Hardware Service v5 - Version History

v5.19.1 6th December 2023

New Features/Changes:

• The Hardware Service Monitor and Hardware Configuration have new menu and button options to check for software updates.

The following issues have been fixed:

• During some reconfiguration actions of Virtual GPIO devices and AEQ interfaces, the Service would sometimes restart unexpectedly.

v5.18.4 28th March 2023

The following issues have been fixed:

• Myriad Playout 6 connections would occasionally stop working after a short period of time.
• Virtual GPIO Devices: UDP data was being wrongly oversanitised to replace any `CRLF` sequences with `CR` meaning it would no longer match with a terminator set to `CRLF`.
  •  Important: If you are using a source that sends UDP packets to the Hardware Service you should check and update your Termination character in the Virtual Device settings.

v5.18.3 9th March 2023

The following issues have been fixed:

• Hardware Service: Fix to SmartSign2 not being unable to register for hardware line notifications.

v5.18.2 22nd February 2023

The following issues have been fixed:

• Hardware Service: The Service Monitor window would open not visible on some Windows systems.

v5.18.1 30th January 2023

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service:

• Adds initial support for Myriad Playout v6.
• Internal changes and performance improvements for connections from SmartSign v2.

v5.17.1 9th August 2022

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service:

• The Virtual Network Device can now send a HTTP GET request to a URL you specify whenever a line changes state.

The following issues have been fixed:

• Client disconnections by the server due to a client timeout were sometimes not being detected by the clients themselves.

v5.16.1 January 2022

Other internal changes:

• Internal changes to ensure compatibility with future releases of other Broadcast Radio products.
• Minor changes to better handle concurrency when clients disconnect from the Virtual Network Device.
• Fixed incorrect detection of the connection state of a Virtual Network Device connecting out via TCP.

v5.15.1 14th July 2021

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service:

• Support for the P.I. Engineering USB GPIO device has been added. This device support up to 14 inputs and up to 12 outputs.

Hardware Configuration

• The Configuration window now highlights the Line Number column in green if the line goes high.  This can be useful for assigning correct line names to some devices.  Note that the device will need to be enabled, and the configuration saved before going back into the configuration window for this feature to work.

Logging:

• The Hardware Service now creates log files in the "C:\ProgramData\BroadcastRadio\Profiles\Profile1\Logs\HardwareService5" folder for all primary functions, as well as including detailed HEX format logs for data sent and recieved by the Virtual Network Devices. This makes is very easy to diagnose issues with serial and IP based devices where the formatting of the actual messages is unknown or unclear.

Other internal changes:

• Added SR based service interface for future Broadcast Radio products.

v5.14.1

Internal testing.

v5.12.1 6th January 2021

The following issues have been fixed:

• An error message would show about a COM port being in use when editing a Serial Device or Virtual Network Device with a COM port if a KMTronic LAN device had been enabled.
• The columns for devices in the Hardware Monitor have been made wider so longer line names are less truncated.
• Advanced Text Matching on the Virtual Network Device was not checking the day of the week for the Specific times filtering.

v5.11.2 24th June 2020

The following issues have been fixed:

• Virtual Network Device: When using the Advanced mode, if the string for any line contained certain characters such as asterisks then no strings would be matched.
• Virtual Network Device: An error was wrongly being displayed in the Service Events after a configuration change.
• AEQ Send/Receive: If these devices were disabled then the service could stop after a configuration change.

v5.11

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service:

Virtual Network Devices:

• The Virtual Network Device has a new command mode of Advanced Text Matching.  This allows the definition of custom commands with custom termination characters to Pulse lines or turn lines off, along with specific times of days to enable these commands.  The Pulse duration is 1 second.
• Advanced Text Matching can also be limited to only operate during specified time periods - for example, an incoming message might only be allowed to alter a Line's state during a certain show between 21:00:00 and 22:59:59.
• The Hardware service can now send a custom packet to connected clients in both TCP Listen and TCP Connect modes when a connection is initially made.
• The terminator for a command packet can now be customised rather than being fixed at a carriage-return CR (\r).  Any character or characters can be used by entering the hexadecimal ASCII value of the character prefixed with a percent symbol (%), e.g. %0D for a carriage-return CR (\r).

Patch Bay:

• The Patch Bay has two new directions - OneWayPulse & OneWayToggle.  OneWayPulse will pulse the destination line for 1 second when the source line changes to the Set, Flash or Pulse state; OneWayToggle will toggle the destination line state between Set and Clear only when the source line changes to the Set, Flash or Pulse state.
• Patch Bay Links can now be configured to either always activate, or only activate when another line is currently Set ("Constrained") - this allows you to easily configure a safety "enabler" line - for example a user might have to hold down a certain button connected to an input before other changes are patched across.
• The direction column on the Patch bay window has been moved to inbetween the 2 devices.
• The Patch Bay Link window now handles the ESC key to close the window.
• Tab keypress cycling on the Virtual Network Device panel has been improved.

