Remote control of QSC PLD amplifiers over network instead of USB - SOLVED!

B

Brian jojade

Senior
Jan 15, 2011
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Wausau, WI
www.happymacshop.com
I just picked up some QSC PLD amps. I was disappointed at the decision to have USB interfaces on the amps, as the amps live on stage, and I wanted to be able to monitor them from FOH.

I know you can get USB extenders and run USB over cat 5, but that's just one more wire I'd have to run, and that didn't sound like fun. I've already got WIFI in each amp rack, so there has to be a way, right? Well, I did find some commercial products available that run software on a dedicated computer that would have to live in the rack. The price was insanely expensive, and the whole dedicated computer in the amp rack seemed out of line. Well, I found the perfect solution in the Raspberry PI. For those of you that aren't familiar, the PI is a tiny little computer about the size of a business card that you can run Linux on. In searching the software, low and behold, there's USB over IP available as a package, and it's FREE!!! A Pi costs around $35, so I ordered one up. It took me about 2 hours to get everything installed and working, which included installing an OS on the thing, and learning how to use it, and all that fun stuff.

Then there's just a simple client you install on your laptop that lets you connect the virtual USB port to the machine and bam, the amp is visible on the network.

This is seriously awesome stuff!!
 
Re: Remote control of QSC PLD amplifiers over network instead of USB - SOLVED!

This is an awesome solution. Perhaps when you get some time you could create a short tutorial regarding how you set this system up / configured it and also what settings/software you used to handle the USB over IP for the PI.

Thanks
Hal
 
Re: Remote control of QSC PLD amplifiers over network instead of USB - SOLVED!

It really couldn't have been easier.

Step 1. Buy a Pi.
Step 2. Run the default configuration.
Step 3. Create an account and add the app to your Pi store. http://store.raspberrypi.com/projects/virtualhere
Step 4. Launch the app on the pi and connect it to your device.

It took about 2 hours start to finish to get this working which was mostly wait time for the software to download and run the installers.

This solution is free for one USB device, $40 for unlimited USB devices on the same Pi.
 
Re: Remote control of QSC PLD amplifiers over network instead of USB - SOLVED!

Brian,
What version of Pi were you using? I have a handfull of B's and B+'s....but just picked up a Pi2. Wow. Light years faster.
 
Re: Remote control of QSC PLD amplifiers over network instead of USB - SOLVED!

Tim McCulloch said:
Crown offers a device specifically for that purpose.
Click to expand...

http://www.crownaudio.com/en/products/usbx

At $199, it's kind of a pricey option.

The PI solution should work with ANY USB device you want to remotely access. Performance is dependent on the quality of the network connection. At the show I did last week, the WIFI connection I had wasn't the best, and the app wasn't exactly responsive, but still functional enough so I could have an idea what is going on. Over wired ethernet, it worked much better. I'd expect that the Crown solution is better designed to handle network latency issues that the QSC didn't account for.
 
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