Dean Roddey
Senior Member
Charmed Quark Software is proud to announce the 1.3.4 release of CQC (the Charmed Quark Controller), its software based control and automation system. CQC is the brains that supplement the brawn of your PC network, to create a powerful, secure, network distributed, highly visual, and highly robust system for management of hardware devices and software applications. With the addition of the need ports (IR, serial, contact, etc...) to a general purpose PC, CQC can provide you with control and automation services on par with far more expensive traditional automation systems. It also has strong home theater front end services, providing a powerful mixture of front and back end services, all in one package. CQC supports the Windows XP, 2000 Server, and 3000 Server family of operating systems, with others coming.
Version 1.3 is a quite extensive step forward from the previous (1.2) version, particularly in the area of graphical capabilities, user interface features, new features of particular interest to the HTPC owner, as well as major new features in the traditional automation category.
In the remainder of this document some screen shots will be provided. These are of the current CQC demo system. Please note that there is nothing about these images that is intrinsic to CQC. They were created using the CQC interface designer, using arbitrary images gathered up by me because I thought they provided an attractive interface. You may create interfaces with any look and feel you want, so just be aware that these interfaces are purely examples. Note that they are also pretty significantly reduced in quality in order to avoid download overhead
What's New Overview
---------------------------------------
This section will briefly introduce the major new features in this version, some of which will be discussed in more detail later in this document.
Click here for a full sized version
Text to Speech
---------------------------------------
The new text to speech support is provided in two different ways. The CML (macro language) runtime has a new class to support this feature. This class allows you to invoke speech, and control voices used, from your own control macros. This mechanism will invoke speech on the machine where the macro is actully executed.
There is also a text to speech driver which allows you to invoke speech on other machines. CQC is a fully network distributed system and you can have drivers (both to control devices and to provide services such as text to speech) installed on any machine in the network. By providing a text to speech driver, CQC allows you to make any machine in the network speak. This can be very useful in many cases.
In addition to just providing support for the speaking of lines of text, the driver provides some interesting additional features. You can have it repeat a phrase periodically, a reminder for instance, every X seconds.
Also, you can have it do a 'countdown'. In other words, you can have it repeat a phrase every X seconds, in which there is a replacement parameter that is replaced by a current count. You can set that count (in seconds) and the driver will start counting down the seconds to zero, repeating the phrase and placing the current countdown value into the text.
Though I like to use it to do "This apartment will self destruct in 30 seconds", "This apartment will self destruct in 20 seconds", type countdowns, to scare my neighbors, you can use it for things such as a countdown for disarming a security system, or other situations of that type.
User Interface Improvements
---------------------------------------
Significant work was done on the user interface system in this release. Many of the improvements are useful for the adminstrator of the system, by making it easier to create user interfaces, but the sexy ones of course are all the visual goodies. This section will discuss some of these changes, and provide some example demo interfaces, to help graphically demonstrate the new features.
Note that the example interfaces displayed here use a scheme commonly employed in CQC, which is to have a single main interface, and to have a set of buttons that load up various smaller interfaces into a central area. All the buttons in the Options section to the right load up 'overlays', which are just smaller interfaces, into the central area of the main image. This both saves time by allowing you to provide common functionality once, and allows for more flexibility in reuse of sets of overlays that provide access to common types of functionality
Click here for a full sized version
Alpha Transparency
You can now use both constant alpha and source alpha transparency. This allows you to blend images into the background in interesting ways. It's a key means of creating very sexy looking displays. In the above example, you can see the volume knob is blended into the background, so tha tthe texture shows through. Also, though it's really only apparent in the full size image, the current button is using alpha to become brighter and more transparent.
Another nice use of transparency is to do a set of buttons (such as numeric) that have no color of their own, i.e. they are just gray scale, and which therefore can be used on pretty much any background and displayed slightly transparently. This makes them pick up a little of the underyling background's color, so that they look like they are designed for that background, but are really just generic.
Input Focus
The interface viewer now has the concept of input focus, which it did not previously. This allows you to navigate around with the arrow keys and invoke buttons with the enter key. To support this, buttons now allow you to indicate focus in a few different ways.
