Grass Valley NV9000-SE v.3.0 - Manual (Page 251)

NV9000-SE Utilities • User’s Guide 231
11. Control Panels
Operators use control panels to perform switching activities. In order for routers and other devices
to communicate with the control panels, the control panels must be configured in the NV9000-SE
system. Control panels are inoperable until properly configured. To configure a control panel, you
define control panel behavior, button functions and operational modes. Each control panel configu-
ration is saved as a configuration file and can be unique to a control panel or shared among many
panels of the same type.
Control panels are either hardware (physical) or virtual (a software application) and are easily
added using the ‘Add Control Panel’ wizard. Once added, control panel information can be man-
aged through the ‘Control Panel’ page or through individual tables. The wizard, page and tables
share databases. Changes made in one interface immediately appears in all corresponding fields in
all interfaces sharing that database.
Virtual versions of hardware control panels are run on computers attached to the NV9000-SE and
the NV9000 system controller through a network. Virtual control panels display control buttons on
a screen similar to the buttons operators see on a hardware control panel. Functionally, the virtual
panels are identical to their matching hardware control panel counterparts. However, there are a
few slight operational differences. The most obvious is that with a physical control panel, you press
a physical button and with a virtual control panel, you click on a colored rectangle (a virtual “but-
ton”).
Differences between virtual panels and hardware panels:
• Virtual panels have no GPIOs, which are ignored by the virtual panels. See Defining General
Purpose I/O (GPIO) Connections on page 337.
• Buttons on physical panels have fixed legends (plastic button inserts). Depending on the control
panel, buttons on virtual panels can have more than one “page” can have different legends for
different pages. See
Creating a “Tree” of Pages on page 342).
• Virtual panels have a context menu with which to connect or disconnect the control panel and to
select certain display options.
• Virtual panels can be resized and repositioned on your screen.
• Dark (i.e, disabled) buttons illuminate if you click on them and hold the mouse down.
There are two virtual control panels that do not have a hardware equivalent: EC9700 control GUI
and the EC9710 status GUI. For information about these panels, see
EC9700 and EC9710 Panels
on page 385.