Hi everyone,

for those of you guys, who happen to have an old (or new) ACS-Panel (Autodesk Control Surface) for Lustre in their facility, and also happen to have a SCRATCH at hand – here’s how you can use your ACS-panel with SCRATCH.

It’s an awesome panel, but sadly, designed for Lustre only (plus it’s not being manufactured anymore). Big advantage of the ACS are the illuminated buttons (helps finding them in the dark, you know ;-) , and, if it’s an older ACS, the built in Wacom – the newer ones do not have the Wacom built in. The only disadvantage of our little setup here will be, that the display of each panel will remain in test mode and can not be driven, although all controls are working fine. But hey – only panel for SCRATCH out there with illuminated buttons :-) !

1. We’re basically going to treat the ACS like a Tangent CP 200, meaning we need to connect all 3 panels via ethernet in the same (physical) network as the workstation is.
If your ACS features a Wacom (it’s a Wacom Graphire 2, actually), just connect it to the Workstation via USB and install the corresponding drivers from the Wacom website – not tested, but should work.

2. Make sure, there’s a dhcp-server working on that network, because assigning IPs through the SCRATCH-interface won’t work with the ACS. Shouldn’t exactly be your house-network, though… but every cheap-shit consumer-router has a built in dhcp, you can use to set up a dedicated panel-network on the second ethernet-port of your workstation. Since you would need a 4-port ethernet-hub anyways, to connect all 3 panels to the workstation, an old 4-port router, shipping with a dhcp-server option, might just do that job as well ;-) . Also, once the panels have their IP, you can read those out of the router and in case of none-responsiveness ping them via cmd-line to make sure, the network-connection itself is fine.

3. a) Now the short way to get everything working, is to download the attached zip file.
First, backup and delete cs_devices.xml from the following location:

– C:/Program Files/Assimilate/Settings (under OSX: /Library/Application Support/Assimilator/Defaults)

Then backup and delete both cs_mappings.xml and cs_devices.xml from this location:

– C:/Program Data/Assimilator/Settings (under OSX: /Library/Application Support/Assimilator/Settings).

Download the attached zip-file, unzip it, and copy cs_devices.xml and cs_mappings_ACS.xml to
C:/Program Files/Assimilate/Settings (under OSX: /Library/Application Support/Assimilator/Defaults) .
Now open up SCRATCH, create a new User, go to “System Settings” ==> “Advanced” ==> “Panel Setup”, activate all three ACS-Panels, and fill in the corresponding ID of each panel. At the end select “Overwrite Mappings”.

Restart SCRATCH and there you go – jump directly to step 5.

3. b) In case you want to know, what’s going on under the hood and what to do, if you haven’t our zip-file at hand, read on:
Inside SCRATCH, first create a new User, select it, and under “System Settings” ==> “Advanced” ==> “Panel Setup”, enable the CP 200 BK, TS, K and activate dhcp for each one. Also fill in the ID of each panel – as soon as the panel get’s powered on, it shows it’s ID on the display – you can find it also on the sticker on the back of the panel – it’s the last 4 digits without the preceding zeros (if there are any). Lastly, hit the “Overwrite Mappings”-Button.

4. If you now restart SCRATCH, the panel is ready to go, but of course with a totally wrong mapping, since the mapping we’re using is thought to apply to a CP 200, not an ACS-panel – meaning, the only thing that works properly are the balls/rings of the grading-panel and everything else will be totally mixed up.
If you don’t want to remap every single button yourself, find attached to this post a mapping-file (cs_mappings_ACS.xml).Copy it to
C:/Program Data/Assimilator/Settings/, and/or to every User, who should get it under
C:/Program Data/Assimilator/User/*username*/ .
(on OSX: /Library/Application Support/Assimilator/etc… .)
After placing the mappings-file there, just rename it to “cs_mappings.xml” to make SCRATCH recognise it.
Also attached to this entry are three JPEGs of the mapping, so you know which control sits where on the panel, since the displays won’t tell you ;-) .

5. That’s basically it. If you don’t feel comfortable with the provided mapping, go to “Player” ==> “Settings” ==> “General” ==> “Configure Panels” and re-assign the controls to your liking.

 

If I can find a way to let SCRATCH make use of the displays as well, I’ll post it here. But chances of that happening are being virtually zero, honestly speaking. Until then, the solution will be duct-tape and possibly a marker to write the functions on it. If anybody of you guys manages to get those displays working, feel free to contact me and receive a beer as a reward!

Also, keep in mind that this configuration is not officially supported – neither by Assimilate, nor by Autodesk and what’s working these days might not work in a future release of SCRATCH. And, of course, I will not be responsible for any damage the above listed steps might cause to the panels, or your reputation as a Lustre-user ;-) .

 

Cheers,
Mazze

 

Download: ACS-mapping for SCRATCH