Essential Install | Matrix and Signal Management
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BEYOND
THE
BOX
36 | May 2017
Into The Matrix
Mother Lode
Daniel J Sait takes a look at some of the latest
developments in the wonderful world of matrixes.
Voice control is of course something that
has literally been on many people’s lips of
late. HDANYWHERE is a brand that has been
keen to be involved, but has been holding off
until it felt it had something useful and rock
solid to offer. Arguing that voice control for
a complete home automation set up is not
there yet, HDANYWHERE has been working on
some intuitive and real world examples of how
to use its MHUB family to deliver some neat
voice activation for AV users. The company set
itself the task that it would not introduce any
functionality that could not be done easier and
quicker via the normal control mechanism be it
remote or its own uControl App.
HDANYWHERE points out that its new Alexa
Skills don’t require the user to say where in
the house they are and its approach has been
to create commands that people would feel
comfortable and natural using.
The maker’s syntax (voice structure) for
a command follows a strict patter. ‘Alexa’
wakes the Echo or Dot and makes it listen, ‘tell
my TV to’ tells Alexa to target specifi c HDA
functions, then a pre-defi ned command (like
increase volume, play, watch) which the mHUB
understands. This can be followed by a joining
word to make a grammatical sentence, but
these are optional. The sentence can also be
fi nished with a variable to make the command
actionable in real time and can be anything
from a room name, volume up to a certain
value 25 on a particular channel.
There is also a skill that will turn on a TV in a
given default confi guration so a certain channel,
volume, source, room can be triggered just
by ‘Alexa, turn on TV’ then or any word of your
choosing. Whilst watching TV, the user can also
say: ‘Alexa, tell my TV to’: Play, Pause, Record/
Stop Recording, Increase/Decrease volume/
volume up by any number value, Switch to
source devices, Go to favourite channel, Watch
any word, Resume in any room name. The
company says it expects to start rolling out all
the skills throughout June.
Experiencing a busy time of late, including
demonstrating some neat Alexa voice
interaction with its range, Pulse-Eight is
defi nitely on a development drive. Company
MD, Martin Ellis, says: “For us, matrixes are no
longer just a means to move video from point
A to point B. Matrixes are the heart of a home
automation solution. They are the customer’s
gateway to the home. The matrix should
facilitate the control of your content as well.
“Standalone control systems are great, but they
require huge amounts of programming and often
provide more barriers to entry than they solve.
Pulse-Eight have spent years rethinking the video
distribution problem and developed a product
family that augments, not replaces, how end
users watch and control the content they watch.
Having implemented HDMI-CEC control within
our products since inception, the introduction of
voice control via Amazon Alexa has created new
possibiliti