Loading and Saving configurations:

• The configuration for a device can now be saved to and loaded from a Preset configuration file, for example to easily copy the configuration to a new device for modification, or to load the configuration for a device onto a different computer.

Hardware Monitor

Service Log:

• The connections display has been replaced with a new "Service Log" window that shows all active connections, but also a recent history of Service events to allow you quickly diagnose Service issues all in a single place.

The following issues have been fixed:

• Scrolling the line list while the Description edit field was visible would not hide it and it would then show on different lines as the grid was scrolled.

v5.9 28th February 2020

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service:

• Added support for P.I. Engineering X-Keys Switch Interface devices.  The USB-3 offers 3 input lines, the USB-12 offers 12 input lines through the use of Stereo 3.5mm jacks with splitters, or 6 lines with Mono 3.5mm jacks.

The following issues have been fixed:

• Hardware Service: If using the Virtual Network device with "Connect via TCP" enabled, the device would not behave correctly if "Keep Connected" was either enabled or disabled.

v5.8

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

• Added extra detection for changes in the way Advantech Devices are enumerated in the latest Advantech driver packages.

The following issues have been fixed:

• The Patch Bay Link window would not show the last line of a Hardware Device in the line list.
• An Information button has been added to the Advantech DAQ device panel in the Hardware Configuration, to show details about the device and its driver.

v5.7

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

The way the Virtual Network Device handles connected TCP clients has been improved to reduce connectivity issues.

v5.6

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

Broadcast Radio Switcher v1:

• Support has been added for the "Broadcast Radio Switcher v1".  This is a USB device that has either 2, 4 or 8 output relays.  Important note: Only one of these devices can be connected at a time.

AEQ Virtual GPI and Virtual GPO Devices:

• Support has been added for AEQ Virtual GPIO .  This provides 255 inputs and a separate 255 outputs.
• You can connect multiple "Send To AEQ Virtual GPI" devices - for example to a Forum IP Mixer in each studio.
• You only need a single "Receive From AEQ Virtual GPO" device which will recieve from any AEQ device on the network.

The following issues have been fixed:

Hardware Configuration

• The description of a missing device would lose the "Missing" text and the red forecolour after clicking on it in the tree view.
• The BMCM USB-PIO device would sometimes not work correctly after launching the Hardware Service until after editing it's configuration.

v5.4

New Features/Changes:

• An About window has been added to both the Configuration Editor and the Service Monitor.  The Service Monitor also now shows version information in the status bar.

The following issues have been fixed:

• A Virtual Network Device in connect mode would send line state changes to the server being connected to but would not read any changes from the server side.
• Fixed a problem with line state changes being sent to clients but sometimes not being patched through the Patch Bay.
• Line state commands received by a Virtual Network Device would sometimes not be put through the Patch Bay or sent to subscribed clients.
• Lines on the BMCM can only be set to Inputs or Outputs in 3 groups of 8, however the Hardware Configuration allowed setting them individually.  This has been fixed.

v5.3

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Configuration - Patch Bay

• The Patch Bay is a brand new feature that allows you to virtually interconnect GPIO lines on a Device to other lines on the same device, or on to other devices - for example a GPI on an Advantech device could be patched across to another line on a Virtual Network Device as well as to a relay output on a KMTronic device so that every time the line on the Advantech is activated, that is shown on the VND and also activates the relay on the KMTronic. Turning the line off likewise then turns off the patched lines.

Hardware Service

KMTronic Devices:

• Added support for the KMTronic USB 8 Channel Relay and the KMTronic UDP LAN 8 Channel Relay hardware devices.

v5.2

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Monitor

• The Connections window now acquires and displays connection information faster.

Hardware Configuration

• A Cancel button has been added to the Message Box that appears when clicking OK on the Hardware configuration window if changes have been made, keeping the window open.

v5.1

The following issues have been fixed:

Hardware Service

The Virtual Network Device may have provided erroneous notifications that a line state had changed when it had not.

Hardware Monitor

Received line state changes are now handled by the Hardware Monitor in a synchronous fashion.

v5.0.14.0

The following issues have been fixed:

Hardware Service

An issue that was introduced in v5.0.12.0 that would cause the Service to use excessive CPU cycles has been fixed.

Fixed an issue that would cause a broken TCP connection to a Virtual Network Device to terminate the hardware service.

Hardware Monitor

The Hardware Monitor now displays tooltips on hardware lines to make longer line names readable.

v5.0.12.0

The following issues have been fixed:

Hardware Service

The Virtual Network Device would not interface correctly with a Broadcast Radio SmartSign's GPIO Outputs.

Hardware Monitor

The Connections window would sometimes display the same information multiple times.

v5.0.11.0

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

NB.  Client applications that had previously been subscribed to an RS232 device, e.g. Myriad Logging, may need to be reconfigured to the use the correct device.

