Endeleo UDM1604
22 February 2006, 07:00 by Chad Reynoldson
I recently worked on a large project with my friends from SKC that had several Endeleo UDM1604 boxes. These boxes are essentially a cat5 distribution system capable of matrix switching 4 analog inputs (VGA, composite, s-video, component) or 4 TVM inputs to 16 cat5 outputs.
Endeleo connects the cat5 outputs to a UDM RX01 receiver. These receivers implement skew compensation and are even phantom powered. The delivery is video, audio, and control (232 and/or IR).
Endeleo also provides Integrated Device Management (IDM â„¢), enabling control of both centrally located devices and the end display devices.
The UDM1604 is controlled via IP or 232. Through this single point of control, you are able to control devices at each of the 16 receivers. Our implementation was 232.
The unit does require an authentication process before you can control it, but this was just a minor inconvenience and easily overcome with code.
It also requires “Slip Encapsulation” which simply means you need to escape any 0xC0 data values with (0xDB,0xDC) and any 0xDB data values with (0xDB,0xDD). Again, this is easily overcome with code.
Documentation Comments (gotchas)
Here is an important note, the *documentation is in decimal*. I could not find in the manual where this is stated. You read about “Slip Encapsulation” early on in the manual and you may easily mis-interpret the examples as displaying hex values. Really the only hex values are the escaped bytes, the rest are in decimal. *What does this mean? Well, take the login command for instance. It is listed in the documentation as 98 (decimal). If you send 0×98, it won’t work.*
Another important note, with the send remote command, you must send 2 bytes, the first byte is the “IR Code” from the table and a 0×00 value for the second byte. *If you only send a single byte, it will not work.* I’m guessing this table will expand from 255 entries for future use.
Common commands
Some of the key commands an integrator will implement include:
-Login / Logout (I never logged out, don’t know why you would)
-Connect input to port (matrix switching)
-Disconnect port (blank the output)
-Set remote device protocol (baud up to 38400 , parity, etc)
-Send remote device command (absolute command control Didn’t get this to work )
-Send remote command (generic template driven control)
Summary
This is a good piece of equipment to control. It does what it states in the documentation. If you follow my “gotchas” I identified above, you should not have any problems.
I did write a driver file for it. If you’re interested, drop me an email and I can send it to you.
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