May 3, 2022 - Bruce Levy of Parallax AV Design has developed his own control engine for AV programmers to use in large video distribution deployments. If you are looking for a control alternative and know a little something about programming, this might be your next control solution! Of course, Bruce has made sure that his platform works flawlessly with AVPro Edge products.

The Parallax Control Engine is a control system environment that can be installed on a Raspberry Pi4 (OS-Lite Server) or hosted virtually in the cloud on an AWS Lightsail Server (Ubuntu Server OS). It was developed to be used by C# Programmers in the AV industry.

The Parallax Control Engine bypasses the need for proprietary hardware, out-of-date software, and limited UI tools that have become common among control system manufacturers. Instead, Bruce created this system to work with Unity Software as the front-end interface. Industries have adopted the Unity Game Engine outside video gaming, such as film, automotive, architecture, engineering, construction, and the United States Armed Forces. Additionally, it is common to find programmers who have learned C# on Unity, making it easier for AV integrators to find programmers capable of developing with tools they already know.

Programmers familiar with Digital, Analog, and Serial Joins will find it easy to link control programming to the user interface application. With Unity, you can easily create interfaces by dragging and dropping buttons, sliders, and even your own custom-built tools right onto the canvas. Simply wire up the join numbers and export them to any iPad or Android tablet.

DRIVERS

Additionally, drivers that integrate with the Parallax Control Engine are being created to quickly integrate with major AV products such as AVPro Edge, Biamp, Aver, Brainboxes, and more. Our AVPro Edge Library can be copied into the project for use with your control system program, simply add it as a reference and start using it.

Getting started is as easy as flashing an SD card with Pi Imager and executing our setup script. After that, drop the AVPro Edge Library into your project file. From there, you’ll be able to make calls to control your AVPro Edge gear with any iPad or Android tablet.