OCA Alliance, Bothell, Washington, USA, 15 June 2017. The OCA Alliance, the AV industry alliance promoting awareness and adoption of Open Control Architecture, also known as OCA and standardized as AES70, is presenting the results of a year of development and further momentum in the OCA ecosystem.
Demonstrations on the OCA Alliance booth incorporate products from member and non-member companies alike, demonstrating the power of an open standard for the AV industry. Demonstrations include integration of products from Beckhoff Automation and d&b audiotechnik, and showcase AES70 hardware and software references, available to the public on a license-free and cost-free basis.
The alliance is also announcing a number of initiatives to further drive AES70 development. A new website supports the distribution of the reference tools; https://ocaalliance.github.io/
The ‘informal’ technical website is aimed at AES70 development community. “The site is completely open,” says Ethan Wetzell, Platform Strategist for Bosch Communications Systems and acting chair of the OCA Alliance Marketing Work Group. “Alliance membership is not required to use it, nor does a user account need to be created by companies or individuals interested in these tools.”
Of major significance is the announcement of the release of OCA 1.4 by the alliance. A new version of the OCA specification, OCA 1.4 will be used by the AES to update the current AES70-2015 (OCA 1.3) standard.
“OCA 1.4 contains a number of upward-compatible enhancements, most notably a streamlined system for connection management known as OCA CM3,” explains Wetzell. “Also included are changes for preprogrammed operation sequences and other executable phenomena, improved support for adding proprietary extensions, support for definition of reusable device elements, more general and flexible support for timing and sampling clocks, and numerous other additions, improvements, clarifications, and editorial corrections.”
OCA 1.4 also defines new options for transport of OCP.1, the AES70 control protocol, over USB and WebSocket connections, instead of the usual TCP.
The OCA Alliance booth – #5989 – is staffed by technical experts from member companies throughout InfoComm. They are on hand to answer any and all questions related to AES70 and the broader OCA ecosystem.
Ends
About OCA
OCA (Open Control Architecture) is an open control and monitoring standard for professional audio and AV media network devices. From a single device and controller to networks with almost any number of devices and multiple controllers, OCA provides for powerful, high speed, low cost, robust system control and monitoring of devices from different manufacturers.
OCA can be used in conjunction with any available transport protocol (Dante, AVB, AES67, Cobranet, etc.). Offering interoperability across different media transports and manufacturers’ devices, it enables whole new levels of complex system integration and options as to how and where network devices can be deployed. The architecture operates on commodity Ethernet networking hardware or via standard 802.11 Wi-Fi.
Control functionality allows system professionals to change and monitor all operating parameters of a network device, including the creation and deletion of signal paths, parameter adjustments for signal processing objects, network device firmware updates and management of access control. Control can also be limited to provide simpler ‘operator’ functionality; for instance, providing just level, mute, power on/off and fault indication.
OCA has been ratified as an open public standard by the AES as AES70.
OCA is not itself a media transport, or a means of programming a network device or system control, or generating a user interface. OCA is available free of charge to manufactures, system integrators and designers, to implement with their own and third party network devices, as they require.
About the OCA Alliance
OCA Alliance is a non-profit corporation formed to secure the standardization of the Open Control Architecture (OCA) as a media networking system control standard for professional applications. The OCA Alliance’s purpose is to actively promote the adoption and standardization of Open Control Architecture (OCA) as a media networking system control standard through marketing, education and training, and to develop future standards and other documents, that augment, enhance or extend the primary OCA standard, for the purposes of enabling and promoting increased interoperability and reliability, for a variety of transport standards.
For more information, visit ocaalliance.com
Editors’ contact:
Keith Grant
KGa marketing & media
Mobile: +44 7977 410 444
Skype ID: kgamarketing
E-mail: oca-alliance@kgamarketing.com
OCA Alliance booth contact:
Tina J. Lipscomb
Administrator
OCA Alliance, Inc.
Phone: +1 425-870-6574
E-mail: tina.lipscomb@oca-alliance.com