Computer Controlled Vision Switcher

I am doing Video at "The Palace" at Easterfest again this year.  As usual this is being done on zero budget with Dean Davis & Derek Griffin lending cameras and comms and volunteers coming to operate.

I am trying to improve the preselection to allow me to feed more cameras into the AVE55 digital vision switcher.  To do this I am using a Vicon Nova crash switcher in front of the AVE55.  It has 32 inputs.  Imagine the damage we could do with 32 cameras.

This is the block diagram showing the Vicon Nova video routing switch and the Panasonic digital vision switcher.

Each of these video boxes is connected to the PC via a USB-RS232 serial converter.

Top of this photo shows the wiring for the RS232 connection to the AVE-55.





























This is the program interface as it stands. 
Basic operation is as follows.
The 16 camera buttons are across the top.
A & B represent the two frame stores / busses in the AVE 55 vision switcher.

As shown we have camera 2 switched through to Bus A on the AVE55 and then onto the main video output.

Let say the operator clicks camera 1.  The program checks which bus is currently active (Bus A) so it tells the Vicon Nova Matrix switch to switch Camera 1 to the inactive bus B (Output 2).  Then it waits a quarter of a second for the frame store to lock up and then it sends a command to the AVE55 to switch to bus B and so we end up with camera 1 on screen.  The operator can also use the PC keyboard and this makes for a faster easier switching experience.

This is Microsoft C# Visual Studio 2010 Express where I 'author' the program.  It is really nice to use. And it's free for non commercial use.  So much better than 1 or 2 month trials.  I have basically given up on things with time limited trials because I tend to get a few days and then a month or so goes by before I get another chance to do anything.

You drag controls and place them where you want them on the screen.  There are a gazillion settings and adjustments but to date I have mostly just left them in the default settings.  Behind the scenes one has to write code.  This is interesting (read challenging) because it is in a language that is new to me C# (pronounced see sharp).

The next challenge is to work out how to make it so that the user can use the keyboard rather than the mouse.  So they could press button 1 to select camera 1 instead of clicking the 1 button.