Deep Space Info and Challenges

To join the same network as the rest of the space, connect to CT Deepspace with the password idontknow

To use the screens in the space for simple presentations using the HDMI on the lectern, follow these steps.

From the front of the rack, switch on the DVI Matrix using the small green switch. Once it has booted, we need to check the signal routing is correct. On the front of the matrix you will see two rows of 12 buttons. On the lower row, press ‘9’. You should see ‘5’ light up on the top row. If it’s not, press the ‘5’ button the top row so it lights up.

Repeat the above process above to check:
Lower ’10’ lights up upper ‘6’
Lower ‘3’ lights up upper ‘8’
Lower ‘4’ lights up upper ‘8’
Lower ‘5’ lights up upper ‘8’

At the top of the rack are a set of red power switches, switch on number 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9.

Near the bottom of the rack are the two LED screen processors. Switch them both on.

Whilst the processors are booting, switch on the Behringer X32 rack console. Once it has booted, turn the main output level up to -9dB. If you are using the Bridge you need to mute channels 1 and 2, but if you are using the Deep Space standalone, unmute channels 1 and 2. This sets the routing required to make the minijack cable on the lectern should you need it.

In the left hand corner of the room, behind the LED, is a small audio rack. Turn on switches 6, 7 and 8, then make sure the E-Pak is turned up to -6 and is unmuted (the green LED should be static, not flashing. If it’s flashing, press it).

Finally, check the two 55″ screens in the space are set to the correct HDMI inputs as needed.

Any device plugged into the HDMI cable on the lectern should now display on the large LED screen and the two monitors on the wheeled stands.

Once you have finished, reverse the steps above to power everything off.

Here’s a video of it….

• In the rack there is 2x Pixera servers + Decklink 4K Extreme and 4K Extreme 12G cards, Aja 4K>Quad SDI, 12×12 DVI Matrix, KVM, Apple Mac pro’s + Sonnet chasis with Decklink Duo card, TFC server/controller, 2x Mellanox and Cisco (TFC) switches and 2x LED processors
• In the space there is 2x Panasonic projectors with fixed lenses, Absen 1.9mm screen and 2x 55″ screens
• Always power on DVI matrix first then Pixera Director server followed by everything else in the rack that you need for the training
• Pixera Director server has all the configuration for use of TFC system, it’s output is connected directly to the 28″ Samsung monitor @control table via DP cable, this machine also runs Companion server app that is accessible via network from other browser on other servers
• Pixera Client server and Director server, both machines are running Pixera Demo license at the moment, as Demo doesn’t support Multi-Client workflow you need to open Client server to use Pixera and output signals to LED and Projectors via AJA 4K>Quad SDI, disregard Director machine for now
• Pixera Director server DP output goes directly to 28″ Samsung monitor, 2nd output (HDMI) goes to the DVI matrix, Chrome browser has got the bookmark to access different tools
• Pixera Client server GUI output and 2x LED outputs go to the DVI matrix and 4K outputs feeds the AJA HA5>Quad SDI
• LED Processors are fed by DVI cable from DVI matrix at 1248×1248 resolution, HDMI inputs are available for the external equipment
• DVI matrix: controllable from Lightware Control software, available on the Pixera Director and via Companion, there is 3 presets available in the Companion through bookmark in the Chrome browser, to switch between Pixera, PBP-ProPresenter and Millumin configuration
• Apple Mac Pro servers – left one is used for PBP and ProPresenter, it has a Sonnet chasis attached with Decklink card to generate Key&Fill signals, right one is configure for use with Millumin v4 and feed the LED screen with 2 outputs via DVI matrix
• KVM – we are only utilising USB connection for the keyboard and mouse control, there is a label on the keyboard explaining the switching process
• 28″ Samsung monitors @control table: Mon 1 – DP direct from Pixera Director, HDMI I/P1 from DVI matrix, Mon 2 – HDMI I/P 1 from DVI matrix
• Cisco 2921 router and 2960 switches – standalone system, requires no other systems to be powered up
• ZeeVee STBi3 Set Top Boxes – powered by PoE from the rack, HDMI input 2 on the monitors.

• LED screen is fed from 63A 3ph on the wall in the Deep Space and distro is next to the LED screen, fed from first soca output so turn the main 63A braker and then individual 16A breakers of the first soca output
• Rack in the White Space server room is feed from 32A 1ph on the wall so make sure it is on.
• Check that the breakers on the distro to the right of the rack are still on.
• Check that the breakers on the EMO PDU in the middle of the rack mid-rails are still on.
• At the top of the rack there is a PDU with individual switches, turn the switches as per your requirement.
• First turn the DVI matrix and then Pixera Director server
• Turn the LED processors if using LED screen
• Turn on the rest of the units that you will use for training
• Once the Pixera Director has booted, the screen on the desk will power up. It’s unlikely the KVM will have detected the machine, so press the Enter key multiple times to get the KVM to wake up.

