Virtual Page Station Component

The Virtual Page Station is designed to be used on a touch screen, and provides individual Zone selections and Group Zone selections. The Virtual Page Station can be automated by a script, or External Control. The Virtual Page Station component does not have an audio output pin, and does not have any parameters that relate to hardware. The Virtual Page Station's audio comes from an audio source connected directly to the PA Router.

Controls

Control

Control	Function	Default/Range
Busy LED	The red BUSY LED is intended to indicate that a Page Station cannot perform a live page at the priority level, and to the zone(s), specified in the currently selected Command.	N/A
Ready LED	Green LED indicating that the selected Zones, at the selected Priority, are available for a Live page.	N/A
Record LED	If the Mode drop down is set to Delay and the Talk button is clicked, the green Record LED is on to indicate the page is being recorded . In addition, the Ready LED flashes. Once you have completed recording the page, and the required Zones are available, the page is played.	N/A
Status	Possible status messages include: Live: Ready to page - Press TALK to issue Live: Paging - Speak now! (seconds) Live: Page Complete Live: Busy - Press TALK to enter queue Auto: Ready to page - Press TALK to issue Auto: Ready to record - Press TALK to issue Auto: Paging - Speak now! (seconds) Auto: Recording - Speak now! (seconds) Auto: Playing Message - Press CLEAR to Cancel Auto: Page Complete Auto: Playback Complete Delay: Ready to record - Press TALK to issue Delay: Recording - Speak Now! (seconds) Delay: Waiting to Playback - Press CLEAR to Cancel Delay: Playing Message - Press CLEAR to Cancel Delay: Playback Complete Message: Message not Ready Message: Ready to Play Message - Press TALK to issue Message: Playing Message - Press CLEAR to Cancel Message: Playback Canceled Message: Waiting to Playback - Press CLEAR to Cancel	N/A
Talk	The Talk button opens the microphone to enable voice paging, message playback, or recording for delayed paging.. Click and hold the button - the microphone stays open until you release the button, Click (and release) the button - the microphone stays open until you click the button again, or click the Cancel button. If there is a preamble assigned to the Command, the microphone does not open until the preamble is complete. When the Talk button is activated, all other controls in the Control Panel are disabled. These buttons (configuration controls) can still be controlled via Control Pins. When a page is in progress, the configuration controls do not affect the in-progress page. The configuration controls, if set during a page, affect the subsequent page. Depending on the Mode selected, the name of the button changes.	Off/On
Cancel	Click this button to end the Page, Recording or Message without completing the action.	N/A

Configuration

Control	Function	Default/Range
Mode	Determines the method by which a page is placed in the queue. There are four types: Live, Auto, Delay, and Message. Live means the page will not be Recorded. If the PA Zones are in use by a page of equal or higher Priority, the request will be queued up behind other queued pages of equal or higher Priority, but before pages of lower priority. PA Zones that are in use by pages of lower priority will be interrupted. When the page request reaches the front of the queue, the preamble (if configured) plays and the operator can speak. Auto is a combination of Live and Delay where a decision is made, at the time Talk is pressed or the microphone is keyed, to page Live if all of the PA Zones are available, otherwise the page is Recorded as a Delay page. Delay means the page will always be Recorded. After the recording is complete, and a five second interval has passed (to give you time to cancel the page before it begins), the playback either begins or is queued according to the same rules as a Live page. When playback begins, you can cancel it by clicking the Cancel button.	Default = nothing Range = Live Auto Delay Message
Priority	Determines the Priority of the Page or Message. The priorities are defined in the Q-SYS Administrator.	Default = nothing Range = User Defined
Preamble (Directory)	Select the directory in which the Preamble files are located. By default, this is the Preambledirectory. If you create a subdirectory under the Preamble directory, you must add files to that subdirectory in order for the Virtual Page Station to recognize it.	Default = nothing Range = User Defined
Preamble (File)	Select the file you want to play for the Preamble.	Default = nothing Range = User Defined
Message (Directory)	Select the directory in which the Message files are located. By default, this is the Messagedirectory. If you create a subdirectory under the Message directory, you must add files to that subdirectory in order for the Virtual Page Station to recognize it.	Default = nothing Range = User Defined
(Message File)	Select the file you want to play for the Message.	Default = nothing Range = User Defined
Max Page Duration	The longest page you want to allowed on this Page Station, in seconds.	Default = 60 Range = 0 - 3600
Split	For Pages and Messages, clicking this button means that page or message (command) will not wait for all Page Zones to be available to start; only one zone needs to be available. If one or more, but not all, zones are interrupted during the "splitable" page, the command for those zones is discontinued, but the command continues on the available zones. If retry is enabled and any of the zones had been interrupted or were not available when the command was issued, those zones will be retried. This will continue until all of the zones have succeeded, the retry count is exhausted, the command is canceled or the queue timeout expires. Typically, the Split mode would be used for low priority, non-essential, background messages that go to a large number of zones.	Default = Not Split
Archive	Does not apply to Play Message commands. Checkbox to indicate whether or not pages of the associated Priority level are Archived. A compressed mp3 file of the page audio is saved in the media/Page Archives folder. In the Event Log, there is a play button, next to the page event, to listen to the archive. The pages are stored until they meet the purge deadline - 31 days, or when the directory reaches 10MB. Oldest files get deleted first.	Checked Not Checked
Retry	Retry does not apply to live pages. Checkbox indicating whether or not a page (except Live pages), of the associated Priority, gets retried.	Off/On
Count	The number of times you want the page retried.	1 to 4

