Rascular integrates with Ross Video’s openGear

Rascular, a supplier of PC-based multi-device control, has announced the integration of Ross Video’s openGear control protocol with Helm, Rascular’s powerful, fully user-customisable PC-based soft panel control and monitoring system.

By integrating with Ross Video’s openGear platform standard – which is designed from the ground up as an open protocol – Helm now has the potential to control products from all 29 openGear partners including Ross Video, Cobalt Digital and BlackMagic Design. In combination with the recent announcement that Helm is now also integrated with Snell’s RollCall protocol, the range of technology with which the platform integrates is now even more impressive.

Helm allows customers to pick best-of-breed systems – be that branding devices, routers, video servers, VTRs, multi-image display processors and modular gear, or any combination – from a range of different manufactures and provides a single, integrated, user-defined, PC-based control/monitoring surface for operators. This allows users to control channels, or pods of channels, from a single screen using bespoke, pre-defined buttons for complex workflows.

Helm has already assisted many broadcasters around the world in a huge variety of ways, from relatively simple PC-based third-party device control to handling complex, multi-faceted workflows via a simple, user-defined interface. Helm is now integrated with products from: Miranda, Harris, Pixel Power, Snell, Ross Video, Nevion, Lynx Technik, Axon, Evertz, Omneon and many other manufacturers that provide industry-standard protocols such as VDCP and SNMP.

Roddy Pratt, Technical Director with Rascular, said, “Helm dynamically locates all opengear devices and detects their capabilities, as it does with RollCall. This means that any new or updated products can be used without updating the Helm software. By integrating with openGear and becoming a Ross Video partner we’re opening up a whole new range of control possibilities to broadcasters and playout providers.”