At the recent NAB convention in Las Vegas (USA),
the first CopperLan licensee in the broadcast industry, Radio Systems Inc. of Logan New Jersey, was unveiling its new modular radio console system that uses the CopperLan technology to handle command and control while the audio streaming relies on Livewire, a technology from Axia Audio.
The new PLATFORM console includes multiple physical and virtual control surfaces, each controlling one or more audio engines.
Given their high performance standards and long list of required features for connection and communication, Radio Systems found with CopperLan a ready-made comprehensive solution, dramatically reducing the integration effort.
Using CopperLan was also fulfilling the desire to provide openness and collaboration in system control, enabling the broadcast community to benefit from manufacturers and products that work well together.
The show was a very good opportunity for us to meet and discuss in details the implementation of CopperLan’s broadcast solutions.
We spent a fair share of time with manufacturers of outboard gear. Among them, those whose products rely on GPIO find network solutions, however appealing, unfortunately rather tedious to implement and maintain, given the usual associated software issues. It is precisely this stumbling block that gets removed with CopperLan’s software offering.
Not only do we maintain the CopperLan service on six different platform and OS variations, but we also provide universal Manager software that allows editing of any CopperLan compliant product, hence not mandating the supply of any computer application software.
Our single-chip drop-in Ethernet solution was equally found a valuable asset in product development as it provides the benefit of distributed intelligence even in simple controls, such as those found in radio turrets.
The remainder of our time at the show was devoted to companies that produce consoles and more complex systems. Since they are unavoidably confronted with challenging network and automation issues, they voiced their appreciation for our zero-configuration non-IP based protocol that eliminates the risk of interference/conflict with other network streams or potential hacking.
The VPN (virtual private network) capability was also praised as it allows instant maintenance calls or remote radio performance over the Internet.
For many, an element of surprise was the fact that CopperLan does not mandate the use of computers (a setup can indeed consist of hardware units only, and since there is no "master unit", there is no critical gear whose failure could jeopardize the entire system).
We believe this convention was a successful and rewarding event for CopperLan not only in the light of the many constructive meetings we had, but also because of the interesting requests, suggestions and feedback on behalf of the community.
This strengthens our belief that our ready-made solution will further instill inspiration in the design of innovative products.