The moving lights are powered from the distro behind the LED wall. Circuits 5 and 6 on the top bank of breakers will power up the lights as labelled. The fixtures will power up with their lamps off to save lamp-hours. Allow the fixtures to run through their calibration cycle, finishing with them pointing at the floor.

If you are not planning to use Pixera and Artistic License to provide DMX to control them, you will need to use the standalone controller to switch the lamps on. In the rack room, turn on the 32A supply to the Pixera/TFC Rack, check the EMO PDU in the rack hasn’t tripped off, then turn on switch 5 on the PDU at the top of the rack. Finally, flick the big red switch on the side of the rack. The lamps will take a few seconds to strike, and will warm up over a minute or two.

To power down, flick the big red switch back to the off position, allow about 8 seconds for the lamps to douse. If you have time, wait a couple of minutes for the lamps to cool down, then turn the breakers off.

PIXERA USE (not yet installed)- if using Pixera to provide DMX to the lights, you will need to change the DMX cabling. On the right hand side of the rack, just off the floor is a join in the 5-pin XLR cable. Break this join and plug the end labelled ‘Pixera DMX’ into the Artistic License unit. The Alpha Spots display their DMX addresses on their inbuilt displays.

• Turn off all of the servers, LED processors, DVI matrix then flip the switches on the PDU at the top of the rack and finally turn of the 32A 1 ph
  • LED screen: turn off the breakers of the soca one output individually and followed by the 63a 3ph breaker on the wall
  • Projectors: turn it off by the ON/OFF button wait for it to cool down and then flip the main breaker switch on the projector

1. Open Pixera on the Pixera Client PC from the Taskbar.
2. Add a screen object made of the LED Panels – Absen 1.9mm by dragging the A1.9 object from the LED panels dropdown in the Library on the left
3. Select the LED tile in the workspace and on the right-hand size configure the Panel Array to 12 panels horizontal and 8 panels vertical
4. Go to Compositing tab and use right click on the Media folder under the Resources tab then select Add Resource>From file.
5. Once “Choose Files and Directories to Open” window presents navigate to Raid (D) drive and in the folder LED, select “Grid Deep Space” and click Open.
6. Expand the ‘Media’ drop down menu under ‘Resources”
7. Drag the imported grid file to the screen object in the workspace and move the play head on the timeline to see the grid in the workspace.
8. Head to Mapping tab > Live
9. Click on the dropdown next to the Local and then again next to the Quadro P5000, you should see 4 outputs of the PC
10. If the outputs are activated you should see next to each output in round brackets [active], if they are not active, select the output and in the Output properties on the right-hand side make sure there is a check mark next to the Active
11. If you by mistake, make a GUI active then press a keyboard shortcut Shift+ESC to deactivate all the outputs then repeat step 10.
12. Proceed with the assigning the screen object to the Nova HD Card output by selecting A1.9 in the dropdown under the Assigned to Image Device in the Output properties.
13. Once first Nova HD card output is assigned proceed with assigning the same screen object to the 2^nd Nova HD card output and click on Add when a prompt “Output already assigned” pops up.
14. Head to Project tab and expand “A1.9” object and mappings, then select the mapping that feeds the right side of the screen and adjust the Source Position value X to 1248 in the Output properties.
15. You should have a complete GRID image on the LED screen.
16. Additionally, you can go to Compositing tab and drag more content to the screen from the Standard content folder. Adjust the clips one behind the other on the timeline and click on the Space bar to play the timeline.

Often we need to take a single network connection from a venue and create our own network from it to connect equipment to. CT have many routers/gateways/firewalls in stock, but this challenge will get you to use Cisco command line configure a basic network from scratch.

1. Power up the rack of Cisco equipment. It’s Cisco, it takes a long time to boot. Make sure you have a console software like PuTTY or Terminus installed on you laptop.
2. Plug the console cable into the console port of the lower Cisco switch and open a console session on your laptop. The baudrate/speed is 9600 as standard on Cisco equipment.
3. As the switch is completely reset, the console will display a setup wizard which we do NOT want to use. Typing no will exit the wizard and take us to the switches command line.
4. Cisco consoles start in a safe mode to ensure you don’t accidentally configure something by leaning on the keyboard, you must enable the console before you can go any further.

enable

All Cisco commands can be shorted or auto-completed using the tab kay, but they are written out here to give a more complete view of what the commands are actually doing.

5. You are now in the most basic level of the command line. From here you can’t configure anything, but you can show a lot of information. For instance, to see the configuration the switch is currently running, type the command below. Use the spacebar to stagger through it, or hit q to exit it.

show running-config

6. As we can’t configure anything from this level, we need to elevate to terminal with higher privileges on the switch. This terminal will allow us to apply changes to the switch.

configure terminal

7. We have just accessed the command line of the switch without any authentication at ll, meaning anyone else could do the same thing. The first thing you should do is set a password for the enable command we used in step 4.

enable secret 0 createch

You have told the switch that the password it is about to receive is to be used for the enable command. Secret 0 is telling the switch that we are about to give it a password in plain text (rather than one that is pre-encrypted) and then what the password is. Now, whenever a console session is started, the password will have to be entered.

