Fusion Research, Echo server, MPlus, Global Cache etc.?

[avophile]

Has anybody used any of this stuff?

MPlus touch panel (the Viewsonic V210):

http://www.mplusint.com/specs_01.htm

or

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/mobilewireless/wirelessmonitors/v210b1/

Fusion Research controller and Echo server:

http://www.fusionrd.com/products.html

Global Cache stuff:

http://www.globalcache.com/products/index.html

It seems like these products are kind of dancing around a less-expensive standards-oriented control solution. Any thoughts?

[lonny]

i did the M PLus class. Looks cool, not sure about the prodcut though.

[Anonymous]

I have recently (like last weekend) had the experience of dealing with this crap.
I would NOT recommend it to anyone as their software is in wretched shape.
I was looking forward to putting the system together and getting involved with it because from what I heard it sounded like a pretty strong platform with great potential.
Last weekend I brought the system home at the behest of my current employer, to begin programming it for this over blown bar system we have been putting togther.
I started trying to track down some trouble he was having getting the IR to work through the system (without going through the caches) and realized that I had no emitters handy. What I did notice though was the IR learning interface was probably best left to IR engineers. They allow you to change frequency, pulse and about half a dozen other factors and not a single description was available for any of them anywhere.
For that matter I had a difficult time finding a manual. Now here is something that sort of got my goat, they send you a Windows XP machine that has been modified and purpose built for their application. Its a decent machine I think it had a 1.3 gig proc and 256 mb of ram. They had stuck an additional 2 serial cards in it for serial controls and the machine itself worked great. The air panel was also kind of cool but I started finding little problems with it such as you simply could not log onto certain sites, I tried accessing my hotmail account and ended up crashing it to the point where I had to pull the battery to restart it. I recall several times having to reboot the air panel because it would just freeze up and do nothing for no apparent reason. I did not spend too much time trying to figure out why, perhaps the power settings were not right but it also was running stripped down winXP and for the most part seemed to run decent when it was not froze up. Anyway, back to my other point, the machine had a 40 gig hard drive in it. The only software installed was the Java platform and their Java apps (for programming and running the system) so here is this basically empty 30 gig drive and they did not include a single manual on it. They built it, developed the software, installed all the software and did not include even so much as a read me file. I was a little put off but I went and downloaded the 9 page PDF manual online that was basically written in childspeak. That also kind of put me off. So I start playing with J Tweaker. I had all these great ideas in mind for how to make this great, simple to use interface for the bar managers to control just under 40 TVs located throughout and the 16 sources being fed throughout. But I find that you have no control over the background. I went through alot of trouble making this great map of the bar/restaurant and had it all divided up into three sections so they could fairly quickly get to one TV and control it alone. No dice, cant change the backgrounds. In fact, they only let you have four sections with 3 pages each, defined as theater 1, theater 2, theater 3 and multizone. So I decided to put section one on theater 1 etc. So I start putting this interface together, this has alot of repetition but they did not provide cut, copy and paste functions so I had to make each button individually, then go into each button and shape it, color it and text it. Then (I did not do this part yet) you have to go in another way and assign a command to it, which seemed simple enough but again, I did not go into it. So I finally after about two hours get this page together, get all the buttons aligned and the thing made sense with little explanation, so I save the page and move onto the next page. Now being a creature of habit sometimes, I went back to the other page to try and copy and paste a bunch of the work I had already done and lo and behold if 80% of the page was not the way I had left it! OK, just reload from the last save and it will be OK. Nope, it loaded the save file Exactly the same way it screwed it up the first time. Buttons had gone out of alignment, lost text and shape and about 5 or 6 buttons were missing altogether. I should have taken screenshots of the event but I was so ticked off I just stopped working with it. I came back to it several hours later when my head was a bit cooler and the same thing happened again only I did not waste two hours on it this time.
I was really anticipating being able to do some really fabulous stuff with this system but if you cant even put together an interface without losing it it would be kind of hard to make something at all let alone fabulous. Seeing as how they communicate via ethernet to the global cache product (which I still cant tell you how those perform) you would think there would be an almost infinite number of these available to the system, but my employer informed me a short time back that when he told them about how many caches we had installed around the bar they "took a crap". Bear in mind they knew what kind of system we were installing from the beginning and we told them well in advance what was going to go down (at least I think he told them straight up) and this system was still a go until last weekend when I flat out said "I refuse to work with this system any longer"
Now I know that having worked with all the big three, Crestron, AMX and Elan that I may have had a little too high a set of expectations for this system and I tried to keep that in mind when I first approached it. But what I had to deal with was even more ridiculous than trying to program macros into an MX200 or something. At least when you screw up with one of those its pretty much your fault, not really the remote. This system actually works against you and they seem to be quite satisfied with their extremely low level of technical support.
Now having said all those nasty horrible things, I will say this, it was not designed for such applications. They have pre assembled alot of GUIs already for several types of devices and made some relatively simple interface measures. If this system were deployed into a small theater it may work quite well but after trying to work with it I would have to say to the folks at Fusion, look at your competition and learn from what they are doing and then go back to the drawing board and fix this thing before you fall apart. And for heavens sake drop the stinking Java shell! Its hideous!

Chip

[avophile]

Okay, so much for the controller. Thanks Chip.

I really don't like touch panel design apps that don't allow you to alter templates. This is my only issue with the Elan Vias.

I'm still curious about the M-plus and the Fusion Server, although if their controller is that bad, wow.

These tablet PC controllers seem to have an unrealized potential. I played with an I-Pronto a friend bought against my advice, and I really liked the idea of the Electronic Program Guide integrated TV guide feature, which, if I remember right, allowed you to select programs to view and record right from the TP like a Tivo interface. Obviously, Phillips has had a lot of problems with this and everything else, but I think someday someone will make this work.

I read a post from a guy in Australia who had accomplished this by linking with an online feed from the few channels they had down there and wonder if anybody else had any luck creating and EPG-TP interface.