If you are using images for your buttons, then there is a new 'focus' image option, in addition to the 'unpressed' and 'pressed' images. In the examples here, this is the scheme used. Actually the same image is being used, but its transparency options are different. So as you arrow around, the active button lights up nicely and becomes more transparent.
If the button doesn't use images, but it uses flyover emphasis, that will be used. Flyover allows you to have some visual attribute change when the mouse is over the widget. So far the only attribute supported is the text color. If you notice in these examples, the active button also has brighter text because the mouse was over them when the image was snapped. But if the button doesn't use images, the focus mechanism will use this flyover color change to indicate emphasis as well.
If you have neither of those, then a default red 'emphasis cursor' is displayed, which is just a rounded box around the button.
Interface Driver
There is also now a CQC device driver for the user interface viewer. This means that you can, among other things, drive the user interface focus movement and button invocation via an IR remote. The driver allows you to do arrow up, down, left, and right, enter, and to invoke the blanker.
For those folks who are displaying the control interface on their projector, this is obviously of great utility if they don't want to use a mouse to navigate the control interface. Of course for general IR control you can just train CQC to invoke macros upon receipt of an IR signal. Since you are talking to an IR reciever driver running under the CQC service, you don't have to be logged on to invoke these types of IR driven events.
DirecTV Logo Widget
There is now a specialized image display widget for DirecTV logos. You can see it in the above example. You just associate it with the 'Channel' field of a DirecTV set top box, and it will automatically display the logo for that channel (if it is available.) This is a very helpful 'power assist' type tool. You could do the same thing using the existing capabilities, i.e. the 'mapped image' widget, which allows you to set up the mappings from a field value to the image displayed, but it would be tedious for such a large number of images. With this new widget, you just pop one into the interface and all of that is handled for you.
Nested Overlays
Though these examples don't demonstrate it, overlays can contain other overlays now. This is very convenient when you want to create, as discussed above, overlays that provide common chunks of functionality. Previously, if that functionality required the ability to load up overlays, you couldn't do it in a template that would be loaded as an overlay.
The interface system will insure that you create no recursive links, and the viewer will automatically remove any offending overlays if that would happen. They only work 'downward', so a link button in an overlay can only target a child overlay, not one above it. This also promotes the building of 'standalone' overlays that can be reused and insures you don't do anything wierd.
Hierarchical Image Repository
All the images used in user interfaces are uploaed to CQC's image repostory (on the master server) where they are available to any other machine on the network running (or desinging) interfaces. This repository used to be a flat list, but it is now hierarchical, so you can much better arrange and categorize your images. It also allows Charmed Quark to deliver pre-fab image sets without possible name clashes. All CQC images are in the /System scope, and all user images are now in the /User scope.
The standard file browsing dialog has been extended to support image preview, so it can be used to browse the image repository just like it is a local disk, and you can see thumbnails of the images as you browse.
Weather Data
There is a new Weather Channel driver, which allows you to pull in data from the Weather Channel's XML data feed. This is something that has been on the list for some time, and it is nice to finally get it into place.
Click here for a full sized version
In this example, you can see the display of current conditions, plus 3 days of future condition forecasts. You can also see the use of another new specialized image widget, which understands the Weather Channel 'condition codes' and displays the correct icon for the reported conditions.
What the Future Holds
---------------------------------------
As you can see, CQC has made some major steps forward with this new release. It has always arguably had the most extensive back end tool set of the major software based control system, and now the front end is moving forward to the same level of power, and more of course is to come. The next major steps will be happening in two areas, 'power assist' tools and pre-packaged hardware based systems.
There will be a fairly quick followup release, probably a month from now, which will not introduce any major new features, but will concentrate almost completely on tools which assist you in the installation and configuration of the system. This is a major undertaking and the first cut of these tools won't be the ultimate versions, but it will be a major start, and will be improved significantly in subsequent releases. These tools will walk you through the steps of installing the system, choosing installation options, getting devices under control, setting up IR control, and generating some standard user interfaces so that you can get going quickly with a quite nice system, and then take your time to learn and tweak the system to be exactly want you want.
