Solecis AVS-SL-PR-0201-0301 Presentation Switcher Heads Up

I recently had the misfortune of an engineer designing a Solecis switcher into a couple of small conferencing rooms.

I ran into the following issues:

- The switcher doesn't switch reliably using the AMX provided Duet module

Having written my own module I think I can see why - the switcher seems to respond with an acknowledgement if you send commands in too quick a succession, but doesn't actually perform the command.

- The "master volume control" which can be controlled using the volume up/down buttons on the front panel can't be controlled via the serial port

There's a command in the protocol, but it doesn't work properly, only driving the input attenuation for the currently selected input. Because of the way that the volume control works on these devices, the result is that the volume control on the box (even from the front panel) gets locked up.

These devices are obviously a Novara keypad stuffed in a box with a little switcher and are designed to control rooms, not to be controlled. It doesn't appear that AMX has done much to make them suitable for integration since acquiring them with ProCon. They're definitely not up to the usual AMX standard.

As there's been no response from TS in the US, we're going to have to rip these out and replace them after days of stuffing around with them. You have been warned! Hope this saves someone else some pain.