RS232 device configuration would not correctly handle missing devices.

Devices that were previously configured but are now missing when the Hardware Service is launched will remain in the configuration file.  These will now display in the Hardware Configuration Editor in red with the text "(missing)" on the end of their description.

RS232 Devices are now hard-linked to the available COM ports on the computer.  These will display in the Hardware Configuration Editor with the COM port name after their description.  Note that changing the COM port that a device is on within the Windows Device Manager will cause this device to appear in the Hardware Configuration Editor as a new (unconfigured) device, and the previous configuration will display as a separate (now missing) device.

Missing devices can be removed permanently from the configuration by right-clicking on the device in the Hardware Configuration Editor.  Such changes must be committed to the server by clicking OK on the configuration window.

Multiple Advantech DAQ devices are now matched to the correct Device Number.

Hardware Monitor

The Hardware Monitor now allows monitoring of an unlimited number of devices.

The Minimise button has been removed from the bottom right of the main window.

The Connections information window now shows an event history for the service and its clients.

Hardware Service

The Hardware Service no longer reads the state of RS232 devices during every processing pass.

v5.0.9.0

Other Changes:

• Rebuilt to use the latest common libraries.

v5.0.8.0

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

• Internal changes to improve communication with the Myriad v5 family.

v5.0.7.0

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

• Fixed an issue whereby the Hardware Service would not shutdown correctly when the computer was shutdown.
• Additional internal analytics have been added.

Hardware Monitor

• The connections window can now be refreshed with the F5 key.
• The connections window now lists a connection's Line subscriptions in ascending Line Number order.

v5.0.6.0

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

• Fixed an issue where changes in Output line states were not always being sent to subscribers
• Fixed an issue where the Virtual Network Device would append an incorrect terminator (“|”) when sending multiple Line states to subscribers.

Hardware Monitor

• Fixed an issue where the Service monitor would auto-refresh the display every 5 seconds.

v5.0.5.0

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

Addition of BMCM USB-PIO Devices

Support has been added for BMCM (www.bmcm.de) USB-PIO devices. These provide 24 GPIO pins, each of which can be configured to be an Input or an Output.

Hardware Configuration

Configuration has been updated to allow the addition and configuration of the new BMCM USB-PIO devices.

v5.0.4.0

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

Virtual Network Device

The Virtual GPIO Device (vGPIO) has been changed to that all lines are now described as "InputOutput" reflecting the fact that they can be used as either inputs or outputs. There is no longer any difference in how they behave. In previous releases of the HWService, the first 50 were "Inputs" and could only be "read" from.  All 100 lines are now "InputOutput" lines.

Support for SmartSign Lite  v1

The vGPIO device can now be used to interconnect multiple SmartSign Lite's so the HWService acts as a "hub" for sharing and distributing logic between different Signs. For example, if you have a SmartSign with an "input" line on line 1 connected to a switch,whenever that switch is pressed then the "ON" signal is used by the SmartSign locally, and also relayed onto the HWService as vGPIO InputOutput #1. If a second SmartSign is ALSO connected to the same vGPIO device and it's Pin 1 is configured as an Output, then it will be switched on whenever the switch is pressed on SmartSign 1.

v5.0.3.1

New Features/Changes:

Common

The protocol that the Hardware Service uses to communicate with it's clients has been changed to allow communication between Hardware Servers and Clients in separate security contexts (e.g. not in the same Active Directory Domain, or in separate disconnected AD environments

v5.0.2.2

New Features/Changes:

Hardware Service

Virtual Network Device

There is a new device type of the "Virtual Network Device" - this allows you to create virtual devices, each of which has 50 inputs and 50 outputs, but instead of these being connected to the physical world, instead it is controlled via TCP or UDP messages. Each VND can either wait for incoming connnections or connect "out" to a remote IP Address or UDP Endpoint.

Applications such as Myriad Logging v5 then see this as just another device, exactly the same as other devices such as Advantech cards etc. and can recieve inputs or send outputs in exactly the same way.

This is ideal for other devices such as digital mixing desks (e.g. Logitek, Axia etc) to trigger and respond to instructions from Broadcast Radio Software, as well as other devices - for example intelligent displays, switch matrices etc.

RS232 Device

Support for the forthcoming Broadcast Radio News Switcher v2 has been added. This is compatible with the original P Squared RS232 interface which was a simple 8 channel i/o interface where each line could be individually set as an input or an output and be controlled accordingly. This release of the Hardware Service only supports Outputs.

Hardware Configuration

Configuration has been updated to allow the addition and configuration of the new VND and RS232 devices.

Hardware Monitor

The System Tray icon is no longer changed when a hardware event has been recieved. Instead it's now a simple green or red icon that reflects the health of the connection to the Hardware Service.

v5.0.0.0

Initial Release