Zone Selection

All of the Zones defined in the PA Router display as individual buttons below the Select All and Clear All buttons.

Control	Function	Default/Range
Select All	Selects all the Zones defined in the PA Router.	not selected/selected
Clear All	Clears any and all Zones you have selected.	selected/not selected
Zone (1 - n)	One Zone select button for each Zone defined in the PA Router. Click once to select, again to deselect. When a Zone is selected, the Page or Message is played in that Zone. You can select multiple zones.	not selected/selected

Zone Groups

Control	Function	Default/Range
Group (1-n)	The Zone Group Count in the Properties must be greater than zero to enable this feature. Groups of Zones are based on how you Tag the PA Zones in the Q-SYS Administrator. When you click a Group button, all the PA Zones assigned to that Tag are selected.	not selected/selected
Group tag (1 - n)	One tag for each Group. Enter the Tag name you want to define the Group. All the Zones tagged with that Tag are now part of the Group. You can also select a single zone by the default zone number, or by the name given it in PA Zones in the Administrator.	blank/user input

Control

Function

Default/Range

Group (1-n)

The Zone Group Count in the Properties must be greater than zero to enable this feature.

Groups of Zones are based on how you Tag the PA Zones in the Q-SYS Administrator. When you click a Group button, all the PA Zones assigned to that Tag are selected.

not selected/selected

Group tag (1 - n)

One tag for each Group. Enter the Tag name you want to define the Group. All the Zones tagged with that Tag are now part of the Group. You can also select a single zone by the default zone number, or by the name given it in PA Zones in the Administrator.

blank/user input

Robot Controls

The Robot controls are an alternate way of controlling the Page Station using a Lua script or external control. They allow reliable machine control of the station without risk of race conditions or having to detect blinking lights or having to parse status sentences.

Control	Function	Default/Range
Reset	These buttons are mutually exclusive. When Reset is on, the State will be “reset”. In this state, the Configuration and Zone Selection controls are used to configure a page event. Once configured, press the Submit button to on (the Reset button turns off). If the configuration is invalid (such as no zones are selected or no priority is selected), the State will remain “reset”, otherwise the State will change to “ready”. This does not mean that the zones that are selected are available, only that what has been entered is meaningful.	On/Off
Submit		Off/On
Start	When in the “ready” state, the Start trigger is used to issue the page. The State will transition to “wait” until the requested zones are available (at the selected priority) and the preamble has played (if applicable). The State then transitions to “input” which means the PA Router has routed the corresponding input to the selected zones, the recorder, or both (depending on Mode) and the operator should speak. If Mode is “Message”, the “input” State is skipped and State transitions directly to “output”.	N/A
Stop	When the operator has completed speaking, the Stop trigger is used to stop the page. If this is a delayed page (or an Automatic page that was not completed live), the State will transition to “output” and the recorded message will be played in the selected zones, otherwise the State will transition to “done”.	N/A
Cancel	The Cancel trigger stops the recording or playback of the current page and State transitions to “done”.	N/A
State	Displays the state of a paging operation. It’s possible values are reset, ready, wait, input, output, “done”	N/A

