Configuring Paravel Systems WallTime with WheatNet-IP

The Paravel Systems Walltime is a nice studio clock and notification system based on a Raspberry Pi. It can be used as your primary studio clock and can also display notifications from various systems, including Wheatnet-IP.

As many of our customers have purchased Walltimes and want to use them in conjunction with Wheatstone products to provide notifications such as On-Air Lights and to start segment timers (for example, when a channel on your Wheatstone console is turned on), we have created this tech note to help you set up the connection between Wheatnet-IP and Walltime.

Walltime is able to monitor LIOs and Soft LIOs from your Wheatnet system to display notifications such as those mentioned above, but it will ideally need to be on the same network as your Wheatnet devices in order to do so. If you cannot place the Walltime on the same network as your Wheatnet devices, you will need to work with your IT department to get routing set up to forward packets to the network where your Walltime will live.

The most common Walltime functions requested by Wheatstone customers are the On-Air indication and the Segment Timer functions. We will describe how to set up
these functions in this document. Other notifications that can be set up on the Walltime can be configured similarly. This tech note doesn’t cover initial setup and configuration of the Walltime; we will only discuss the settings used for configuring the Walltime to use Wheatnet LIO and SLIO signals.

What Walltime Can See

The Walltime can see both LIOs and SLIOs from your WNIP network. If you are using LIOs, the Walltime can see a LIO output if it is connected to a LIO input; otherwise you will need to use a LIO input. If you are planning to use SLIOs, it doesn’t matter whether you are using SLIO inputs or outputs, the Walltime will see them either way.

On Air Light Configuration

When you click on the Walltime’s “OnAir Light Settings” function, you will be presented with this screen:

Click the arrow on the drop-down menu and select the WheatNet LIO function. You will now be able to enter the necessary parameters to interface the On Air Light function with your WNIP network:

The Walltime manual states that if your Walltime is on the same network as your Wheatstone blades and surfaces, you will not need to enter an IP address. But we have found it is better to enter both IP address and Blade ID where the LIO you wish to use is configured. You will also need to enter the LIO number. Remember, LIO #1 is shown in the Navigator Blade LIO Setup screen as LIO Port 1, Pin #2.

As mentioned, you can use a LIO Output, but it will first need to be cross-connected to a logic input signal such as your console Tally signal:

We will use the signal shown above that is set to Studio 1 In-Use. It’s LIO 1 on Blade 1, which is a console mix engine blade. This signal is already tested and working. It turns on our physical on-air light so we know it’s good. Let’s put its information into the Walltime settings for On-Air Light:

After entering the required information, you will need to reboot the Walltime. You can do this simply by going to its System page and clicking the “Apply” button under Advanced Settings. You don’t need to actually change anything…just click “Apply.”

After the Walltime has fully restarted, activating the LIO you used will turn on the On Air indication, displaying the Legend you have set up on the Walltime On-Air Light setup screen.

The On-Air indication can also be activated via SLIO (Inputs or Outputs) rather than LIO Inputs. We will discuss how to set these up in the next section on the Segment
Timer.

Setting Up The Segment Timer

In discussing the segment timer function, we will work with SLIOs. Please note that even though the Walltime setup screen asks for a SLIO Input, it will work with SLIO
outputs as well. We will use an SLIO output for our example.

If you want to turn on the segment timer you may want to use the same signal you use to turn on your on-air light and you can do so. But we will demonstrate the
function using SLIOs. Here is the basic unconfigured setup screen for the Segment Timer function with Wheatstone SLIO chosen as the “Type”:

We will set up SLIOs in Navigator that we can use here to start and clear (reset to zero) the segment timer when a mic is turned on, and to stop it when the mic is
turned off. Note that we can use the same SLIO number more than once here, and we will do that with the START UP and CLEAR functions.

Let’s set it up on the MIC1 source on Blade 1 and use SLIO 1. Since we want to fire SLIO 1 when the mic channel is turned on, we will set it to use the “On Tally”
function. It needs to be set as an Output because the corresponding signal on the fader to which it will be routed is set as an Input.

Now we enter the Blade ID (1) and the SLIO we chose into the settings for the Walltime. We want to clear the timer to zero whenever we start it so we use the same SLIO number for both of those functions. Let’s also go ahead and put SLIO 2 in for the STOP function and we’ll set that up in Navigator once we know the START/CLEAR function works. We’re not counting DOWN and we don’t need to freeze the timer so we can leave those with a 0 or blank:

After rebooting the Walltime, we can test our segment timer operation by turning on MIC1 on the DMX console:

That worked. The timer is now counting up from zero. When the mic is turned off, the timer continues to count up. But in our scenario we want it to stop when the mic is turned off. That way the announcer will know how long his/her talk segment was and can make the Program Director happy.

We have already set the Walltime to monitor SLIO 2 from the same Blade as a Stop signal for the timer, so let’s see how to set that up in Navigator.

Remember we used the “On Tally” function for SLIO 1? That starts the timer when the mic is turned on. So let’s try using the “Off Tally” for SLIO 2 and see if it will stop the timer when we turn the mic channel off:

We should be able to test this after clicking “Apply” and closing out of the LIO settings since the Walltime already has SLIO 2 set as the trigger to stop the segment
timer. And in fact the timer now stops when the mic channel is turned off.

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