Control systems

Modern network operations centres require flexible control and monitoring systems. Business needs will change many times over the lifetime of a system and the old approach of custom coded user interfaces and inflexible network architectures quickly becomes a block to progress.

Control systems using Busby can provide in one microservice based distributed system all the routing, control and system monitoring required. The layered approach means that user interfaces and control API’s are independent of the technology used to implement the video and audio paths.

User Interfaces

Busby offers a number of options for user interfaces in Control systems. Standard UI’s are configured from blocks including Routing, Slider and rotary controls, PPM audio meters and other controls. Fully custom UI’s can be written using the Busby UI Plugin Toolkit. Workflows can incorporate control elements providing a high degree of system automation.

Northbound API

Using the Busby low-code nanoservice approach secure custom Northbound API’s can be provided to enable automated control of systems from other business or scheduling systems. State messages can be provided to drive accounting or reporting system.

Router Control

Router control is the core of any Broadcast Control System. Busby provides all the traditional features associated with Broadcast Network Control Systems and also provides

Busby router control provides a fully featured routing core with multi level, multi stage routing. Routers can be physical, SMPTE 2110 based, virtual NDI routing or Dante.

NMOS Built-in for SMPTE 2110 routing

Busby router control includes a full NMOS implementation support for IS04 allows new devices to be added to the network with a minimum of configuration. IS05 control enables SMPTE 2110 endpoints to be controlled in the same way as other routers.

Southbound Switch Interface

As SMPTE systems grow beyond a single switch stack it becomes necessary to manage the passing of multicasts from switch to switch or router to router based on demand. This SDVN capability differs for different switch families and can be accomplished in different ways depending on the scale and nature of the system i.e. a local all layer 2 system with controlled IGMP manipulation or a wide area layer 3 based system with routing table manipulation. To cover the wide variety of approaches Busby supports the use of workflows running Ansible playbooks to manipulate switch multicast routing. This allows mixed switch families to be used.

NDI Routing

Routing of NDI signals is accomplished using the NDI virtual source concept. This enables NDI sources to be routed without having a repeater or physical router. NDI multicasts are supported using a similar mechanism to that used for SMPTE 2110 SDVN allowing large NDI systems to be built without flooding trunks with all sources.

Dante Routing

Dante routing is accomplished using the Dante API to communicate directly with the end devices. This provides fast routing with no requirement for a domain controller. The Driver provides true tally of state enabling control to be shared between Busby and other controllers. Separate drivers can be connected to primary and secondary networks providing fully redundant control.

Supported Devices

  • Ross / OpenGear Dashboard Devices including all Carbonite switcher controls
  • Video Servers VDCP
  • Routers using GV SW-P-02 and SW-P-08
  • AMPP Control workloads including Workflows, Notifications with integration to Framelight X and Playout X
  • Glensound DSP devices and Commentator / Interpreter units
  • ArtNet control, Receive to slave to a show control system and send to control lighting and other production equipment
  • Blackmagic Atem switcher control
  • Blackmagic Hyperdeck control
  • AWS Elemental Live control
  • Cambria Transcoders
  • Dalet Flex
  • Dante Virtual Routing and device control
  • Elemental Hardware Encoder
  • Emotion Audio Processing
  • Disk Archive ALTO
  • Evertz routers
  • Evertz Vistalink Modular Products
  • GV Rollcall
  • ForA Switchers
  • Harmonic NMX
  • Make ProX Control Panels
  • Elgato Streamdeck Control Panels
  • NDI Virtual Router
  • Netgear M4300 switch API driver
  • NMOS IS04 and IS05
  • Panasonic PTZ Camera Network Driver
  • PESA router protocol
  • Ross Linq Graphics Protocol
  • Shotoku Orchestra Camera Control
  • Harmonic Spectrum Xe
  • Danish Interpreter Systems SV6000 Driver
  • Televic Interpreter System API
  • Telos Zip-Stream
  • Tools On-air Justin Driver and Multiviewer integration
  • TSL UMD Send and Recieve
  • Telestream Vantage
  • Sony VTR
  • Zoom API

Scroll to Top