ON-AIR Ideas

[Mark D. Johnson]

There may be a simpler solution.  The audio and video resource managers that
run on the video, audio and display machines could be used to also have a
little (tcl maybe) program to have an on and off-air light on the screen.
When the display machine goes to an AG room, it sends a message to the video
and audio machines, it could send a message to a program on the display
machine that toggles the on-air light.
-mark

Mark Johnson
University of SC
mjohnson at sc.edu


Allan Kenneth Spale wrote:

> I have been doing a little thinking about how to implement an ON-AIR sign
> and other hardware components without hacking RAT.  I am not very
> knowledgeable about what I am talking about; however, from the little that
> I do know, it seems like an option.
>
> I propose to implement a CORBA system where a CORBA object is used as a
> "wrapper" to access the object(s) in RAT that would control the audio
> transmission.  In this way, whatever program on Linux runs the interface
> with the sign could poll RAT to see whether or not "Talk" is pressed.
>
> >From what I understand, CORBA is a system that allows "wrapper" functions
> to be placed over existing code and then able to be accessed in other
> programs.  The languages covered under CORBA include Java, C++, Smalltalk,
> etc.
>
> As another future option, perhaps any hardware devices that are not
> intrinsically part of the AG configuration/setup could be accessed via
> Jini (Sun's Java implementation of a reconfigurable network environement).
> Jini allows the user to query the network as to what network services
> (this includes hardware and software) are available.  Since it uses Java,
> one can download the interface to the service via the network connection
> to use it.  Also, there should not be a need to have any Jini-specific
> hardware because as long as there is a JVM present on the network, the
> hardware using Jini can call that JVM via the network.
>
> My mind is fairly rusty on this because I did report on JVM a year and a
> half ago and only covered Jini briefly.  I have not studied CORBA in
> detail, but it is an open standard that has been around for some time now.
> Please correct any incorrect information that I may have given in this
> message.
>
> I am going to do some research on CORBA, so if you find any information or
> have any comments, please let me know.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Allan Spale
> EVL / UIC node-op