Barco Series 2 Web UI differences

[Leo Enticknap]

Recently, I stumbled by accident across a discrepancy between the web UIs of the Barco Series 2 projectors in an 11-plex (a mixture of DP2K-15Cs and 20Cs, plus a single 19B and a single 32B). Most of them just have a barebones web UI, like this one:

image.png

All it does is give you status info: you need the Communicator app actually to do anything. This projector is a DP2K-15C, like the one below.

However, two out of the 11 projectors have a fully featured web UI with controls, as so:

image.png

My first thought was that the muti-featured web UI (it enables you to do most things that the Communicator app does, but not the installation or calibration functions beyond bulb swapouts) must have been introduced into one of the software/firmware bundle updates along the way, but all of these projectors are on the same version (2.10.121).

Does anyone have any ideas as to why some projectors have the all singing, all dancing web UI, but others don't? This is mainly curiosity and no big deal - I use the Communicator app anyways - but I can think of one or two sites where having this web UI on a phone or tablet might be useful for the end user. So if there is a way to enable it on machines that don't offer it right now, it would be useful to know.

[Carsten Kurz]

Maybe a different cinema controller board?

[James Gardiner]

I seem to remember Barco telling me. As they are moving away from the java app and to a web based version for all the same functions..
The pre S4 may not be capable of supporting all the features. So you will need to keep the java app around for older projectors.

I may be wrong.

[Steve Guttag]

Communicator Lite started with the "S" versions of the projectors. So, you'll see that on any DP2K-8S/10S, DP2K-6E. As to the larger projectors, it will depend on if it is a 1st or 2nd generation Cinema Controller Board (CCB).

If you go to Diagnostics>Version Info. Look at the firmware. The 2nd Generation boards will say "cinemacontroller main fpga (2nd generation)." The 1st gen will not have that line and will have the firmware number of the Xilinx.

[Leo Enticknap]

Carsten and Steve nailed it - thanks. The projectors in houses 7 and 11, which have the multi-function web UI, had CCB replacements in 2019 and earlier this year respectively (the usual failure mode: their onboard LAN routers died and it was only possible to communicate with them via RS232). The others all still have their original CCBs, dating from 2010-13.

So to add this feature to a B or C projector would mean replacing the CCB, at a cost that I suspect would be prohibitive for the two customers who I believe would want to use it. Still, it's useful to know that whenever a dead CCB is replaced, the enhanced web UI is added.

[Steve Guttag]

Leo, you could do the equivalent with a QSYS Nano and have it talk to both (or all) projectors and have a custom Web UCI scaled to work with their phone(s) for less than one new CCB, I suspect (it would be close...Nano plus UCI and Scripting license but I suspect, hardware wise, the QSYS solution would be cheaper, believe it or not. At that point, you could have a full UCI to control more than the projector too. Oh...and it can do sound.

[Leo Enticknap]

Sure, but as well as the hardware, you've got to factor in the time to create and debug the design, and do the install. This is not something the customers I'm thinking of feel that they absolutely must have and would be willing to pay significant money for: I just wondered if the enhanced web UI were possible in any Barco S2 projector if unlocked via a software/firmware install. But if it requires a pricey hardware upgrade, as it looks like it would, then even with very low installation costs, I can't see them going for it.

[Miguel Moreno]

Im trying to see how lite communicator works but the User Password is not the same as the communicator app. Where do i can find it?

[Steve Guttag]

There is a Communicator LITE manual. If you have access to that, the user/pw are listed in there. On the Barco site, the manual is with the Documentation for the DP2K-S projectors (e.g. DP2K-10S).