There is also a big movement here towards beginning to provide CQC pre-packaged in hardware. This will be accomplished in a few incremental steps. Firstly, we will start offering CQC in a very small form factor system with attached touch screen, pre-configured with the needed hardware, and if you are interested in such services, pre-configured with drivers for your devices. These initial systems will be general purpose PCs running XP, just slimmed down and dedicated to this task. This will be happening very soon.
Next we will be moving forward into more touch screen systems, based on Embedded XP, with a wireless touch screen running the interface viewer and a controller system in the closet/rack controlling the devices. This will be a higher end system of course, for those folks who don't want a directly attached touch screen.
And finally we will be moving into a fully custom designed enclosure for a wireless touch screen, and either a rack mount or custom cased PC in the closet or rack handling control, or a fully 'no moving parts' appliance type controller in the closet or rack, for those folks looking for fixed function but highly robust control systems.
We will also be moving into the WinCE world here soon, so the user interface client will be available on things like PocketPCs or other smaller touch screen devices for wall mounting. This will be an incremental move, with more and more of the user interface functionality being supported as we move forward. But a core set of features will be available initially. Because of the massive difference in screen real estate between a normal 12" or 14" or 17" touch screen and a PocketPC, and the differences in capabilities between a desktop/XP system and WinCE systems, you'd probably always being designing interfaces specifically for these small clients anyway.
All of these systems will be well under half the price of what you would pay for a Crestron system of similar utility, so they will provide very high bang for the buck for customers who want to move into the control world, but don't want to pay huge bucks just to get the hardware, or pay someone huge bucks to set up the hardware once obtained. The software only version will still be available as a separate product for those who want to roll their own, or who already have a robust network infrastructure in their home that they want to build on.
I will also let everyone know that CQS will soon no longer stand for Charmed Quark Software, but Charmed Quark Systems, Limited. We have now incorporated, and soon the web site will have a new look and feel and we'll have a spiffy new logo for the new company, and I'll be changing over to the new name in all my postings.
Click here for a full sized version
What's Available
---------------------------------------
CQC consists of a 'base package' and a number of optional packages. The base package provides all that most folks will need, though in some cases they might want to pick up one or two optional packages.
The base package provides the following features:
Give it a Try
---------------------------------------
CQC is available for use in trial mode for 30 days, without any encumberances. So you can fully evaluate it for a month without commitment. If you decide to buy at any time within the trial period, you can convert your existing trial system into a fully licensed system without any interruptions.
CQC is also safe to try. It does not install any system files, or modify your configuration in any way except to create some start menu items and to create a small registry entry. It also creates a service, but all of the files it uses are within the CQC directory. So if you decide not to commit, just use the uninstaller and it can be completely removed without any danger of destabilization of your system.
So feel free to give it a try and see if suits your needs. CQC provides a lot of functionality, all under one roof, where it can be managed and configured as a whole, and where the pieces are designed from day one to work together seemlessly and will continue to do so into the future. You don't have to master multiple systems and tie them together yourself, and hope that they do not diverge at some point, leaving you in the lurch, nor do you have to worry about the security of multiple systems not designed to provide comprehensive built in, user based security.
CQC can adapt to scenarios from a locked down, kiosk mode system, up to a "PC based and not ashamed of it" full home network in which every machine is a CQC node, so it is applicable to many sorts of control system topology and usage patterns, and can change easily over time because of the flexible nature of software based systems.
CQC is licensed on a network basis. So the price is basically for a license to run the 'master server' on one machine. You can then run the other client and server components on other machines in your network as desired. So the price compared to some other options is more competative than it might seem once you move off a single machine configuration.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected], or you can register on the CQC support forums and join the growing comemunity of CQC users, many of whom can provide you with help and practical experience.
Version 1.3 is a quite extensive step forward from the previous (1.2) version, particularly in the area of graphical capabilities, user interface features, new features of particular interest to the HTPC owner, as well as major new features in the traditional automation category.
