Genie of the Lamp

Friday, October 23, 2009 by Jae Jin Park

Imagine, if you will, lying down on your couch in your new home theater. And with the touch of your finger tip, the window shades are drawn, the screen comes down, the lights dim, and the projector turns on and shows the movie you’ve been waiting to see… This is the beauty of the automation and system integration. The same thing can be done in commercial environments as well. Pushing one button can close the shade, lower the screen, turn on the projector, turn your audio system on – and without a single popping noise – and that just scratches the surface.  In a previous blog, I briefly mentioned how intelligent some products are. Projectors that can shut themselves  down if there’s a fatal error, amplifiers that  can monitor the status of speakers, DSPs (digital signal processors) that  can automatically switch to backup audio cables if the main audio cables are damaged.  Most importantly, those products report the occurrence in a certain protocol which can be monitored and can even generate an e-mail to whoever needs to know about it. And they can be programmed to remind you that it’s maintenance time, too.

But all the great features of automation and monitoring require intensive programming. It’s not as easy as rubbing an old lamp and having a Genie present you with 3 wishes.  But if you let your A/V vendor know what you functionality you’re looking for with your system, they will let you know if it’s possible – and within budget or not. At CTS Audio, we have factory trained and certified programmers to help you with this. So let us know what you have in mind!