8. Currently the switch is operating in a reduced state because we haven’t actually told it to do anything with its interfaces. Most switches use VLAN 1 as their native VLAN, but for the this challenge we are going to assign all the interfaces to VLAN 538. To do this, we first need to create the VLAN.

vlan 538

exit

The first command creates the VLAN, but also takes you into its configuration. We don’t need to configure anything to do with the VLAN in this challenge so you can exit straight out of it.

9. Now you have created the VLAN, we need to tell an interface to be part of that VLAN. Think of VLANs as lots of smaller individual switches existing inside our one physical switch; we need to tell each interface which VLAN it belongs to.

interface gigabitethernet 1/0/1

switchport mode access

switchport access vlan 31

exit

Firstly we select the interface we want to configure, in this case gigabitethernet 1/0/1. The numbering scheme within Cisco hardware varies from device to device, you can always check the numbering by looking at the running configuration. Looking at this interface, we are looking at switch 1, the module number the interface belongs (it’s not a modular switch, so all interfaces will be 0), and the interface number.

The first line takes us into the configuration of the interface (shortened to (conf-if) at the start of each line in your console. Next we tell this interface we want to set it to be an access port (rather than a trunk), and then which VLAN we want it to access. Finally we exit out of the configuration for that interface, back to the configuration terminal. Interface GE1/0/1 now access VLAN 31. Which is incorrect!

10. I have given you the wrong VLAN number by mistake, so you have set interface 1 to access VLAN 31, which doesn’t exist on the switch, se you need to fix that. Currently you are sat in the configuration terminal, so you first need to go back into the interface configuration for gigabitethernet 1/0/1 like you did in step 9.

In Cisco, to remove a line of configuration, you put the word no in front of the command you want to remove. We want to remove the access to VLAN 31.

no switchport mode access vlan 31

And instead make it VLAN 538

switchport mode access vlan 538

And exit back to the configuration terminal.

11. It would be very boring to have to do this for each individual interface. Luckily you can configure the interfaces in ranges to apply changes in bulk. First you have to select your range, for us this will be the rest of the interfaces on the switch, interfaces 2 to 28.

interface range gigabitethernet 1/0/2 - 28

Now, like before, set the mode to access, set the interfaces to access VLAN 538 and then exit back to the configuration terminal.

12. It would be useful to check that we can see the switch when it becomes part of a bigger network. Currently the switch knows about VLAN 538 but that’s it. As we have set all the interfaces to be access ports, every packet that comes in to an interface is tagged as belonging to VLAN538, is passed across the switch with this tag in place, but then the tag is removed when it leaves an interface. The switch is simply switching packets. If we want to interact with the switch on VLAN 538, we need to give it an interface on VLAN 538.

It’s important to notice that just because the switch isn’t on VLAN 538 itself, it’s still passing traffic. All we are going to do at this next step is allow ourselves to access the switch from VLAN 538.

interface vlan 538

Just like before, we are now in the configuration of an interface, but this time we are configuring the interface of a VLAN, rather than a physical port on the switch. Once here, we can assign the interface (in this case VLAN 538) an IP address so we can ping the switch.

ip address 10.1.1.10 255.255.255.0

Exit back to the configuration terminal. You have now given the switch an interface on VLAN 538 with a suitable IP address and subnet. You can test this by plugging your laptops network port into the switch, giving your laptop a matching manual network setting (you will only need to set IP and subnet at this stage) and pinging the switch IP above.

You need to configure your network settings manually because we haven’t configured a DHCP server on our LAN, so nothing will issue us with an IP. You can plug you laptop into any interface on the switch because you have already configured them to all be part of VLAN 538.

13. Finally, a bit of house-keeping on the switch. Console windows all look the same, so having a switch called Switch isn’t very helpful. We should set the hostname to make the switch more recognisable.

hostname our-switch

14. We are now finished in the configuration terminal so you can exit back to the basic command line. As before, if you show the running configuration, you will see everything that we have configured so far. Notice that the configuration exactly matches the commands you have typed in. All Cisco configuration files are saved in this plan text format, meaning you can easily see what commands you need to run to achieve certain settings, and you could edit a file in a text editor and upload it directly to the switch if you wanted to.

15. At the moment, the switch is only running the commands you have issued, they haven’t been saved permanently. Cisco uses two configuration files, running configuration and startup configuration. We have been editing the running configuration, so everything would be lost if the switch is turned off. Sounds annoying but is actually useful if you make a big configuration mistake and lose access to the switch. Turning it off and on again will revert the switch back to its last saved config.

