“…software is eating the world.” — Marc Andreessen In 10 years or less, what was once the AV industry is going to be a be a footnote in the history of business technology, somewhere among the overhead projector and the fax machine. This hardware-centric industry we call home, this perpetual contest of who sells both […]

As we talked about in my last post about learning how to program, object orientedness is the name of the game when it comes to writing scaleable code that’s easy to update. Break your code up into little chunks that you can reuse. Figure out how to do it once, and you should (hopefully) never […]

I just finished up teaching CTS prep for Avixa during the three-day classes before the InfoComm show. Not only was this a fun and a rewarding experience… I also came away with a new challenge. Several of my fellow instructors encouraged me to step up my certification game and get both my CTS-D and my […]

Halfway through a session on Crestron’s upcoming HTML5 touch panels, a friend who works there texted me, “Your excitement is the most entertaining [thing] I’ve seen thus far in a class.” What can I say? I’m looking forward to using the same tools as the rest of the software industry. I will have to brush […]

Recently, Extron has become more public about its Global Scripter programming features. I believe that this new path that Extron is taking is going to be a major change for the AV industry. The biggest piece of news is that the Global Scripter uses Python as its base for programming. The potential that this opens […]

I recently had the privilege of working with a client who has very real and very serious vision problems. I say it was a privilege because every time I work with someone who wants something beyond my standard touch panel design, I learn from it. Looking at a touch panel through a client’s eyes (in […]

According to CodeEval in 2016 (the last year data is available), the world’s most popular programming language is Python — with nearly 27 percent of the market. Java is number two with a 22 percent share and C++ is third with 10 percent. That’s not just AV control system programming — we mean all programming languages for […]

RTI today announced that its Integration Designer APEX software is now available. The Windows-based programming platform includes new features that RTI says speeds up the installation process for projects of any size, while still being fairly easy to use. The backbone of RTI’s control and automation solutions, Integration Designer APEX supports the capabilities the company has planned for upcoming […]

I was sitting on an overturned paint bucket, holed up inside a freezing cold electrical closet. Just another day at the office! I was trying to figure out the best way to queue up commands if a link in the system went down. I thought things out to their extreme conclusion… and realized that what […]

In this post college graduate moment in life, from having finished a rewarding internship with Zdi to still engaging in the aftereffect results and opportunities of InfoComm 2015, there is certainly a lot to handle. In this jam packed instance, my best response is to absorb it like a sponge and digest as much of […]

Adelyte Company just launched the second major version of its free and open-source software framework — and did it on a live podcast with Gary. Developed starting in 2010, Crescendo achieved version 1.0 with its 2014 community release. Version 2.0 demonstrates “The Loft,” a complete working system with a full suite of graphical interfaces. The […]

Let me start by saying that I know this blog is going to draw criticism from both sides. This is a long standing argument in the AV community, one that has yet to be universally agreed upon, and I’m certain this piece will NOT change that fact. There will still be people who fall on […]

By Alan Vezina Jydo In my previous post, The AV Industry Needs to Open Up, I talked about two reasons why it is difficult to become an AV programmer — proprietary hardware and certifications. Today, I am going to talk about the biggest reason there is a shortage of quality AV programmers: sub-par tools. For […]

By Alan Vezina Jydo There has been some discussion on rAVePubs.com recently about AV programmers, in particular the lack of AV programmers. It started with the AV Power Up! episode Hey, Get With the Program!, then continued with Hope Roth’s follow up article Where Have All the AV Programmers Gone? In both the podcast and […]

By Hope Roth Anyone who has spent more than a little bit of time on an AV-related job board can tell you that the positions that always seem to stay open are the ones looking for AV programmers. It’s something I get asked about all the time, “How in the hell do I find a […]

By Hope Roth One of my favorite episodes of the Simpsons involves Bart Simpson and an elephant named Stampy (who turns out to be a bit of a jerk). It also involves a couple of radio DJs are who are in danger of being replaced by a computer, the DJ 3000. DJ 3000: Looks like […]

Success doesn’t mean that you don’t have problems; it just means that your problems have changed. Quite frankly, it’s preferable to face the problems associated with having a booming business than the ones that you have when business is slow. As your company’s client base grows, and both the number of projects in your funnel […]

I recently had an interesting conversation with someone in the product design space at a university that I wanted to share — and get your thoughts about. He asked, “You used to be a professor — should my students take computer science even if they don’t want to be programmers?” My answer probably won’t surprise […]

By Michael A. Diodato, CTS-D Verrex Corporation Michael A. Diodato, CTS-D, is executive vice president of operations for Verrex Corporation, an audiovisual, videoconference, and sound systems integrator in Mountainside, New Jersey. He can be reached at mdiodato@verrex.com Having been an AV consultant for many years, I believe that a design consultant should be driven to […]