Lightware range of products. However, these products are commercial grade equipment and may well be outside your project budget.

An alternative solution for EDID management that puts you in full control and is a great deal more affordable is the use of an external hardware device that is connected to the HDMI output of the source such as the DVD player and has an HDMI output which carries on into the HDMI network. It is therefore usually used as the first item in the HDMI chain after the source. This device responds to the EDID request from the source and replies with what ever you want it to provide in terms of manufacturer and capability information. Therefore the EDID request never actually makes it beyond this device and the screen is never actually interrogated. This puts you back in control of the EDID and allows you to make sure the source sets up the video and audio format in a manner that meets your requirements. To programme this magic box it is first put in learning mode and then you plug it into a screen of your choice which provides the EDID you want to use. The device then stores this EDID in non-volatile memory. The device is then located on the back of the source as described above and the source will then always be given this EDID no matter what screen or screens(s) are being used to display the source output. Alternatively there are some factory preset EDIDs that can be selected by dip switches to alleviate the need to learn the EDID from a real screen. An example of such a device is the Gefen HDMI Detective.

The intent of this article is to explain how this EDID information flows and impact it can have so that the reader can make an informed decision about what equipment or technique to use to ensure a successful outcome. I hope this has been useful to you. I welcome any comments and feedback.