We are ready to save this configuration as we are happy it works.

copy running-config startup-config

Now that you have configured the switch in Part 1 of this challenge, we can move on to the Cisco 1921 router. On the surface this looks like it’s a very complex process, but keep in mind that this is part of what your BT HomeHub is doing automatically every day to connect you to the internet, so it’s good to have an understanding of it.

Move your console cable from the switch to the router. You shouldn’t have to restart the console session in PuTTY/Terminus but you might have to press any key to wake the routers console interface up.

As with the switch, you will be greeted with a setup wizard which we don’t want to use. Instead, we are going to reuse some of the commands used in Part 1 to begin configuring the router.

1. Using the some of the commands from Part 1, you should be able to:
   a) Enable the console
   b) Enter the configuration terminal
   c) Set a password for the enable command
   d) Set the hostname of the router to our-router
2. This model of router only has two physical interfaces, all routers will have at least two interfaces because we are expecting them to route traffic between two separate LANs. For a router to work, it needs to be able to communicate with the network it is plugged into. This means giving it an IP address on the network we set up in Part 1. In Part 1, we gave a VLAN an IP address, but using the same command structure we are going to give a physical interface an IP address instead. our-switch is plugged into interface 0/0 on the router, so we should configure that.

interface gigabitethernet 0/0

ip address 10.1.1.1 255.255.255.0

description our-LAN

exit

Notice that the IP address we have chosen is in the same subnet as the IP we gave the switch, which matches IP that your laptop is currently using. We have also given the interface a description to make it easier to identify in the configuration file.

3. If you tried to ping the router on the IP address above now, you would get no response. If you exit out of the configuration terminal, and show the running configuration , you’ll notice a line in the configuration of gigabitethernet 0/0 that we don’t want. The interface is shutdown. Using the same logic we used in Part 1 to undo the mistake with the incorrect VLAN, go back into the configuration terminal, back into the configuration of gigabitethernet 0/0 and remove the shutdown command.

4. The interface will now come up, it will report the change in your terminal window, and the link lights will come on on both the switch and the router. Now you will be able to ping the router from your laptop, but you still won’t be able to ping the outside world (try pinging 8.8.8.8).

5. You have now configured all the interfaces on the LAN side of the router, the next set is to connect to the ‘venue’ network so we can get internet access. The cable labelled ‘VENUE NETWORK’ which is cable tied to the SKB rack mimics a cable drop you would get at a venue. At a venue you may have been told the details you need to use, but you may not have that information. In this situation you may be able to find the information you need without any help.

Plug your laptop into the VENUE NETWORK and set it back to DHCP/automatically get an IP address. Because there is a DHCP server running on the VENUE NETWORK, your laptop will be given all the IP details it needs to get online. Note down the IP range, subnet, gateway and DNS your laptop has picked up, you will need them in a moment.

6. With this information, you now have the information you need to set up what will become our WAN interface on the Cisco 1921 router. The next step is to configure the other physical interface, gigabitethernet 0/1 using the details we gleaned from the VENUE NETWORK. Enter the configuration for the interface, set its IP and subnet (you can use the IP address that your laptop was given, or use the same range but end the address as .7 which is reserved for this challenge) and set a friendly name for the interface like our-WAN. Remember the interface will be shut down, so fix that whilst you are configuring.

7. Plug the VENUE NETWORK into the interface you just configured, the link should come up. Plug your laptop back into our-switch and manually set your laptop’s IP settings back to the range of the LAN you configured and used in Part 1. Note that we are beginning to jump around IP ranges to be able to test connectivity. It is really important you check your laptop’s network every time you try to connect to a device over IP; am I in the right subnet to be able to talk to this device?

8. Check you can ping the IP address of our-switch. Then check you can ping the IP address of the LAN interface of our-router. Finally, ping 8.8.8.8 which is definitely beyond our network. You won’t be able to ping anything beyond the WAN interface yet because we haven’t told the router what traffic it’s allowed to handle, or how to handle it.

9. Routers work by keeping a table of all the packets that pass through it. It notes the IP address that the packet comes from on the LAN side, then tweaks the packet headers to change the source IP to its own WAN address to disguise and protect your devices. When your configuration is complete, packets from your laptop (or any device on your LAN) will appear to the outside world to come from the router’s WAN IP address, not the LAN IP address of the device. When the response to your laptop’s request (which now appears to have come from the router) comes back to the router, it uses it’s log table to translate the network address back to your laptop’s IP address and sends the response to your laptop. This network address translation, or NAT, is a fundamental process within the router, but we have to tell it how to achieve this.

