Among these, Project Templates are a selection of pre-configured, pre-programmed projects that are bundled with the Stardraw Control 2010 authoring tool. Each template represents a typical system type (boardroom, classroom, automated home and so on) and contains the devices, their functions and a user interface that is completely pre-programmed and fully-functional. Each Project Template is fully customisable, allowing a system integrator to produce a complete control system front- (and back-) end, specific to a particular project, in minutes.
Critical to this is Driver Substitution, which enables a new driver to be dragged from Stardraw Control’s product lists and dropped onto an existing one: this substitutes one product in your already-programmed system for another and Stardraw Control intelligently re-assigns events and actions so that no re-programming is required. Where there may be ambiguity, Stardraw Control displays a substitution grid that allows assignment of the old action to a new command.
Driver Substitution can be employed in any Stardraw Control project, regardless of how it was created, making it easy to re-use system configurations from project to project with a minimum of programming effort.
The third – possibly most innovative – of the new features is an extension of support for WebServices. WebServices are a set of technologies that allow direct machine-to-machine communications across networks (including the internet, but also LANs and WANs). The extension to WebService support directly exposes the functions and properties of the devices in your system so that the UI, or any other process, can communicate with them directly and intelligently.
‘The extension to WebService support is hugely important for two main reasons,’ explains CEO, David Snipp. ‘First, it means that the developer can choose whether to have an abstracted system with centralised intelligence (which can be a very efficient way of deploying large and complex projects), or one with distributed intelligence, or even a combination of the two – each of these techniques has its own place and advantages. Second, it massively reduces the effort involved in deploying non-Windows UIs using iPads, iPhones, Android devices and the like because no intermediate logic is required. Combined with Project Templates and Driver Substitution these enhancements mean that Stardraw Control systems can be rolled out even more quickly and profitably.’
