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SIMPL Bridging

hvolmer edited this page Feb 13, 2020 · 14 revisions

SIMPL Windows Bridging

Essentials allows for devices defined within the SIMPL# Pro application to be bridged to a SIMPL Windows application over Ethernet Inter System Communication (EISC). This allows a SIMPL Windows program to take advantage of some of the features of the SIMPL# Pro environment, without requiring the entire application to be written in C#.

Some of the main advantages are:

  1. The ability to instantiate devices from configuration.
  2. The ability to leverage C# concepts to handle data intensive tasks (Serialization/Deserialization of JSON/XML, etc.).
  3. The ability to reuse the same compiled SIMPL Windows program (regardless of target processor type) by offloading all the variables that may be room or hardware specific to Essentials.
  4. The ability to handle multiple communciation types generically without changing the SIMPL Program (TCP/UDP/SSH/HTTP/HTTPS/CEC, etc.)
  5. Much faster development cycle
  6. Reduced processor overhead
  7. Ability to easily share devices defined in Essentials between multiple other programs

Common Use Cases

  1. There are 10 conference rooms that all operate the same, but have hardware differences that are impossible to account for in SIMPL Windows. For example, each room might have a DM-MD8X8 chassis, but the input and output cards aren't all in the same order, or they might be different models but function the same. You can use Essentials with a unique configuration file for each hardware configuration.
  2. You have a floor of conference rooms that all share some centralized hardware like DSP, AV Routing and a shared CEN-GWEXER gateway with multiple GLS-OIR-CSM-EX-BATT occupancy sensors. All the shared hardware can be defined in the Essentials configuration and bridged over an EISC to each program that needs access. The same device can even be exposed to multiple programs over different EISCs.
  3. You have a SIMPL program that works for many room types, but because some rooms have different models of processors than others (CP3/CP3N/AV3/PRO3/DMPS3 variants), you have to maintain several versions of the program, compiled for each processor model to maintain access to features like the System Monitor slot. You can use Essentials running in a slot on a processor to expose the System Monitor and many other features of the processor, regardless of model. Now you only need to maintain a single SIMPL program defined for your most complex processor application (ex. PRO3)

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