10. At the moment we have given the two interfaces friendly names so we can identify the LAN and WAN sides of the router, but we haven’t actually told the router this information. We need to go into the configuration of each interface individually, making gigabitethernet 0/0 the LAN side, and gigabitethernet 0/1 the WAN side.

interface gigabitethernet 0/0

ip nat inside

exit

inteface gigabitethernet 0/1

ip nat outside

exit

The router now knows which way around its interfaces are, but it still can’t route traffic.

11. Routers need rules to work by, and at the moment we haven’t given it any. So we will create a very basic access list that we can put rules in, which we can then use to filter packets.

ip access-list extended our-access-list

Notice again that the line on our terminal window has changed again. We are now in the configuration of this access list. What this command tells the router is: we are configuring settings to do with the IP protocol, we want to create or edit an access list, we may want to extend the access list beyond a single rule, and we would like to name it something friendly.

Currently this access list is empty, but we will add a single rule so broad that it it will apply to every packet that comes through the router.

permit ip any any

This line allows all packets that belongs to the IPv4 protocol, from any source, heading to any destination. Essentially every packet! As we are in the configuration of the access list, you need to exit back to the configuration terminal.

12. Having made the access list, it now needs to be applied to an interface so the router can check traffic against it.

ip nat inside source list our-access-list interface GigabitEthernet0/1 overload

In this one line we are telling the router to take any IP protocol traffic, translate the network address (NAT) of the device inside the LAN to that our WAN interface (gigabitethernet0/1) as long as it is permitted by our-access-list

13. The final step to get our LAN online is an important one. It’s a setting that every network capable device needs to connect to a wider network. Consider this, you have given your laptop an IP address (let’s say 10.1.1.20) and you’ve given it a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. In those two settings we have told the laptop it can only communicate with devices that have an address of 10.1.1.something, with the something being between 0 and 255. What happens if we want to communicate with a device that isn’t in that range?

Your laptop’s network adaptor can calculate if an address is within its subnet, so it can also calculate if an address is outside its subnet. If it is trying to send a packet to a device outside the subnet, it needs a way out of its subnet. Let’s call it a gateway out of the subnet. Your laptop will send any packets destined for the wider network to the gateway in the hope the gateway knows what to do with them. As your laptop has manual IP settings at the moment, if you don’t specifically tell your laptop the IP address of the gateway, it won’t know where it is, it won’t know to send packets there, and you won’t be able to communicate outside your subnet.

On your laptop, set the gateway setting. You know the IP address of the gateway, you configured it earlier. Think about the fact that the gateway IP must be within the subnet of your laptop, otherwise how will your laptop communicate with it? You are trying to give it a gateway out of its subnet, how can it use a gateway that it needs a gateway to get to?

14. Now that your laptop has a suitable gateway (it should be the IP address of the routers LAN interface by the way), your laptop now knows that our-router is where it can send packets to the outside world. The router is your laptops ‘next hop’. But as far as the router is concerned, it only knows about two subnets, your LAN and the venue’s network. The router doesn’t know how to get these packets out to the internet because it also needs a ‘next hop’. It also needs a gateway, but what’s the IP of the next hop?

You already know the answer to this as the VENUE NETWORK helpfully told you through DHCP when you plugged your laptop in to the VENUE NETWORK many steps ago. The gateway the router needs to use is the same gateway your laptop was told to use.

We want to tell the router to send all traffic to the venue’s router. The command means: apply this to any IPv4 protocol, route any source IP, look for any destination IP, to the venue’s router.

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.5.1

Now you can try your ping tests. Ping our-switch, ping our-router, ping the venue’s router, ping 8.8.8.8. You should get a reply from all of them, proving you are online.

Consider what the venues router is doing at this point. It has an interface at 192.168.5.1, and an interface on the next WAN. It will have a rule in it that forwards traffic, and crucially it’s been told to use a ‘next hop’ on its WAN network. That ‘next hop’ has a ‘next hop’ and so on.

15. Having done all this work, we should probably save it as we did on our-switch.

16. Bonus configuration! You have just proved you can ping 8.8.8.8, but if you try to browse the internet, your browser will timeout. The reason for this is DNS. Everything you have tested so far has been an IP address, not a domain name (we have pinged 8.8.8.8 not google.com for example). In order to use domain names, we need a service which can look up a domain (youtube.com, bbc.co.uk, ct-group.com) and resolve it to an IP address. You have manually set all the network settings on your laptop so far, but haven’t given it a domain name service (DNS). Because of this it has now way of looking up the IP address of google.com so you can’t ping it, let alone browse to it.

So what DNS should you use? You already know, your laptop was told via DHCP when you plugged it into the VENUE NETWORK. If you tell your laptop to use this DNS, you will properly be able to ping, browse, stream etc.

17. It’s unlikely you will have to do this in anger on site. You would just use a router that does it all in the background and has a nice web interface to set it up from, but there is an important lesson here; to get a device online, it needs four critical pieces of information, and that information needs to be correct!

