NCast PR720 - Manual (Page 30)

NCast Presentation Recorder Reference Manual
www.xxx.yyy.zzz,sss.ttt.uuu.* A comma-separated list of addresses and ranges
Standard CIDR notation is documented in IETF RFC 4632.
3.8. S
CHEDULER
3.8.1. Overview
The PR-720 Series Scheduler is a feature that allows the manager of one or more Presentation Recorders to
schedule these appliances through use of a Google calendar or through use of industry-standard iCalendar
files. The manager can start and stop each Presentation Recorder at a predetermined time, load unique
settings for each individual presentation, send serial control commands to each Presentation Recorder to
provide additional functionality, and specify how and where the Presentation Recorder sends its output, all
without touching the actual Presentation Recorder user interface. All that is required is one or more
Presentation Recorders, each with a connection to the Internet, and access to a Google calendar or an
iCalendar file, no matter where in the world the equipment is located.
3.8.2. Components of the Solution
The Scheduler Implementation uses three components to allow automatic start/stop scheduling of one or
more Presentation Recorders in a network. These components are:
• An administrative interface based on Google Calendar or other Calendar system using iCalendar
• A scheduler process which queries the calendar information and activates the Presentation
Recorder.
• The Presentation Recorder IP serial command interface, which receives commands at the
scheduled times.
3.8.3. Scheduler Overview
The following sections describe how to use a Google Calendar account or an iCalendar file to setup a
schedule for one or more Presentation Recorders and how to use the Scheduler web page.
Complete documentation for the serial command set is in the “Presentation Recorder Serial Interface
Specification”. Please refer to this manual for a more complete description of commands which may be used.
This guide lists a few basic commands which allow the user to start and stop a unit from the Scheduler
interface.
3.8.4. Google Calendar Events
Google Calendar is a web-based interface used to enter calendar events such as meetings and
appointments. It allows multiple personal calendars (e.g. business and home) and allows sharing of public
and private calendars with friends and associates.
One interesting and important aspect of this calendaring system is that Google has defined a standards-
based software API (called “gdata” for many of their services) which allows programmatic access to the
calendars and the events contained within them. The API is implemented in Java and several other
languages, and allows outside programs (e.g. clock widgets, PDA’s, other calendar systems) to access and
create events within a Google calendar.
NCast has taken advantage of this programmable API to implement a scheduling system for Presentation
Recorders where the web-based Google Calendar is the administrative interface for defining session
start/stop times for one or more Presentation Recorders within a customer’s network.
The process works in three steps:
1. An administrator enters one or more scheduled events for a Presentation Recorder
2. The scheduling process queries the calendar at regular intervals and captures these events.
3. Commands sent to the IP Serial Interface of a Presentation Recorder starts and stops the unit.
The calendar interface allows an administrator to setup single or repeating events. The example below
shows a single event scheduled for Tuesday, a Monday-Wednesday-Friday repeating event, and a Monday-
NCast Corporation Revision 1.1
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