Screen Motion Control
Learn how to show and hide a screen or projector with contact closures
Last updated
Learn how to show and hide a screen or projector with contact closures
Last updated
Mira Connect now makes it easy for users to show and hide any number of projection screens and projectors automatically from the Mira Connect touchscreen. 'Show,' 'hide,' and 'stop' buttons can also be customized and added for manual screen and projector lift control.
Hiding screens and projectors protects the equipment when not in use, keeps the room neat, and allows the room to be used for other purposes when needed.
Mira Connect controls the screen motor via contact closures connected to a third-party screen motor or motor controller. While the types of contact closure interfaces required will vary by screen/projector lift manufacturer, Mira Connect offers flexibility for interfacing many different types of screen/project lift controllers.
This article describes how to add screen motion controls to your system, starting with a contact closure device, adding a projector, and then associating one or more contact closures with the projector. The result is an elegant user interface on Mira Connect that is easy to setup and easy to use.
Next, enter the IP address of the contact closure device and press ADD EQUIPMENT. Other than the IP address, there are no settings to configure on Global Caché contact closure devices since the motion settings are configured on the projector or display.
Once the device has been added to the room, Mira Connect will connect to the device and report a valid connection if the device is found at the specified IP address. Mira Connect automatically detects the number of relays on the device once it connects to the device.
If you checked the 'Simulate equipment' box in Mira Portal to get started before you have the device, the simulated equipment behaves as a Global Caché iTach IP2CC with three relays.
If you need more than three relays, add more than one contact closure device to your room.
Screens and projector motors typically have a motor control interface that determines how to start and stop the motion. For example, a Da-Lite Advantage Electrol system requires one contact closure for raising (hiding) the screen and another contact closure for lowering (showing) the screen. Some motor control modules also support a screen stop command that can be configured with either a third contact closure or by activating both the hide and show contacts at the same time.
In this example, we'll use two relays from the Global Caché IP2CC to connect to the Da-Lite control module. According to Da-Lite's documentation, the contact closure must be held closed for at least 500 msec to trigger motion. The screen motion can also be stopped by pressing both up and down contacts for at least 500 msec. We'll show how to configure the contact closures in the next section.
Screen and motor interfaces from other manufacturers may have different connection requirements. Mira Connect's support of contact closures has been designed to be flexible enough to accommodate many different types of interfaces.
In Mira Portal, the screen motion and projector motion controls are configured with the display settings.
To continue, add your display or projector to the room and enter the IP address of the device on the CONNECTION tab. In this example, we've added a Hitachi projector.
Next, select the SCREEN MOTION tab and click the ADD MOTION CONFIGURATION link to start adding screen motion controls to the projector.
In this example, since we are lowering and raising a screen, we'll associate the 'show' screen command with lowering the screen (down motion) and associate the 'hide' screen command with raising the screen (up motion).
If you have both a screen motor and a projector lift motor, you can add both the screen hide/show and projector hide/show motion steps together by adding multiple contacts.
First, add a label that can appear on Mira Connect for the motion controls. In this example, we've entered the label "Screen" for the user controls.
Check the Show Control Buttons box if you'd like to have the manual control buttons visible on Mira Connect. These buttons will allow a user to manually hide or show a screen.
Check the Automate With Power box if you'd like to automate the motion features based on the power state of the projector. This means when the projector is powered on, the 'show' contact closures will be executed, and when the projector is powered off, the 'hide' contact closures will be executed.
While at least one contact closure must be defined for screen motion, typically there will be screen hide (up motion for our screen example) and screen show (down motion for our screen example) motions defined. A screen stop function can also be added if the screen motor controller supports it.
Each motion control describes which motion is associated with the power on and off the device. In this example, the screen hide command is associated with the off state of the projector.
If you were lowering a display when it is powered off, instead of lifting a screen, you would still use the hide option when the display is powered off and would choose a different icon to represent that hide motion direction so users know which motion will be activated by the button on Mira Connect when showing manual controls.
To add a screen hide action, expand the screen up area, and select an icon to display on the Mira Connect.
Next, click ADD CONTACT to add a contact closure. The Global Caché device will be selected by default if you have already added it to your room. If you have added more than one contact closure device, select the desired device to configure.
Next, enter the device's module address (1 always for the IP2CC) and port number (1, 2 or 3) for which relay output will be used. The IP2CC module and port numbers are shown in the following figure.
