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SETTING UP CEC
Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) is a built in technology within HDMI, widely supported in modern TVs, AVRs,
Blu-Ray players and Media Centres.
INTRODUCTION
The Z88 has built in support for all CEC implementations from different vendors, where possible we have included
additional vendor specific support to maximise compatibility. That said implementation varies between different
brands and continues to improve, certain features described in this manual may not be available on all makes and
models in your setup. If we can detect that a feature is not supported, this incompatibility will be displayed in the
web interface.
DIFFERENT BRANDS
Common brand names for CEC are, (Samsung), BraviaLink or BraviaSync (Sony), EasyLink (Philips), SimpLink
(LG), VieraLink (Panasonic) Kuro Link (Pioneer) CE-Link and Regza Link (Toshiba), RIHD (Onkyo)
More and more devices are using the common name “HDMI-CEC”, often it is disabled by default, and you may
need to enable it in the settings menu before continuing. (Consult the manual for your source or sink device on how
to do this)
HOW IT WORKS AND SWITCHING SOURCES
Depending on the TV you are using will depend on exactly which button you press, for example, on a Sony TV you
press the “Sync Menu” button, this brings up a menu, from here select HDMI Device selection and your source
devices are listed, if you have customised their names, these names will be listed.
The order in which they are displayed may change from time to time, there is no ability to specify the sort order of
devices in these lists. In other brands, simply pressing the “Source” button will list all of the devices alongside other
inputs (such as Network or USB media)
ACCESSING THE MATRIX WITHOUT
AN INTERNET CONNECTION
While the Z88 works best with an active internet connection it is possible to still configure and operate the system
without one. However to configure the system from its defaults a local network connection is required. Normal
operation of the CEC and IR control systems does not require any network connection, but IP based API control or
Web based controlled does require a persistent network connection.
DISCOVERY TOOL
You can download a discovery tool from the Pulse-Eight monitoring portal at http://monitoring.pulse-eight.com/ this
program will run on Windows 7 or newer only, when run it will scan your network and detect the IP address of your
matrix. If you have multiple matrix systems on the same network, the discovery tool will only display the last found. If
you do have more than one system, it is advised that you disconnect other systems first.
The discovery tool will display the IP address of the matrix, you can then access the matrix by typing that IP address
into your web browsers address bar.
It is recommended in this mode that you configure the networking to use a static IP address, this allows for you to
bookmark the page easily and return to the web interface easily without needing to run the discovery tool again.
THIRD PARTY CONTROL DRIVERS
You can control the matrix via IR, Serial or our recommended method, TCP/IP. We supply drivers for common control
systems, including Control 4, AMX, Crestron, RTI and Elan. We are constantly improving our native integration with
other platforms, more information and driver downloads are available at http://monitoring.pulse-eight.com/
API REFERENCE
We provide a fully documented API for the matrix, this is available in the Pulse-Eight monitoring portal
(http://monitoring.pulse-eight.com/). You must be logged in to access it.
If you have questions, please speak with your distributor, we are not able to provide programming support directly.
