Key Articles

• Free Driver Policy Announced - 30 Day Turnaround Confirmed
• UI Template Included in Stardraw Control 2010
• New Drivers Now Available
• New Training Dates
• Symbols Updates

Free Driver Policy Announced - 30 Day Turnaround Confirmed

In what is being interpreted as a major strategic move, we are pleased to announce a new policy offering the creation of custom device drivers for registered users of Stardraw Control 2010 free of charge. The move extends and enhances last year's "Free Driver Initiative", by which anyone buying a new license of Stardraw Control 2010 could have one custom device driver written for free. Now, registered users may request as many drivers as they wish, at any time, and expect a guaranteed turnaround within 30 days.

Commenting on the policy, CEO David Snipp explained, "As an open-architecture, universal control platform, the great thing about Stardraw Control is that anyone can create their own drivers. The application contains many tools to make this easy, and the source for existing drivers is readily accessible, which means that you can cut and paste to create new ones with very little effort. We've long known that many users do not have the time or inclination to 'cut code', so an initial response was to offer our services to provide one free driver when they bought the program. However, we understand that if Stardraw Control is to realize its full potential as the ultimate control application, one that truly can control any device over any protocol, we've got to make that statement true for everyone, including those that don't want to write their own drivers. The only way to do that is to offer the creation of drivers to all of our users as a service."

"In many ways this is a logical extension of what we've been doing for over a decade with our design/documentation products." continued Snipp. "Just as data is a key element of the value proposition for those applications, so drivers are key to the value of Stardraw Control. In terms of features, power and flexibility we're confident that the application outstrips anything else available on today's market technically, and the advantages of our commercial model have been proven by the reaction to Stardraw Control in the marketplace. The provision of drivers is the final piece of the jigsaw: we went part of the way with our "Free Driver Initiative" for the duration of the last year, but it's now policy to provide ALL drivers on request. It's the right thing to do."

Once written and published, the driver is instantly available to ALL users through Stardraw's transparent product update process which runs in the background whenever the application is launched and synchronizes local drivers with those available through Stardraw's webserver. "Everybody wins," confirmed Snipp. "Our users get control of the products they need with no outlay in cash or time, and the Stardraw Control platform itself benefits from a raft of newly supported devices that people need to control in the real world."

Registered users of Stardraw Control 2010 can request the creation of drivers for the products of their choice through the Stardraw.com Drivers Request forum. There is no limit on the complexity of the driver, which can be uni-directional, i.e. issuing commands only, or bi-directional, i.e. offering command and monitoring functionality, but there are some logical conditions:

• The device must be remotely controllable and communicate over an existing, supported transport protocol (e.g. TCP/IP, RS232, KNX/EIB, SNMP, Ethersound, Cobranet etc)
• The device command protocol must be open, documented and supported.
• The driver will contain standard command/monitoring functions but may not contain esoteric and/or configuration functionality since it is intended for control of the use, not the configuration, of that device.

Full details are available on the Stardraw.com Drivers Request forum and from authorized Stardraw Control resellers.

Visit Drivers Request Forum

UI Template Included in Stardraw Control 2010

Stardraw Control 2010 has been updated to install the 'Tala' User Interface template, previously a chargable add-on, for free.

UI templates are collections of professionally-generated graphics files that offer the quickest way to create great-looking, fully customized UIs with the minimum of effort. The Tala template features tactile black and blue styling and includes button images for all common transport, numberpad and menu controls, as well as common device icons. All button images include a Default, Hover, Pressed and Disabled state.

An assortment of background images are also included, in resolutions of 800x480, 800x600 and 1024x768, and in total the Tala template contains 215 images in .PNG format with Alpha transparency.

The Tala template will be installed by default on all new Stardraw Control 2010 installations, including demo software, and existing users can download the template by following the second link below.

	Download Stardraw Control 2010 Demo
	Download Tala Template

New Drivers for Stardraw Control

Since the last newsletter, the following advanced drivers have been added to the Stardraw Control product family:

These, as with all published drivers, will be automatically added to your Stardraw Control product library when you choose to accept Library Updates on startup. To make your own product requests, please visit our Drivers Request forum by following the link below.

Visit Drivers Request Forum

New Training Events

Newly-appointed UK & Eire distributor RGB Communications has announced a program of one-day training courses providing a valuable introduction to Stardraw Control and Stardraw AV to be held at their headquarters in Hungerford, Berkshire. Upcoming courses take place on April 27th and May 25th. A booking fee of £25 applies.

For more information and to reserve your place at a training day please contact Kate Wilson on katew@rgbcomms.co.uk or call 0844 8800790/+44 (0)1488 73366

Symbols Updates

In February the following libraries were updated in one or more of Stardraw's design/documentation applications (Stardraw Audio 2007, Stardraw AV 2007 and Stardraw AV Lite 2007). Click on a manufacturer name to see full details of that library.

To update your Offline Libraries, select Options | Synchronize Offline Libraries in your Stardraw application.