Conference Composer User Guide Copyright © 2001 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Because of technical progress, specifications are subject to change without notice. The Polycom logo and Vortex® are registered trademarks of Polycom, Inc.. Polycom, Inc. Installed Voice Business Group 1720 Peachtree Street NW, Suite 220 Atlanta, GA 30309-2439 Phone: (800) 932-2774, (404) 892-3200 Fax: (404) 892-2512 www.aspi.com Technical Support: (800) 932-2774 vortex@polycom.com CCUG-0100-01 CONFERENCE COMPOSERTM USER GUIDE Conference ComposerTM Software ..............................................................2 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2 Installation.............................................................................................................. 2 Features of the Conference Composer Window ..................................................... 3 Operating Conference Composer...................................................................5 Device Parameters .........................................................................................8 System ..................................................................................................................... 8 Options.................................................................................................................... 9 Mic/Line Inputs....................................................................................................... 11 Input Filters ............................................................................................................ 12 Automixer................................................................................................................ 13 EF Bus .................................................................................................................... 14 Matrix Mixer........................................................................................................... 15 Output Filters ......................................................................................................... 17 Outputs.................................................................................................................... 17 Logic Input.............................................................................................................. 18 Logic Output ........................................................................................................... 19 Presets..................................................................................................................... 20 Macros .................................................................................................................... 20 Diagnostics ............................................................................................................. 20 Project Files and Creating Reports ................................................................21 File Saving .............................................................................................................. 21 File Restoring ......................................................................................................... 21 Creating Reports..................................................................................................... 21 The Console Window ....................................................................................22 Console Tab ............................................................................................................ 22 Properties Tab ........................................................................................................ 23 Modem Use with the Vortex..........................................................................25 Troubleshooting the Vortex Modem Connection.................................................... 27 Polycom, Inc., Copyright 2001 Technical Support: 800.932.2774 1 CONFERENCE COMPOSERTM SOFTWARE CONFERENCE COMPOSERTM SOFTWARE INTRODUCTION Conference Composer is the design and configuration software that is supplied with the Vortex®. Its purpose is to make it easy and intuitive to configure Polycom's Vortex products, share configuration files, create presets, macros, and logic assignments. Conference Composer operates under WindowsTM 98, ME, NT, and 2000. INSTALLATION Insert the Conference Composer disk into your CD-ROM drive and run the Setup program. If you have a previously installed version of Conference Composer on your computer, it is highly recommended that you uninstall that version (use Add/ Remove Program from the CONTROL PANEL window) before installing the latest version. After running the Setup program, simply follow the instructions for installing Conference Composer. USING CONFERENCE COMPOSER WITH A VORTEX AND EF200 PHONE ADD When using the Conference Composer software with the Vortex and the EF200, plug the RS-232 into the Vortex. If you plug into the EF200, you may not be able to get Level information because the EF200 will not know how to interpret the data from the software that will display metering information. Conference Composer User Guide 2 Technical Support: 800.932.2774 CONFERENCE COMPOSERTM SOFTWARE FEATURES OF THE CONFERENCE COMPOSER WINDOW 4 1 2 3 Figure 1. Feauters of Conference Composer window 1. EXPLORER MENU. The Explorer-type menu structure allows you to easily navigate and browse through your device list. Clicking on an item in the tree will display the parameter page to the right of the explorer menu. STATUS METER. This meter and status light shows the communication status between your PC and a Vortex or EF device (EF200 or EF1210). The WAITING light turns yellow when it is communicating via RS-232 with a Vortex or EF device and the meter indicates how full the command buffer is with commands being sent to the device. DSP LOAD. Indicates the current percentage of used available variable DSP resources. MENUS. · FILE. The File menu allows you to create a new Project, Device Chain, or Device; manages file functions of a Project such as Opening, Saving, or Closing; and handles printing and Preferences. · PROJECT. The Project menu contains 3 options: AUTOSCAN, SAMPLE, or ONLINE. AUTOSCAN finds all Vortex or EF devices connected to the PC and scans in their settings. SAMPLE loads a sample project into Conference Composer. ONLINE allows you to either download settings from a Vortex or EF device or upload settings to a Vortex or EF device. 