Premise Extron IPLink

Hello,
Has anyone here has any experience interfacing the Premise software with Extron's IPLink products? Here is a link: http://www.extron.com/product/listbytype.aspx?subtype=94

I currently have an IPL T SFI244 installed on my home theater. I have my panasonic plasma and marantz receiver attached to it with RS-232 and many other devices installed via IR.

Although it does much more than a conventional Lantronix RS-232/ethernet adaptor, i would think it would be perfect to interface premise with my home AV.

I have no experience writing drivers or even RS-232 commmands, but i am willing to learn to make this work. What is the best place to look to learn how to write drivers, etc for the premise software?

Thanks!
Jacob

Jacob, welcome to Cocoontech and the Premise Home Control forum!

Extron's IP Link looks like a very useful gadget and would make a nice addition to Premise's list of supported equipment. Let's see what we can do to get you writing a driver ...

Starting on page 4-16 of the SFI244's manual, it describes the device's control protocol. You can communicate via its telnet (port 23) or HTTP (port 80) interface. The command structure depends upon whether you use telnet or HTTP. In either case, the good news is that the IP Link's command protocol is text-based (i.e. not binary-encoded) and simplifies the task of creating a driver.

I posted a super-simple text-based driver here (Text_Listener.xdo) implemented as a Module (VBScript). It listens for incoming traffic on the PC's serial-port and dumps whatever it finds to the Windows Debug Console. You'll need DebugView to see the debug console. Experiment with it to gain a better understanding of how to setup communications for a driver.

You probably want to talk to the IP Link via your PC's Ethernet interface and not its serial-port. I haven't found support for TCP/IP communications within Premise (via VBScript). However, there is a very simple kludge that works perfectly. I'm writing a driver for the ELK M1 and the technique is described in the driver's (pre-release) manual on pages 5 and 15. Basically, you configure Premise's Lantronix UDS driver and use it as a middleman between your custom driver and the IP-based device.

Good luck!

Thanks 123.
When i have some time, I will try to interface the two together. Thanks again!
Jacob