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Control Concepts

Control is a first-class part of the Cognio platform. Every Cognio product includes a built-in control engine, so you can control the system from anywhere, control third-party devices from Cognio, and control Cognio from third-party systems.

Control Panel Groups

A control panel group is a group of related control panels. Spaces that use touchscreens start with a control panel group already in place.

Control panel groups give Cognio built-in knowledge of which panels belong together, which makes several tasks easier:

  • Navigation. Because Cognio understands the relationship between panels in a group, you can add a navigation control (such as a radio button), set it to appear on all panels, and let Cognio automatically generate buttons to move between the panels in the group.
  • Live previews. A tab at the top of the group shows live previews of every panel so you can see and manage them at a glance.
  • Mapping controls. You assign a control to a parameter through its function settings. You can also drag a control directly from a signal flow design into a control panel group to map it quickly.

Decoupling Look From Function

Cognio separates how a control looks from how it works. The Function tab defines what a control does, while the Design tab defines its appearance.

  • Themes change the look of many controls at once. Cognio includes built-in themes, and you can create your own in the custom control theme manager, without third-party design software, CSS, or code.
  • Custom controls. You can adjust properties that make sense for an AV control system, such as cap style, fill and cap colors, glow or drop shadow, borders, scale or up/down buttons, value readouts, fonts, and more.
  • Reuse and sharing. Themes can be exported, imported, and shared, so one person can design the look and feel while another builds the function, and a theme can be reused from site to site. Selecting all controls (Ctrl+A) and recalling a theme reskins an entire panel in one step.
  • External assets. Anywhere there is a color, you can use an image instead, allowing custom fader caps, backgrounds, icons, and other graphics.

Cognio Control of 3rd Party Devices

Cognio uses Symetrix's large, established library of third-party drivers. Drivers are easy to download from the Symetrix website and drag into a design to install, and existing drivers are being ported to Cognio.

  • Drivers are written in Lua, so anyone with Lua experience will be at home, and they are easy to port from Composer.
  • A consistent driver model covers both Dante and non-Dante devices, so you learn one approach that works across products.
  • Cognio adds new Lua scripting capabilities beyond the previous Composer driver model.

Cognio can communicate with third-party devices over the common control protocols you would expect, including:

  • Physical — GPIO, serial, and IR.
  • IP-based — UDP, TCP, HTTP, and SSH.

Tip

If a driver you need does not already exist, Symetrix Pro Services can work with you to create it. Reach out through your sales manager or the support department.

Control Cognio from 3rd Party Control Systems

Cognio products can be controlled from external control systems using JSON-RPC over TCP.

Because every product runs Cognio OS, this is not limited to DSPs. Any Cognio product can be controlled directly over JSON-RPC, including endpoints and touchscreens. The protocol is designed to be logical and consistent, making Cognio a straightforward platform for third-party control programmers.