Contemporary Research ICE-HE, Product Manual, Page: 12 / 19

Contemporary Research
12 ICE-HE Ethernet Head End
Overview
RS-232 control for up to 4000 iC-Net devices is provided through an iC series Head-End Network
Controller. The ICC-HE Head-End manages iC-Net communication over RF Coax to ICC-series devices
as well as ICW-series devices over twisted-pair Cat3/5 wiring. The ICW-HE Head-End operates on the
Cat5 network only.
Each device is assigned a unique device number from 1 to 4000 to which control commands are
addressed. The devices are organized into 16 zones of 255 devices. All the devices in each zone will
respond to a single “virtual device number” — one device number that represents all devices in each
zone. There is also a global device number, 4095, that will command all devices in the system. This
feature dramatically speeds up system operation and programming, because one command can affect
an entire group of devices—or all. To take advantages of this feature, review the section iC-Net Zones
in this manual.
In ABC-Net Media Retrieval Systems, we reserve the first group of devices, 1-255, for components
operating on a connected control system. Zones 1-16 are used for CR TV Controllers, Video Display
Controllers and Tuners. As it’s unlikely any system will use all 4000 devices, this may be a good device
standard for your system as well.
The Remote RS-232 port on the Head-End Network Controller can communicate from 1200 to 38.4K
baud. The factory default setting is 19.2K baud, 8 data bits, No parity, and 1 stop bit.
Command String Structure
Characters in command strings are expressed in
a combination of hex and ASCII characters.
 Single-byte hex numbers are preceded
by the ‘$’ symbol
 ASCII characters or strings are
enclosed in single quotes

Numbers not marked as hex or ASCII
are a single decimal byte

Parameters shown in < > brackets are
single byte

A series of multiple commands or
parameters are set apart by [ ]
brackets

Commas separate the bytes, but are
not part of the protocol

Double quotes enclose the command
string, but are not part of the protocol
Command format
“$A5,<dh>,<dl>,<ncb>,<cmd1>,<parameter> [<cmdN>]"
$A5 Starts the command
<dh> The zone or high order byte of the device
<dl> The unit or low order byte of the device (0
for global zone)
<ncb> The number of command bytes to follow
<cmd1> The first command byte
<parameter> Command parameters (not used by all
commands)
[<cmdN>] Multiple commands can be concatenated,
with byte count added to <ncb>