ACN implementation?

According to the HES website, the HOG 3 supports network and ethernet based protocols, leading me to assume that support of ACN has been implemented already, but is this true, is the current HOG 3 software supporting ACN controls?

And if yes, how? Does it offer full support to end user (ie. programmer) for all ACN parts? Of more particular interest, DDL and DMP? And how would I go about with this on the Hog?

Or is the support purely on the control side of things once the system has been set up and is running?

It's just that I can't find anything about this in the manual.
  • Hans,

    The Hog 3 platform does support network and Ethernet-based protocols, but that does not mean they support ACN. There are many systems out there that are Ethernet-based but not ACN.

    The problem is that only parts of ACN are currently released. The parts needed to build truly interoperable equipment do not yet exist. The DDL is a fairly freeform way of describing anything you can think of in XML, but it does not give the console any real clue as to how to map those parameters to a user interface. This results in a situation no better than we are today with console libraries. There is work going on in the ACN Task Group to create "EPI's" which is a series of DDL templates that descrbibe well known parameters such as a Gobo Wheel or Color Mixing System. This will move closer to building truly interoperable product.

    ACN is such a fundamental change to how most products operate and store and manipulate data, that unlike RDM, is not a protocol that is easy to implement into an existing product. You pretty much have to start from the ground up designing it to be an ACN product.

    Hope this clears up any confusion.
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