Serial Control (e.g. RS232, RS485, VISCA)

Serial control allows remote PTZ, preset calling/setting and other control from 3rd party devices (e.g. joystick, Crestron) or software (e.g. Prisual Camera Tool) over a wired connection to the camera. With the Prisual there are 2 methods for controlling your camera. rs-232 and rs-485. Rs-232 is a standard that most joysticks and control systems use. Rs-232 is a 2 way control protocol, which allows the joystick to talk to the camera, but also the camera to talk back to the joystick. This is useful if using a joystick that requires feedback from the camera, such as one that allows for querying the cameras position. RS-232 is achieved using 3 main signal connections; transmit, receive and ground. When you hook up from your joystick to your camera, you would only need to connect these 3 wires to achieve camera control. If you need to control more than one camera from a joystick you would need to daisy chain camera 1 to cam 2. This would involve a daisy chain cable that will require 5 signal connections to achieve.




You can also hook up your camera using rs-485 for control. This is a one way communication that allows the joystick to send commands to the camera, but cannot accept any commands back from the camera. This is a very easy method for hooking up your cameras to a joystick, mainly because it only requires only 2 signal connections, transmit plus and minus. Then, if you need to daisy chain off of this connection, you would just put another wire from the rs-485 port on your camera, in to the rs-485 port of the next camera. This method works well, and is very versatile since you don't need proprietary cables to daisy chain you cameras together, any old 2 conductor cables will work. I have seen people utilize existing cat cable in their walls and just cut off a couple heads and then use that to wire a direct connection for rs-485.

Most meeting room users will be perfectly content with their infrared hand-held remote control, especially when all PTZ command are executed via preset calls. However, some operators will require a better control interface for their application (e.g. Produced events with camera operator(s); Rooms with centralized touch-panel control systems, like Crestron/AMX/Extron, where all hand-held remotes have been removed from the room, etc...). Cameras with serial control capability will often conform to the industry standard mini-Din8 connector and Sony VISCA protocol. This makes using this feature fairly straightforward, as long as you have the right control cabling and set both the camera and controller to a matching baud rate, etc...