Whether it’s a laptop trying to download a file, an encoder streaming to YouTube or a matrix needing a firmware update, they will all need to be given an IP address and subnet that allows it so communicate with a gateway on that subnet, and that gateway needs to be able to access the internet do look up the domain names in the DNS that you have set.

18. Once you are happy, it’s time to reset our-switch and our-router back to default, ready for the next challenger. As you are connected to the router, let’s start there.

write erase

Hit enter to confirm the reset.

Move your console cable back to our-switch. You will have to enable with the password you set earlier by this time, and issue the same command.

You have now deleted the startup configurations, your running configurations are still active, but when you switch the power off, they will be lost and the devices are rest.

Head to youtube.com and log in. If you are using the PCs in the Deep Space, you may already be logged in to the CT test account. If not, sign in using the email address remote@ctlondon.com and the password Cre@t1veTech

Like many sites, Google (who own YouTube) like to use two-factor authentication to secure the account. This is more likely to be triggered when signing in from an unknown PC or IP address, but can happen anywhere. As these accounts are not designed for our industry, we have a work-around to let you get the 2FA code.

If prompted, opt to use another authentication method and from there select the text message option to the number ending 896. Google will now send a code to this number, which we then forward on to the Onsite Links pages which can be also be found by scanning the QR code on our flightcase labels.

Once logged in, locate the Create button, and select Go live from the drop-down menu. You’ll land on the stream management page, where you can click the blue Schedule Stream button.

Give you stream a title and description, and you will be using Streaming Software to go live.
As most of our events are advertised by our clients, the Category doesn’t matter.
If you are using the PC’s in the Deep Space there is a suitable thumbnail to upload in the Pictures folder.
Playlists don’t matter to us as it’s a one-off event, and to play it safe, we always say the content isn’t for kids.
Under the Show More button, there is a setting for Allow Embedding. This is important if the client wants to embed the stream on their own site. If this is disabled, the event will just show an error on their website. It will still be viewable on YouTube, but not anywhere else.

For most of our events we won’t want the chat enabled, it opens a can of worms with regards to moderation, so disable all interactivity.

Finally we need to set the visibility. As this is a test, you can set it Private so only you can view it. Normally we would set this to Unlisted for client events, that way it can be embedded on a website or anyone with the link can watch. Now set your schedule. All this does is set the countdown timer the public see before the stream starts, it doesn’t take your event live automatically.

Clicking Done will take you to the Studio page.

The stream URL and hidden stream key are the two pieces of information you need for your encoder. Note that YouTube also supports a backup stream, so you can have a second encoder pointing at the second stream URL as a failover.

Things to avoid here are using the auto-start and auto-stop functions. You run the risk of automatically starting or ending an event just by starting your encoder if these are enabled.

Enabling DVR allows viewers to rewind the event whilst it is still streaming, which is useful if viewers join late.

As we haven’t started an encoder yet, the stream is receiving ‘No data’.

Click the share icon in the top right of the screen to get the viewing link to send to clients or viewers.

Now you just need to stream some video to your event.

The Deep Space has a Kiloview E1 encoder permanently installed in the server room, so you don’t need any additional hardware for this part of the challenge.

From the control PCs or the Deep Space WiFi, navigate to http://kiloview.deepspace.ct-networks.com and log in as admin/createch

The encoder already has a video source which you can see in the preview. It also already has some stream outputs set up to drive the IPTV system, but we want to add a new output to send to the YouTube event we just created.

Click on Add Stream. You now need to select the correct transport protocol for your stream. Most stream URLs (including YouTube) give you a clue as to which protocol it is looking for. The stream URLs for YouTube all start with rtmp:// and contain the phrase ‘rtmp’, which tells us that we want to use RTMP. It’s RTMP Push because we are pushing our data from the encoder to the server, rather than the server requesting it from the encoder, which would be a pull.

The encoder will now create the new stream service, but you need to configure it by clicking the cog icon.

Different encoders will refer to the stream URL and stream keys in different ways, and they also need this information in different places to make the stream work. There is a bit of Googling and trial error to get the combination correct. For the Kiloview encoders, they wany the stream URL and stream key to be combined into the Push point as a single URL. For example:
stream URL: rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2
stream key: a1a1-b2b2-c3c3-d4d4
would need to be combined to form: rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/a1a1-b2b2-c3c3-d4d4

The username and password fields are left black because YouTube doesn’t require authentication, so you can just save the changes and return to the home screen.

You can click Start to begin the stream, and stream will begin.

Unfortunately, YouTube isn’t receiving the stream. Isn’t that annoying. It’s time to look at the logs and see if it points to any issues.

As you can see in the Streaming logs above, there is a clear issue here. There is a problem accessing the DNS. DNS is the service that resolves URLs such as youtube.com to their IP address. Without this service, the encoder doesn’t know where to send the packets.

Locate the network settings and see what DNS1 and DNS2 are currently set to.

