Specifications

Becoming an openGear
®
partner and being able to create
openGear
®
compatible cards is a straightforward process.
Companies sign a simple license agreement with Ross Video
which gives them access to the hardware and software
specications and the right to use the openGear
®
logos.
Ross Video does not charge any royalties and there is a
single annual $1,000 fee to cover some of the openGear
®
website and other general marketing costs. There are no
exclusive rights within openGear
®
to any card or product type
- any company can create any product they like – including
those that compete directly with Ross. Open competition
on products within the frame is one of the strong reasons
customers want to adopt openGear
®
. Customers can buy
the best product to meet their needs, price and delivery from
whomever they wish and still have a single frame and control
system standard.
Ross Video manufactures all of the frames, power supplies
and network cards for openGear
®
. These are provided to all
of the openGear
®
partners at an OEM discount. Since frames
are a loss leader in the industry, the goal here is to consolidate
production to increase volumes and hopefully drive costs
down over time. Virtually all of the prot on terminal equipment
is made on the functional cards that plug into the frame. The
frames are generically branded openGear
®
in the top right
corner of the front of the frame and partner companies have
a location to add their own brand in the top left corner of the
frame before shipping to the end customer.
Every openGear
®
card can be controlled by DashBoard,
the Ross control system software graphical user interface.
DashBoard is provided to customers and partners at no
cost and can be downloaded from the openGear.tv website.
DashBoard allows customers to congure card settings as well
as see all of the status and alarm information for openGear
®
frames and cards. DashBoard is java-based and runs on
Windows, Mac and Linux systems, thus tting right in to
virtually any IT environment.
The openGear
®
frame contains a network card which
aggregates the communication from all of the cards in the
frame and makes it available to the IP network via the Ethernet
Port on the rear of the openGear
®
frame. Each openGear
®
card talks to the network card inside the frame using OGP, the
openGear
®
Protocol. Through this protocol, cards describe
themselves, indicate how many controls they have, the names
of those controls, the minimum and maximum value of each
control, as well as a number of other pieces of information. This
mechanism allows cards to be controlled by DashBoard with
absolutely no changes required in the DashBoard software, the
only software a partner needs to write is inside their own card.
Customers benet in many ways by choosing openGear
®
.
First, they have a wide range of choices and competition within
the platform – great products at great prices from a large and
growing variety of vendors. Second, openGear
®
keeps the cost
of ownership down signicantly by reducing the complexity and
the number of systems to learn. Once a customer understands
the openGear
®
frame and DashBoard, they don’t have to
relearn it for new openGear
®
products regardless of which
company makes the cards. Third, openGear
®
can also be much
more space efcient since empty frame slots have many other
products to ll them instead of being limited to the offerings
from only one company. This reduces the number of frames,
power supplies and network card slots that the installation
requires driving costs down yet again!
The openGear
®
ecosystem has grown even larger with the
addition of openGear
®
Connect. openGear
®
Connect opens
the DashBoard control and monitoring system beyond
openGear
®
frame-based products. openGear
®
Connect
is for products that for some reason don’t make sense as
openGear
®
cards but could benet from integration to the
DashBoard control system. With openGear
®
Connect, any
equipment that has an Ethernet connection can appear in
DashBoard. These frames can contribute alarm and signal
status information alongside the openGear
®
card information.
In addition, an openGear
®
Connect compatible product can
also be fully controlled within DashBoard if that company
desires. openGear
®
Connect is made available at no cost
and with no royalties required to both customers and other
broadcast equipment manufacturers.
Implementing openGear
®
Connect is quite straightforward;
there is a simple no-fee license to sign. Once signed, Ross
Video provides all of the documentation required about the
openGear
®
Connect protocol. There is no software of any kind
that is required to be written inside DashBoard by another
company for their product to become openGear
®
Connect
compatible, they only have to implement the openGear
®
Connect protocols within their products.
openGear
®
has had great success with 4 industry awards,
more than 25 partner companies on board developing
products for the openGear
®
platform, and new partners joining
every month. There is an extremely wide array of solutions
available from 3G video, to digital audio, IRDs and ber. The
whole range can be viewed on the openGear.tv website.
We hope you agree that openGear
®
is an important
advancement in the broadcast industry and whether you
are a customer or potential partner we would be pleased to
speak with you about how openGear
®
can be of benet to
your organization.
We decided we
should create an
industry standard for
terminal equipment.
This t perfectly with
our code of ethics
‘#1: We will always
act in our customers’
best interest.’
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