In the remainder of this document some screen shots will be provided. These are of the current CQC demo system. Please note that there is nothing about these images that is intrinsic to CQC. They were created using the CQC interface designer, using arbitrary images gathered up by me because I thought they provided an attractive interface. You may create interfaces with any look and feel you want, so just be aware that these interfaces are purely examples. Note that they are also pretty significantly reduced in quality in order to avoid download overhead
What's New Overview
---------------------------------------
This section will briefly introduce the major new features in this version, some of which will be discussed in more detail later in this document.
- Scheduled Events. In the area of traditional automation features, a new optional component provides support for scheduled events. You can schedule one shots, every X minutes or hours or days, or on particular days of the week, month, or year.
- Text to Speech. There is now support for Window's text to speech services, so you can make the computer talk to you, to make announcements or whatever other use you might have.
- User Drawn Interface Improvements. There have been extensive improvements to the user drawn interface system, which will be discussed in much more detail below.
- New/Improved Drivers. There are new drivers for the Lumagen Pro/HDP video scalers, the Lutron Radio RA lighting system, The Weather Channel's XML data feed, and significant improvements in the Lexicon MC-12 and X-10 drivers. The application control system also has some significant improvements.
- New Image Sets. The first two sets of pre-fab images for the user drawn interface system are provided in this release, for DirecTV channel logos and Weather Channel 'condition' icons, and there are new user interface widgets specialized to deal with them.
Click here for a full sized version
Text to Speech
---------------------------------------
The new text to speech support is provided in two different ways. The CML (macro language) runtime has a new class to support this feature. This class allows you to invoke speech, and control voices used, from your own control macros. This mechanism will invoke speech on the machine where the macro is actully executed.
There is also a text to speech driver which allows you to invoke speech on other machines. CQC is a fully network distributed system and you can have drivers (both to control devices and to provide services such as text to speech) installed on any machine in the network. By providing a text to speech driver, CQC allows you to make any machine in the network speak. This can be very useful in many cases.
In addition to just providing support for the speaking of lines of text, the driver provides some interesting additional features. You can have it repeat a phrase periodically, a reminder for instance, every X seconds.
Also, you can have it do a 'countdown'. In other words, you can have it repeat a phrase every X seconds, in which there is a replacement parameter that is replaced by a current count. You can set that count (in seconds) and the driver will start counting down the seconds to zero, repeating the phrase and placing the current countdown value into the text.
Though I like to use it to do "This apartment will self destruct in 30 seconds", "This apartment will self destruct in 20 seconds", type countdowns, to scare my neighbors, you can use it for things such as a countdown for disarming a security system, or other situations of that type.
User Interface Improvements
---------------------------------------
Significant work was done on the user interface system in this release. Many of the improvements are useful for the adminstrator of the system, by making it easier to create user interfaces, but the sexy ones of course are all the visual goodies. This section will discuss some of these changes, and provide some example demo interfaces, to help graphically demonstrate the new features.
Note that the example interfaces displayed here use a scheme commonly employed in CQC, which is to have a single main interface, and to have a set of buttons that load up various smaller interfaces into a central area. All the buttons in the Options section to the right load up 'overlays', which are just smaller interfaces, into the central area of the main image. This both saves time by allowing you to provide common functionality once, and allows for more flexibility in reuse of sets of overlays that provide access to common types of functionality
Click here for a full sized version
Alpha Transparency
You can now use both constant alpha and source alpha transparency. This allows you to blend images into the background in interesting ways. It's a key means of creating very sexy looking displays. In the above example, you can see the volume knob is blended into the background, so tha tthe texture shows through. Also, though it's really only apparent in the full size image, the current button is using alpha to become brighter and more transparent.
Another nice use of transparency is to do a set of buttons (such as numeric) that have no color of their own, i.e. they are just gray scale, and which therefore can be used on pretty much any background and displayed slightly transparently. This makes them pick up a little of the underyling background's color, so that they look like they are designed for that background, but are really just generic.
Input Focus
The interface viewer now has the concept of input focus, which it did not previously. This allows you to navigate around with the arrow keys and invoke buttons with the enter key. To support this, buttons now allow you to indicate focus in a few different ways.
If you are using images for your buttons, then there is a new 'focus' image option, in addition to the 'unpressed' and 'pressed' images. In the examples here, this is the scheme used. Actually the same image is being used, but its transparency options are different. So as you arrow around, the active button lights up nicely and becomes more transparent.