Properties

Property	Function	Choices
Hide Zone Buttons	Hides or displays the individual Zone Select buttons. You can use only Select All or Clear if this is set to Yes.	Yes / No
Zone Group Count	Controls how many Zone Groups the page station will have.	0 to 100
Enable Robot Controls	Enables or disables the Robot Controls.	Yes / No
External Prefix	Enter a name to help identify controls belonging to this component. The name can be any character. Spaces are removed from the name. When you add an External Prefix, Q-SYS automatically assigns that prefix to all of the controls of the component. When you place a control into the Named Controls pane you do not have to rename the controls one at a time. The names all begin with the External Prefix you enter. In addition, the prefix name is displayed on the component in the design unless you have given the component a label by selecting it and entering the label.	user defined

Control Pins

The available Control Pins depend on settings in Properties.

Pin Name	Value	String	Position	Pins Available
Group Active (1-n) ¹	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Output
Group Match (1-n) ¹	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Output
Group Select (1-n) ¹	trigger button			Input
Group Tag (1-n)	user-defined string			Input/Output
Robot Cancel	trigger button			Input/Output
Robot Reset	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Input/Output
Robot Start	trigger button			Input/Output
Robot State	text field ready output reset done			Output
Robot Stop	trigger button			Input/Output
Robot Submit	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Input/Output
Archive	0 1	off on	0 1.00	Input/Output
Busy	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Output
Cancel	trigger button			Input/Output
Clear All	trigger button			Input/Output
Max Page Duration	0 to 3600	0 seconds to 3600 seconds	0 1.00	Input/Output
Message (file)	The user-defined text string identifying message files. The filename does not need the file-type extension in this field.			Input/Output
Message Directory	The case-sensitive name of the directory where the Message (file) is stored. The default directory name is Message, indicated by a blank. Use "/" forward slashes between directories. NOTE: You must have the correct type of audio files present in a directory to access it.			Input/Output
Mode case sensitive text input	System-defined case-sensitive text string: Live Auto Delay Message			Input/Output
Preamble (file)	The user-defined text string identifying preamble files. The filename does not contain/need the file-type extension in this field.			Input/Output
Preamble Directory	The case-sensitive name of the directory where the Preamble (file) is stored. The default directory name is Preamble, indicated by a blank. Use "/" forward slashes between directories. NOTE: You must have the correct type of audio files present in a directory to access it.			Input/Output
Priority	1 - n	User-defined text name of the Priority. The numeric values associated with the Priorities depend on how many Priorities you set, and their order.	1 - 1.00	Input/Output
Ready	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Output
Record	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Output
Retry	0 1	off on	0 1.00	Input/Output
Retry Count	1 to 4	1 to 4	0 1.00	Input/Output
Select All	trigger button			Input/Output
Speak Now ²	0 1	false true	0 1.00	Output
Split	0 1	off on	1 1.00	Input/Output
Status	text field			Output
Talk (in Live and Auto) Record (in Delay) Play (in Message) ³	0 1 (Play N/A)	false true	0 1.00 (Play N/A)	Input/Output
1. Group Active is the red LED indicating paging activity on that group, Group Select is the trigger button, Group Match is the state (color) of the trigger button. Bright is match, dark green is no match. 2. Speak Now is tied to the Status field. When the Status field reaches the status of "Speak now! (seconds)" this Control pin goes to true. The Mode must be Live, Auto or Record. 3. In the Message Mode, the Play button is a momentary button that activates the message playback by clicking and releasing, or clicking and holding. Either method causes the button itself to be disabled (grayed out).

Virtual Page Station Component

Controls

Control

Configuration

Zone Selection

Zone Groups

Robot Controls

Properties

Control Pins

1. Group Active is the red LED indicating paging activity on that group, Group Select is the trigger button, Group Match is the state (color) of the trigger button. Bright is match, dark green is no match.

2. Speak Now is tied to the Status field. When the Status field reaches the status of "Speak now! (seconds)" this Control pin goes to true. The Mode must be Live, Auto or Record.

3. In the Message Mode, the Play button is a momentary button that activates the message playback by clicking and releasing, or clicking and holding. Either method causes the button itself to be disabled (grayed out).