As they are blank, the encoder isn’t able to resolve youtube.com to an IP address. There are many DNS servers available in the world, and your venue may be running their own which they would have told you about. But if in doubt use 8.8.8.8 which is Google’s DNS service. If Google don’t know about a website, no-one does! As we are at a ‘venue’ I can tell you that the primary DNS is 192.168.2.14 and the secondary is 8.8.8.8.

When you apply the settings, you will get a popup asking if you want to immediately apply the settings, which you do.

Annoyingly, this hasn’t fixed the problem. The stream still isn’t making it to YouTube. Look at the streaming log file again, this time the error is less obvious so a more fundamental fault-finding approach is needed.

Always start with what is known as Layer 1. This is the physical stuff: is the encoder powered (yes, we can get to it’s webpage), is the ethernet cable plugged in (yes, we can access the web page). Next we move to Layer 2, which is MAC addresses and the fundamentals of network traffic. It’s unlikely there is a duplicate MAC address on the network (we can access the web page so traffic flow is good). Next, Layer 3: IP settings.

Open the network settings again. The four critical pieces of information are there: IP address, subnet mask, gateway and the DNS you added.

As all this information has been set manually, there’s a chance it’s wrong. The easiest way to prove this is to get a laptop and connect it to the network using DHCP. The DHCP server will issue your laptop all the information it needs to get online, so compare the settings your laptop or the control PC has been issued with the settings on the encoder. The last octet of the IP address will be different because the IP address must be unique, but there is another difference.

The DHCP server is telling devices to use a gateway which is at 192.168.5.1, which is not what the encoder is set to. The encoder is trying to send traffic destined for the internet to an IP address that isn’t in use. As there is no device at 192.168.5.254 it can’t possibly be a gateway to the internet. Change the gateway address to match what the DHCP server is telling your device and apply the changes.

Finally, you are getting a stream to YouTube. If you wanted to take your event live, you would simply click Go Live on the YouTube control page. It’s worth noting here that YouTube is very good at finding copyright content, and as we are streaming the BBC, YouTube will detect it and eventually stop the stream. This is the same case with music, so be careful on site!

To reset from this challenge, stop the stream output you set you and delete the event on YouTube. The encoder will reset to its ‘broken’ state overnight.

Power on the TFC Switch from the PDU at the top of the rack. If you are using your own laptop on the WiFi, this is all you need. If you are using the Pixera Director as your control machine boot that up and also turn on the Aten KVM for the top PDU. If using the KVM, wait for everything to boot then hit the Enter key a few times to wake the KVM. Make sure the two 55″ screens are set to HDMI 2

Open Chrome and navigate to http://iptv.deepspace.ct-networks.com:5050 Note that the system does not use a standard port number, your are connecting to the server on port 5050. From a factory default state, it’s worth working through the left-hand menu items in order, start with Configurartion

The first thing we need to do is tell the system what IP range to look for set top boxes in. In this case, they will be between 192.168.5.1 and 192.168.5.254 as that’s what the networks DHCP server will issue.

When set top boxes are discovered, they need to know where to get their channel list and splash screens from. For nearly all cases, this will be the IP address of the IPTV Manager and the same as the web interface you have opened. We have added a URL to our network so you are connecting to iptv.deepspace.ct-networks.com, but this resolves to 192.168.5.10. In our demo setup, this is the Manager Server Address, so enter this in and Save.

We can now move on to Channel Lists. The channels available in a system on site will depend on the encoders configured on your network. In the space there is one encoder generating a UDP stream which is available on 239.0.0.5 on port 5001. Create this channel in the Manager.

This new channel now needs to be added to a Channel Group. Channel Groups allow you to control which set top boxes can access which channels. Create a Channel Group, then add your channel to the group by selecting them from the three-dot menu.

Next we can move on to Splash Screens. If you are using the Pixera Director as you control machine there is a suitable splash screen in the Pictures folder, if not, any 1920×1080 image file will do. Add a new splash screen to the Manager.

Finally, on the STBs page, you will be able to run a Scan to discover the set top boxes. You have set a range of 254 addresses, and we left the discover timeout as 5 seconds, so the scan may take a minute to complete.

The scan will discover the two set top boxes which are installed on the back of the 55″ screens. To adopt them into the system you must first create a group to put them in. On site, a group of screens would be something you may want to control together: set all the screens in one room to the splash image, mute all the screens in catering etc. Create a Group, assigning it the Channel Group you created earlier.

We now need to adopt the set top boxes into the Group you have created. The name of the box is just a friendly name to help identify the box. As the boxes are adopted they will restart to apply their new configurations. As this happens you’ll see the boxes go offline, making them highlight in red, an exclamation mark appear in the head of the Group, and the Offline status in the left-hand menu flash. This would happen on-site if any boxes go offline.

Now the boxes are adopted you can control them individually, or by Group. Set the Group to the splash screen , then back to channel 1.

