OCA Alliance Showcases New AES70 Tools and Resources at InfoComm 2017The OCA Alliance, the AV industry alliance promoting awareness and adoption of "Open Control Architecture," also known as OCA and standardized as AES70, is presenting the results of a year of development and further momentum in the OCA ecosystem. Demonstrations on the OCA Alliance booth incorporate products from member and non-member companies alike, demonstrating the power of an open standard for the AV industry. Demonstrations include integration of products from Beckhoff Automation and d&b audiotechnik, and showcase AES70 hardware and software references, available to the public on a license-free and cost-free basis. The alliance is also announcing a number of initiatives to further drive AES70 development. A new website supports the distribution of the reference tools; https://ocaalliance.github.io/ . The "informal" technical website is aimed at AES70 development community. "The site is completely open," says Ethan Wetzell, platform strategist for Bosch Communications Systems and acting chair of the OCA Alliance marketing work group. "Alliance membership is not required to use it, nor does a user account need to be created by companies or individuals interested in these tools." Of major significance is the announcement of the release of OCA 1.4 by the alliance. A new version of the OCA specification, OCA 1.4 will be used by the AES to update the current AES70-2015 (OCA 1.3) standard. "OCA 1.4 contains a number of upward-compatible enhancements, most notably a streamlined system for connection management known as OCA CM3," explains Wetzell. "Also included are changes for preprogrammed operation sequences and other executable phenomena, improved support for adding proprietary extensions, support for definition of reusable device elements, more general and flexible support for timing and sampling clocks, and numerous other additions, improvements, clarifications, and editorial corrections." OCA 1.4 also defines new options for transport of OCP.1, the AES70 control protocol, over USB and WebSocket connections, instead of the usual TCP. The OCA Alliance booth - #5989 - is staffed by technical experts from member companies throughout InfoComm 2017. They are on hand to answer any and all questions related to AES70 and the broader OCA ecosystem. 
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