Touch10 working with AMX and Crestron

[Irshad Ali]

hello team,

Do you have more information on the touch10 working with the AMX and Crestron? The integration story.

[keglass]

Irshad,

Since you are a Cisco Partner, I recommend you post this request to the Cisco Partner Community for more appropriate information and feedback.

TelePresence

I hope this helps. Thank you for participating in the community.

Kelli Glass

Moderator for Cisco Customer Communities

[kinguye2]

Hi Irshad,

Thanks for your interest. Are you talking about in-room controls on the Touch 10? If so, here's a video that describes it in more detail: Cisco In-Room Control Puts You in Control - YouTube. If you have any specific questions about reviewing this, I'd be happy to refer you to the product manager.

Regards,

Kim

[skilambi]

Kim

While it's nice to see a marketing slick like this and I also have an editor doc to create third party controls on Touch 10, what I really need from Enrico or other folks in the BU is a clear white paper showing where you still need to lead with the third party control vs Cisco. I see references to selecting sources which was supposed to come out in CE8.2(but i think was pushed) and I also see responses that "most" items can be done with Cisco touch.  But then what are the caveats that can't be done yet? The issue is you have A/V Crestron folks who aren't super deep in what Cisco is doing and we rely on those folks to interface with us. So you get into a lot of FUD where they are used to doing this with Crestron touch because that's what their skills are based on and we need a good white paper with a Pros/Cons on what the Cisco touch 10 can do and where u still need a third party touch

Hope this makes sense

[Patrick Sparkman]

Starting with CE8.1 you can customize the Touch 10 and add controls for external room peripherals that are connected to either AMX or Crestron for example.  I have an SX80 that is setup to control a TV in my office, the Crestron processor is simply watching for events that are triggered when I control the TV using the Touch 10, the processor then sends the relevant commands to the TV.  Here is a link to the In-Room Control on Touch 10 Guide that helped me, and I'm not a great programmer or even know much at all, just enough to throw small simple programs together or fix existing ones.

The only limitation that I see, is if you have a lot of things you'd like to control, want to get fancy with the UI of the Touch 10, or the provided Touch 10 icons and menu options isn't enough for your needs.

[skilambi]

Patrick

Yes that's the same link I referred to in my post above. As you have said there are gaps in this solution. For example CE8.2 was supposed to have more updates on source selection. What if I have a board room and need to select multiple sources (DVD/Apple TV etc). Well in 8.2 they were supposed to add that, but does that handle all scenarios? The point is you have legacy Cisco UC partners and then you have A/V partners. Each come from their angles of expertise and experience and there is a happy middle ground which can be addressed with a nice BU white paper explaining clearly what you get out of the box and what you don't

I have my A/V vendors in fact doing the reverse which is make the Crestron touch look like the Cisco touch 10. Of course you can't replicate everything and OBTP is a Cisco specific feature but their point being is that you need the control system anyway and if their touch can be be made to look UI close to touch 10, then remove the touch 10 and they are comfortable doing the programming

Hence my request again to the BU to create a positioning white paper covering scenarios where the touch 10 has gaps

[kinguye2]

I've asked the TME and PM to address your question.

[Enrico Conedera]

Hello Srinivasan - I understand your logic about wanting some technical positioning. As you say, native support for external video switchers was pushed back from CE8.2.  It is a simple matter to have a video switcher page using In-Room Control, but "native support" would mean that the Share tray would bring up all the sources attached to your external video switcher, which is more elegant.

I gave a presentation on Audio Visual Best Practices at CiscoLive, and I covered In-Room Control. The idea is that we can support a majority of conference rooms - 80% or more - using the Touch 10 as the only user interface.  Some of the benefits include a) no reprogramming necessary when Cisco releases a new feature like SpeakerTrack or PresenterTrack, b) resulting lower cost of ownership, and c) identical intuitive interface across all endpoints.  Customers have come to us, asking for us to open the APIs so they can use our Touch.  We are not trying to force this on the industry.  And, as you say, it still requires a control system processor - we depend on AMX, Crestron, Extron, etc to interface with the environment.  We don't have the physical interfaces or the expertise.

Crestron has released an In-Room Control module.

When will it not work? Let's consider two extremes: 1) a standard conference room with controls for lights, blinds, projector screen. 2) At the other extreme, a war room, with 20 screens on the wall and 25 potential sources, including video conferencing.

Obviously, the war room scenario is not meant to be controlled by a Touch 10.  Nor is any scenario where you need drag and drop source-to-destination video routing. But the standard conference room is well-served by the Touch 10.

Also, the In-Room Control is like a walled garden - you can put in pretty much any controls you need, but you are limited to our selection of icons and colors.  You can't use day-glo orange.  Nor can you use a custom graphic.

I think a white paper is a good idea, but I want to wait until we have native support for selecting sources from an external switcher. Hopefully that will come in the next release.

[skilambi]

Enrico

Thanks that's where I was going with this. The point of a white paper was to cover exactly the nuances you mention below so that when we have a AV guy saying flat out we can't do this because they are more comfortable with their systems we can point to this. It also helps us send them this when they have doubts whether something can be done or not.

Yes I have the recording of the session in May which you did at Pvt where you discuss these points mentioned above. I think the need of the hour is to cover this in a more technical white paper type doc that has these pros and cons laid out like you have here.

Obviously it's easy with the two scenarios you have above the basic room vs the war room. The challenge is there are in between rooms and that's where this will help.

To me the OBTP soon to be called the BGB feature is one of the biggest selling point of touch 10 so if I push for that I want to make sure the AV guy doesn't lose out on something the Crestron touch could have provided.

Thanks

Srini

[Irshad Ali]

Hi Enrico,

Can you please point me to this presentations ?

Also can I also chat with you?

Irshad

Sent from my iPhone

[skilambi]

Presentation is here

Advanced Custom Room Integration best practices with Cisco Codecs and Cameras (2016 Las Vegas)

[zenggt]

Hello, the video is private. Can you open up permissions?

[Wayne DeNardi]

If you search on the Cisco Live On-Demand Library for BRKCOL-3008, presentations from many of the previous Cisco Live events are accessible.