Next, select how the contact closure should behave to control the screen or projector motor.
As shown in the following figure, the default behavior is to close the contact for a specified duration when the action is triggered. In this case, when the screen is told to hide (raise in our example), contact closure 1 on the device at 192.168.100.139 will be held closed for 600 msec and then the contact closure will be opened and remain open.
As shown in the following figure, you can also choose to open the contact closure if your motor controller requires an open connection. The default behavior is to close the relay to start motion.
There are also three switching options to choose from: Momentary for Duration (the default), Momentary while Held, or Latched.
Momentary for Duration will keep the relay closed (or opened) for the specified duration from 0 to 10,000 msec. A typical value is 600 msec. In our example, a Da-Lite control module requires the contact to be held closed for at least 500 msec to start motion.
Momentary while Held will keep the relay closed (or opened) only while the button is being pressed on the touch panel.
If automating with power, when the momentary while held option is selected, there's an additional Automate Hold Time (ms) field that appears to set how long the system should hold the button when automating the screen based on the power state of the projector.
Latched will set the state of the relay to closed (or opened) and leave it in that state.
If you have additional screens or projector lifts to control from the same user interface, click ADD CONTACT to control more contact closures.
Once you've configured 'hide' motion for the screen, follow the same steps for creating the 'show' motion for the screen:
Select the contact closure device and port to be used to show the screen
Select the switching option (Momentary for Duration is the default value) and enter a duration in milliseconds
Following the Da-Lite example described previously, we've added the port 2 contact closure for showing the screen, using a Momentary for Duration switching option and setting the duration to 600 msec.
An optional stop action can be added using the same methods used with the hide and show actions. For the Da-Lite example, the screen motion is stopped by closing both the screen hide and show contacts at the same time for at least 500 msec.
After adding the port 1 contact closure to the stop action, click ADD CONTACT to add the port 2 contact closure. Notice that we have re-used both ports 1 from the up (hide) motion and 2 from the down (show) motion for the stop function.
Once configured, the summary of the screen hide (up in this example, show (down in this example), and stop motion will appear as in the following figure.
Once the screen motion has been configured, click ADD EQUIPMENT. If there are any invalid settings, the ADD EQUIPMENT button will be grayed out until you correct the settings.
If the screen motion is defined correctly, you will see the status of the Hitachi Projection appear as a green circle in Mira Portal.
If there are settings not correct with the screen motion definitions, you will see an "Edit equipment to complete additional configuration" message associated with the projector. Edit the projector and correct the highlighted issue.
If you've enabled Show Control Buttons to show the user interface, Mira Connect will show the motion buttons with the label and icons you've selected to indicate the correct motion direction for the hide and show actions. In this example the hide motion has an 'up arrow' icon and the show motion has a 'down arrow' icon.
If you've enabled Automate With Power, Mira Connect will automatically trigger the screen hide motion when the projector is powered off, and the screen show when the projector is powered on.
For displays and projectors that support Blank and/or Freeze features, you can re-order the controls on the display card from the display's options tab. Click and drag the different controls to change the order on the display card. Click Update Equipment when done.
Mira Connect controls many audio/visual devices without requiring any programming and now makes it easy to hide and show screens and projectors automatically.
With just a few clicks of your mouse, you can create a professional user interface with both manual raise and lower controls and automation for raising/lowering the screen automatically based on the power state of the projector.
To add screen or projector motion to your system, start by adding one or more contact closure devices to your room. Navigate to your room in and select ADD from the equipment menu as shown in the following figure.
For more information on how to get started with Mira Portal and pairing a Mira Connect to the room, see our .
Scroll to the Contact Closure devices and select the desired product. Mira Connect currently supports the X-400 series and the GC-100, iTach, Flex, and Global Connect product families for contact closures/relays.
A commonly used contact closure device is the Global Caché which provides Ethernet control of three independent contact closures, numbered 1, 2, and 3 as shown in the following figure.
If you have questions about how to set an IP address on the Global Caché device, click the link on the add equipment dialog.
Next, navigate to the VIDEO INPUTS tab and enable the desired video inputs, selecting an icon and adding a label and optional description. If connecting the output from a video switcher to the input of the projector, see our short for how to use sources connected to other devices.
Get started now by creating a account today and build a system entirely in your browser.
