Album Art

[aard3]

Thanks, Aaron. I've been using Photoshop, for work, for about 10 years. Each new version is incredibly cheap, at educational prices, and work pays for it too, so I'm not complaining too much. But right click on an image, and change image size, within AS, would be pretty slick.

I watched the excellent Automation Studio tutorial from Worthington U. - great intro.

I'm curious, though, what CAN be done with the software, if the template isn't used. The instructor insisted that everyone should use the template, and don't even THINK about starting from scratch.

You need to circulate some advanced examples of the possibilities. Everyone admires a good Crestron or CQC GUI, if they're done well. What are the limits to Automation Studio? Many templates should be offered, out of the box - hopefully that's on the 'to do' list. There are many companies out there that do Crestron, AMX, and RTI programming - might want to 'partner' with 1 or 2, now that business for them is slow. Would be easy for them to crank out some new default HAI templates, from their existing designs. The colors and buttons are the hard part.

Starting from the template is certainly a good idea, that will get you a lot of functionality with little to no work. The default templates are really based off of having lists of things... Like a list of Units, list of thermostats, etc. Designing this way allows for you to be able to re-use your design over, and over again... the more custom way to approach things might be to instead have a page for each room, with buttons and labels specific for that room, etc. It really all depends on your imagination and skill level.

As far as the actual capabilities, with AMX / Creston, you're actually coding those interfaces (and I mean actual programming, it's not like your programming an Omni, it's like your writing a program for a computer). Automation Studio / 5.7e/10P was designed to give as much functionality as we can, without having dealers try to learn to program. That's why we created "Objects" that you can add to your design. Each "Object" has the coding already done for it, and you can assign it actions, properties, etc, but you don't have to actually code anything. While certainly AMX / Crestron might be more flexible, the learning curve is MUCH steeper.

That said, the actions you can assign are things like sending a command to the Omni, Jump to page, Delay, Play Sounds, etc... So for example, you could do something like this.

Have a button, say it's a Movie Time button... and give it your own image, then add some actions

On Press
- LivingRoom Lights 50%
- Send IR Code TV ON
- Send IR Code DVD ON
- Delay .1 Sec
- Send IR Code TV Input 1
- Send IR Code DVD Eject
- Jump To Movie Page

You can have Text Labels that report the status of the lights, or even have Images that report the status (light bulb on if on, off if off, etc). Maybe you have a security page with your Front door camera and a keypad, or something... there really are and endless amount of possibilities with it, and we plan on adding more and more features as we get requests, and see what people want. Hope that helps.

Thanks,

Aaron