Technical information

RMS Enterprise NetLinx Programmer’s Guide
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RMS Enterprise - NetLinx Programmer’s Guide
Control methods are named functions with an optional list of arguments that can be registered along with each monitored asset.
These registered control methods are accessible and can be invoked via the RMS web user interface. RMS Control Macros also
utilize these registered asset control methods to perform coordinated sequences of control events across multiple assets and/or
locations.
System Power
System Power provides a means to perform a system power ON or OFF on the control system platform. System power is an
abstract concept that was automatically registered in the RMS 3.x SDK. System power was composed of a "System Power"
parameter for each "System" and an i!-ConnectLinx function to turn the system power ON or OFF.
RMS Enterprise does not make any assumption and register a system power parameter on the control system asset or the asset
control methods for controlling system power by default. The control system monitoring module can however, be compiled to
include this parameter and control methods if desired.
The RMS Enterprise SDK does provide the system power mechanism and communication infrastructure to route the notifications,
but does not provide any concrete implementation behavior for what System Power ON or System Power OFF needs to perform. It
is the responsibility of the NetLinx programmer to provide this implementation where needed/desired.
See the Implementing System Power section on page 113 for more information.
System Modes
System Mode is also an abstract concept introduced in RMS Enterprise that can facilitate the needs where a system can be changed
to a concrete set of operational modes such as “Audio Conferencing”, “Video Conferencing”, “Presentation”, etc.
Like System Power, RMS Enterprise does not make any assumption and register the system mode asset control methods system
modes by default. The control system monitoring module can however, be compiled to include this support for control modes if
desired.
The RMS Enterprise SDK does provide the system mode mechanism and communication infrastructure to route the notifications,
but does not provide any concrete implementation behavior for what System Modes needs to perform. It is the responsibility of the
NetLinx programmer to provide this implementation where needed/desired.
See the Implementing System Modes section on page 114 for more information.
Source Usage
Source Usage is a tracking mechanism in RMS that can track the time that each source based device is in use. Source devices are
typically devices that provide source content for display such as rack computers, laptop inputs, DVD players, document cameras,
etc. The RMS 3.x implementation of source usage tracking was highly tied to the i!-ConnectLinx infrastructure and channel based
methodology.
RMS Enterprise takes a different approach to source usage tracking. Not wanting to make any assumption about how source
devices are tracked, the RMS Enterprise SDK requires the NetLinx programmer to be responsible for activating (and in some cases
deactivating) source devices in use.
The RMS Enterprise SDK provides more capabilities such as support for both mutually exclusive and non-mutually exclusive sets
of source devices as well as multiple source groups. The RMS Enterprise SDK provides a rich and more powerful set of APIs to
control the source usage behavior but does require the NetLinx programmer to implement the logic in their program.
See the Tracking Source Usage section on page 112 for more information.
Asset Power Monitoring / Energy Management
RMS Enterprise provides power rate (Watts) monitoring for all assets. By default if no specific asset power parameter is provided,
then the RMS server will provide estimated power consumption rates based on the assets power status and the asset type associated
to the asset.
If a special asset power consumption parameter is registered by the NetLinx programmer, then the server will discontinue any
assumed estimation behavior and the responsibility to update the power consumption rate will be that of the NetLinx program.
A special exception to this is AMX power monitoring equipment such as the NXA-PDU-1508-08 (Power Distribution Unit). A
NetLinx module is provided that will take ownership of providing power consumption rate information on behalf of other devices
that are plugged into the PDU's physical outlets. A device to outlet port mapping is required in the NetLinx program to make these
associations.
Please see the Asset Power / Energy Consumption section on page 112 for more information on implementing the PDU.