2. 3. 4. © Polycom, Inc. 3 Conference Composer User Guide CONFERENCE COMPOSERTM SOFTWARE · USER MODE. User mode selects between BASIC and ADVANCED. Basic mode limits user options that can be adjusted. Advanced mode allows control of all parameters available on Conference Composer. HELP. The Help menu contains the ABOUT option that shows the version number of the software. · Conference Composer User Guide 4 Technical Support: 800.932.2774 OPERATING CONFERENCE COMPOSER OPERATING CONFERENCE COMPOSER Conference Composer may either be operated online or off-line (not connected to a Vortex or EF device) depending on how you would like to use it. If you work off-line it is easy to save the settings to a file, share the files with others, and then upload the settings into an EF device when you go online. The online or off-line operation of Conference Composer is the same, although if you are operating off-line you will need to add devices to the project before you can start working with the devices. Conference Composer organizes your projects into a hierarchy of PROJECT, DEVICE CHAIN, and DEVICE. Starting from the bottom of the list, a DEVICE is simply that ­ some piece of equipment that will be used in the installation. A DEVICE CHAIN is a collection of devices that are linked together through the ASPI Bus or EF Bus (that's where the name device chain comes from). Typically these represent all the devices that are tied to a particular serial port on your computer/controller. The PROJECT represents a collection of DEVICE CHAINS. You can think of the PROJECTS as directories, the DEVICE CHAINS as files and the DEVICES as items in the files. There are many different buttons and knobs that allow the user to change settings on the device. Conference Composer's convention is that a feature associated with a button is enabled when the button's LED is lit. To use a knob, click on the knob and while holding down the mouse button, raise or lower the cursor to increase or decrease the knob value.. Figure 2. To increase the level, click on the knob and move the cursor UP. To decrease the level, click on the knob and move the cursor DOWN. ONLINE: CONNECTED TO AN EF DEVICE To operate online, the EF Device should be connected to an RS-232 port of your host computer. The first step is to have Conference Composer scan your EF Device -- this ensures the settings you see on the PC screen are exactly the settings in the device. To do this, select the AUTOSCAN option from the PROJECT menu as shown in Figure 3. This ensures the settings you see on the PC screen are exactly the settings in the device. © Polycom, Inc. 5 Conference Composer User Guide OPERATING CONFERENCE COMPOSER Figure 3. Select AUTOSCAN to have Conference Composer automatically find online devices. NOTE If you have any devices currently using the serial port on your PC, such as a PalmPilot's HotSync, please close those programs to free the COM port before running AUTOSCAN. AUTOSCAN will automatically find all EF devices (EF2280, EF1210, EF200) attached to the RS-232 port and then automatically download all the settings into Conference Composer. Once the settings have been downloaded to the PC, any changes you make to the device through Conference Composer will be sent automatically to the device, updating its configuration in real-time. Once Conference Composer has finished downloading the settings from the connected devices, you will see the Navigation area look like Figure 4. The amount of time it takes to sync with the Vortex depends on the number of presets that have valid data. More presets means more data must be sent to the PC. Figure 4. Project generated when connected to a Vortex. OFF-LINE: OPERATING WITHOUT AN EF DEVICE To operate without any devices connected to the computer you can select NEW>DEVICE->EF2280 to create a sample Vortex system to configure. This will automatically create a Project. Once you have a Vortex installed, your navigation tab should Conference Composer User Guide 6 Technical Support: 800.932.2774 OPERATING CONFERENCE COMPOSER look like Figure 4 (the red X's indicate that you are offline), and you are ready to proceed to the next section. Figure 5. Operating Conference Composer Offline. © Polycom, Inc. 7 Conference Composer User Guide DEVICE PARAMETERS DEVICE PARAMETERS Each device in Conference Composer is represented by a list of sub-entries for that device. For the Vortex, those fields are SYSTEM, MIC/LINE INPUTS, etc. as shown in Figure 4. By clicking on the Device (EF2280:00 in Figure 4) you bring up the SYSTEM page as shown in Figure 6. Notice that each SYSTEM page has tabs corresponding to the list of sub-entries in Figure 4. Clicking on either a tab or the field name will bring you to a page with specific controls for that set of functions. SYSTEM Figure 6. Vortex System tab shows the block diagram of the device. The SYSTEM Page presents you with a block diagram of the Vortex. It allows you to quickly enter text labels for inputs and outputs (this can also be done on all the other pages too), and see the signal flow from inputs to outputs. Holding the cursor over a particular block in the block diagram will show signal flow information from inputs to outputs or outputs to inputs depending on where you hold the mouse. By holding the cursor over any output block, you can see the all the inputs that map to the particular output. You may enable/disable specific features by left clicking on the blocks in the SYSTEM Page. If a block is grayed out, it is turned off. When connected to a device, the Signal Activity LEDs mapped to the inputs and outputs of the SYSTEM Page (See Figure 7) show the signal activity. This indicator is independent of the gating indicators -- it simply indicates when the input or output has signal level above the Activity Threshold. The Activity Threshold for what constitutes activity is set on the OPTIONS Page -- it is in the MISCELLANEOUS section. If you set this level too high, the threshold may be too high and the signal activity LED will Conference Composer User Guide 8 Technical Support: 800.932.2774 DEVICE PARAMETERS be difficult to light. If you set the signal activity level too low, the ambient room noise may light the signal activity LED too easily. Figure 7. Signal Activity LED of Inputs and Out ...