Alcorn Mcbride Digital Video Machine 4, User Manual

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Detailed Command Summary 13
Detailed Command Summary
Pioneer / AMI Protocol
The DVM4 uses the versatile Pioneer/Alcorn McBride Enhanced protocol.
Although multiple channels and graphical overlay features make
communicating with DVM4 slightly different, it still has much in common
with the command sets of our other products(i.e. DVM2).
This section discusses the most commonly used commands in detail, and then
lists the entire Pioneer/Alcorn McBride Inc. protocol for the DVM4 in tabular
form.
This ASCII based protocol is universal among all control interfaces for the
DVM4. Serial, Ethernet, Playlist, and Scheduler control all use this exact same
command structure to control the machine. This means that if you learn to
control the box with one interface (ie. RS-232 Serial), learning the rest will be
even easier since the commands themselves are identical. The only difference is
how these commands are inserted into each interface.
Commands sent
to individual
units using the
address operator
(@) will receive
a message
response, but a
wildcard message
will not.
Addressing Commands
Any command can be preceded by <ID>@ where <ID> is the ASCII
representation of the unit’s Device ID (‘0’-‘126’). This allows
commands to be sent to individual units in a control line of multiple
units. ‘127’ and ‘*’ act as wildcard ID’s; a command sent using ‘127’
or ‘*’ as the ID will cause all units in the control line to execute the
command. The Device ID can be assigned using the Set Device ID
command.
NOTE: Although it is shown in the protocol listings, it is NOT
mandatory to precede the serial message with the unit ID.
Channel Commands
The ‘c’ found in most of the following commands represents the
channel number you wish to issue that command. The ‘c’ field can be
represented by a channel number (1-4), or a wildcard operator (‘*’) if
you wish to apply it to all channels.
Group Commands
There are a few commands that require a ‘g’ field to represent a group.