If the button doesn't use images, but it uses flyover emphasis, that will be used. Flyover allows you to have some visual attribute change when the mouse is over the widget. So far the only attribute supported is the text color. If you notice in these examples, the active button also has brighter text because the mouse was over them when the image was snapped. But if the button doesn't use images, the focus mechanism will use this flyover color change to indicate emphasis as well.
If you have neither of those, then a default red 'emphasis cursor' is displayed, which is just a rounded box around the button.
Interface Driver
There is also now a CQC device driver for the user interface viewer. This means that you can, among other things, drive the user interface focus movement and button invocation via an IR remote. The driver allows you to do arrow up, down, left, and right, enter, and to invoke the blanker.
For those folks who are displaying the control interface on their projector, this is obviously of great utility if they don't want to use a mouse to navigate the control interface. Of course for general IR control you can just train CQC to invoke macros upon receipt of an IR signal. Since you are talking to an IR reciever driver running under the CQC service, you don't have to be logged on to invoke these types of IR driven events.
DirecTV Logo Widget
There is now a specialized image display widget for DirecTV logos. You can see it in the above example. You just associate it with the 'Channel' field of a DirecTV set top box, and it will automatically display the logo for that channel (if it is available.) This is a very helpful 'power assist' type tool. You could do the same thing using the existing capabilities, i.e. the 'mapped image' widget, which allows you to set up the mappings from a field value to the image displayed, but it would be tedious for such a large number of images. With this new widget, you just pop one into the interface and all of that is handled for you.
Nested Overlays
Though these examples don't demonstrate it, overlays can contain other overlays now. This is very convenient when you want to create, as discussed above, overlays that provide common chunks of functionality. Previously, if that functionality required the ability to load up overlays, you couldn't do it in a template that would be loaded as an overlay.
The interface system will insure that you create no recursive links, and the viewer will automatically remove any offending overlays if that would happen. They only work 'downward', so a link button in an overlay can only target a child overlay, not one above it. This also promotes the building of 'standalone' overlays that can be reused and insures you don't do anything wierd.
Hierarchical Image Repository
All the images used in user interfaces are uploaed to CQC's image repostory (on the master server) where they are available to any other machine on the network running (or desinging) interfaces. This repository used to be a flat list, but it is now hierarchical, so you can much better arrange and categorize your images. It also allows Charmed Quark to deliver pre-fab image sets without possible name clashes. All CQC images are in the /System scope, and all user images are now in the /User scope.
The standard file browsing dialog has been extended to support image preview, so it can be used to browse the image repository just like it is a local disk, and you can see thumbnails of the images as you browse.
Weather Data
There is a new Weather Channel driver, which allows you to pull in data from the Weather Channel's XML data feed. This is something that has been on the list for some time, and it is nice to finally get it into place.
Click here for a full sized version
In this example, you can see the display of current conditions, plus 3 days of future condition forecasts. You can also see the use of another new specialized image widget, which understands the Weather Channel 'condition codes' and displays the correct icon for the reported conditions.
What the Future Holds
---------------------------------------
As you can see, CQC has made some major steps forward with this new release. It has always arguably had the most extensive back end tool set of the major software based control system, and now the front end is moving forward to the same level of power, and more of course is to come. The next major steps will be happening in two areas, 'power assist' tools and pre-packaged hardware based systems.
There will be a fairly quick followup release, probably a month from now, which will not introduce any major new features, but will concentrate almost completely on tools which assist you in the installation and configuration of the system. This is a major undertaking and the first cut of these tools won't be the ultimate versions, but it will be a major start, and will be improved significantly in subsequent releases. These tools will walk you through the steps of installing the system, choosing installation options, getting devices under control, setting up IR control, and generating some standard user interfaces so that you can get going quickly with a quite nice system, and then take your time to learn and tweak the system to be exactly want you want.
There is also a big movement here towards beginning to provide CQC pre-packaged in hardware. This will be accomplished in a few incremental steps. Firstly, we will start offering CQC in a very small form factor system with attached touch screen, pre-configured with the needed hardware, and if you are interested in such services, pre-configured with drivers for your devices. These initial systems will be general purpose PCs running XP, just slimmed down and dedicated to this task. This will be happening very soon.