One channel is probably not enough for you, move on to the next challenge to add another channel.

The Deep Space has a Kiloview E1 encoder permanently installed in the server room, so you don’t need any additional hardware for this part of the challenge.

From the control PCs or the Deep Space WiFi, navigate to http://kiloview.deepspace.ct-networks.com and log in as admin/createch

The encoder already has a video source which you can see in the preview. These encoders only support one video input so your new channel will have same video content.

From the Encoding & Streaming menu, click on Add Stream. You now need to select the correct transport protocol for your stream, for IPTV this is TS-UDP pushing because we are going to push a UDP transport stream onto the network.

The encoder will now create the new stream service, but you need to configure it by clicking the cog icon.

The target address is the multicast address we want to use. These are special ‘Class D’ addresses, some of which have specific uses within the IPv4 protocol. To avoid this, pick an address starting 239, ensuring it is unique from any other streams on your network. For this challenge you can use 239.0.0.6. It’s worth noting that this address is theoretically outside the subnet of the encoder, and because of this, Kiloview encoders must have a gateway address set for them to stream!

Next you need to select a target port. Port numbers can be anything from 0 to 65,353 although 0 to 1023 are reserved. Again, to keep us out of the way of anything else, we will use port 5001.

The rest of the settings on the stream can be left as default as our network is very simple. You’ll notice that the Enable Push option at the top of the settings is set to Yes, so when you Save this stream, it will start streaming immediately.

Now you have a second stream available to the IPTV system, you can add a second channel to Channel List in the Manager, and add that to the Channel Group you created. The Multicast Address and Port Number are the ones you have just configured in your stream. Note that changes like this causes the boxes to reboot as they have to download their new channel list. The same is true if you upload a new splash screen.

Once you are happy, you can reset the Manager in the Configuration menu, ready for the next person.

1. Find the IP address of the ODIN Control port using the front panel
2. Check that the network adaptor on the PC is in the same subnet as the ODIN Control Port.
3. Select the AZ Edit Control port interface. Options> Preferences > Discovery, select from the drop-down.
4. Navigate to Options > Communications. Click the ellipsis symbol and confirm the ODIN IP
5. Connect using the icon or by navigating to Online >Connect.
6. Load the default configuration. Online> stored setups and load the file in slot 1. Alternatively load the online config. from slot 1 using the front panel of ODIN.

Should IP edit prompt for authentication to connect to a device, use the credentials (Please note that these are case sensitive)

Username: admin
Password: <blank>

If a device is factory reset the default credentials are Username: admin; Password: password.

1. Check that the network adaptor connected to the OMNEO network is set to DHCP. Confirm by pinging the OMNEO port or Audio IP address (you will need to check what these are TIP: rotate the left encoder clockwise to scroll the ODIN screen for all device details.
2. Connect the DBPs to the OMNEO VLAN of the switch. The DBPs can be daisy chained.
3. Launch IP Edit and ensure the correct adaptor is selected from the Edit> Preferences> Discovery drop-down.
4. Using IP Edit, connect the beltpacks to the ODIN. The port Alphas should be visible in the Intercom Alphas field, so you don’t need to keep moving between applications.
5. Launch DANTE Controller and check that the beltpacks are connected. You will see that multicast flows have been created automatically.

NB always connect an ODIN channel to channel 1 of a panel or beltpack.

There are some programming errors in the AZ Edit configuration file. Work through the scenarios below to solve the issues.

Scenario 1- Partylines
Cameras can hear “everything” on the Camera Production (Cam Pr) PL.
Camera operators only need to hear each other and to have open Comms with the Director. Other users have a key to talk and listen to Cam Pr if they wish to.

Exercise 1
Investigate why they are hearing so many sources of audio.

Scenario 2 – IFBs
Communication with the presenter is by IFB. The presenter is not hearing cues because the programme feed is too loud compared to the cue. You can’t turn it down because of the ambient noise in the studio.

Exercise 2
Investigate why the presenter IFB is not working and fix it.

Scenario 3- Crosspoints
Remote contributor 1 thinks they can hear someone talking on a mic in their program feed and it is distracting them.

Exercise 3
Investigate the crosspoint map to determine the reason and correct it, if appropriate.

Scenario 4 -Keypanels
One of the DBPs (DBP 2) can hear audio from all Partylines but doesn’t have their listen keys enabled

Exercise 4
Investigate the listen state of the keys and resolve.

Scenario 5 -Keypanels
The Vision Mixer is unable to latch the listen keys on their panel.

Exercise 5
Check the vision Mixer panel and permit all keys to latch. (Talk and listen)

When you have completed the exercises, please re-name the DBPs with something random in IP Edit. This will make them lose connection with ODIN, ready for the next person to use this system.

A configuration file without errors is loaded on slot 4 for reference. Please make sure this is replaced with the starting config from slot 1 when you finish.