Crestron
e-control Mail SW-MAIL
8
••
Introduction
Installation & Reference Guide — Doc. 5798
Introduction
What is Crestron e-control Mail?
Crestron
e-control Mail
(SW-MAIL) empowers any Crestron control system with the
ability to construct and transmit, and receive and view e-mail messages.
Simply by asserting specific signals, your control systems can send arbitrary text,
whole text files, canned messages, alerts, status updates,
etc.,
to any e-mail address.
Messages can be sent to a control system for display and to assert specific signals.
The term “server” does not imply
a need for specialized hardware.
Any PC meeting the minimum
requirements on page 11 will
suffice to run
swserver.exe
.
The actual e-mailing is not carried out by the control systems themselves, but by a
remote e-e-mail host. The control system relies on intermediaries to translate
communications protocols and supply other services. One of these intermediaries is
the freely distributed Crestron
e-control Software Server.
SW-MAIL is a licensable
component of this “server” application (
swserver.exe
) which is hosted on a
standard PC running Windows
®
95/98/NT and provides the following core
technologies:
•
Signal-level communications with the control system
•
Access to database tables
•
Access to external services (such as e-e-mail hosts) through the PC’s network
connection.
The server is connected to the control system via either a serial cable through an
RS-232 port or an Ethernet network through a LAN port. To effect the latter type of
connection, the control system relies on an intermediary, the Crestron
CNX Gateway,
to translate communications protocols.
To aid in making all this clear, the following illustrated discussion of system
terminology and topology should prove useful at this point.
System Terminology and Topology
This manual simultaneously discusses several different inter-connected computer
systems. To reduce confusion, throughout the manual, these systems are referred to
using the terms in the following table. (Also refer to the diagrams on the next page.)
Term
Explanation
The
system
or
the control system
One of a number of Crestron
control
system(s),
which may include any combination
of the following models:
CNMS
,
CNRACK
,
CNMSX
-
PRO
,
CNMSX
-
AV
, and
CNRACKX
.
The
server
or
the software server
The Crestron Software Server,
swserver.exe
, which runs on a PC under
Microsoft
®
Windows
®
95 or Windows NT
®
.
The
gateway
or
the CNX Gateway
A communications conduit that sits between
the
server
and the control system(s).
The
host
or
the e-mail host
An e-mail host used for exchanging mail with
the
system
and other e-mail clients.
The
control system(s)
are connected to the
server
via direct RS-232 serial connection
or via TCP/IP to the
gateway
and thence via TCP/IP to the
server
.