Next we will be moving forward into more touch screen systems, based on Embedded XP, with a wireless touch screen running the interface viewer and a controller system in the closet/rack controlling the devices. This will be a higher end system of course, for those folks who don't want a directly attached touch screen.
And finally we will be moving into a fully custom designed enclosure for a wireless touch screen, and either a rack mount or custom cased PC in the closet or rack handling control, or a fully 'no moving parts' appliance type controller in the closet or rack, for those folks looking for fixed function but highly robust control systems.
We will also be moving into the WinCE world here soon, so the user interface client will be available on things like PocketPCs or other smaller touch screen devices for wall mounting. This will be an incremental move, with more and more of the user interface functionality being supported as we move forward. But a core set of features will be available initially. Because of the massive difference in screen real estate between a normal 12" or 14" or 17" touch screen and a PocketPC, and the differences in capabilities between a desktop/XP system and WinCE systems, you'd probably always being designing interfaces specifically for these small clients anyway.
All of these systems will be well under half the price of what you would pay for a Crestron system of similar utility, so they will provide very high bang for the buck for customers who want to move into the control world, but don't want to pay huge bucks just to get the hardware, or pay someone huge bucks to set up the hardware once obtained. The software only version will still be available as a separate product for those who want to roll their own, or who already have a robust network infrastructure in their home that they want to build on.
I will also let everyone know that CQS will soon no longer stand for Charmed Quark Software, but Charmed Quark Systems, Limited. We have now incorporated, and soon the web site will have a new look and feel and we'll have a spiffy new logo for the new company, and I'll be changing over to the new name in all my postings.
Click here for a full sized version
What's Available
---------------------------------------
CQC consists of a 'base package' and a number of optional packages. The base package provides all that most folks will need, though in some cases they might want to pick up one or two optional packages.
The base package provides the following features:
- Network distributed front and back end architecture
- User drawn interface development and deployment tools
- IR control
- X-10 control
- Serial and socket device control
- Macro development tools
- Device driver development tools (what would be called 'plug ins' in some systems)
- Security and user management
- Scheduled Events Server. As discussed above allows you to schedule events to occur at regular interfaces.
- Application Control. If you want to control other applications as though they were devices, then you need to get the application control system. It allows applications to be managed via standard CQC device drivers, so that they integrate cleanly into the CQC system (within the natural limits imposed by the fact that applications are often not designed to be controlled.)
- XLM Gateway Server. Provides a simple XML over Sockets interface into the CQC system, to support third party clients.
Give it a Try
---------------------------------------
CQC is available for use in trial mode for 30 days, without any encumberances. So you can fully evaluate it for a month without commitment. If you decide to buy at any time within the trial period, you can convert your existing trial system into a fully licensed system without any interruptions.
CQC is also safe to try. It does not install any system files, or modify your configuration in any way except to create some start menu items and to create a small registry entry. It also creates a service, but all of the files it uses are within the CQC directory. So if you decide not to commit, just use the uninstaller and it can be completely removed without any danger of destabilization of your system.
So feel free to give it a try and see if suits your needs. CQC provides a lot of functionality, all under one roof, where it can be managed and configured as a whole, and where the pieces are designed from day one to work together seemlessly and will continue to do so into the future. You don't have to master multiple systems and tie them together yourself, and hope that they do not diverge at some point, leaving you in the lurch, nor do you have to worry about the security of multiple systems not designed to provide comprehensive built in, user based security.
CQC can adapt to scenarios from a locked down, kiosk mode system, up to a "PC based and not ashamed of it" full home network in which every machine is a CQC node, so it is applicable to many sorts of control system topology and usage patterns, and can change easily over time because of the flexible nature of software based systems.
CQC is licensed on a network basis. So the price is basically for a license to run the 'master server' on one machine. You can then run the other client and server components on other machines in your network as desired. So the price compared to some other options is more competative than it might seem once you move off a single machine configuration.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected], or you can register on the CQC support forums and join the growing comemunity of CQC users, many of whom can provide you with help and practical experience.
