Description:

The Theta Casablanca 3 is the latest flagship A/V processor product from Theta Digital. It is a very high end box, and obviously strong on the A/V side of things, but the control protocol is a bit weak, as discussed in the Quirks and Limitations section below.

This driver was provided by Les Auber, and is PDL based.

Quirks and Limitations:

The Casablanca is what is referred to in CQC-speak as a 'Dead if Off' device, meaning that when it is in standby mode, it will not respond to anything but a power on command. Unfortunately, to any control system there is no difference between not responding and being completely disconnected or dysfunctional or having been stolen and now sitting in a pawn shop somewhere.

So, this driver cannot act like most drivers and go offline when the device stops responding. If it did so, then you couldn't ever turn it back on via CQC. Instead it goes into 'dead if off' mode, and all of the fields but one are put into error state, but the driver stays online. This one field can be used to query the current power/standby mode and, importantly, can be used to power the device back up again.

Connection Details

The Casablanca uses a serial connection. It can use a standard 9 wire cable or a minimalist 3 wire cable, since it really only uses send, received, and ground wires. It can be configured to use a number of communication speeds, but this driver only supports its fastest 115,200 rate, so be sure you have configured it for that speed. This insures maximum responsiveness. So the settings are 115,200, N, 8, 1.

Driver Fields

This section lists the fields that the driver makes available, their types, minimum and maximum values, etc...

Name	Type	R/W	Description/Limits
AudioJack	Card	R	Indicates the value of the current audio jack selected.
AdjustMVolume	Boolean	W	Write true to bump the master volume up, and false to bump it down
CycleSource	Boolean	W	Write true or false to cycle forward through the mapped sources for the current input. It only cycles forwards so it doesn't matter what you write.
IncDecMVolume	Boolean	W	Write true to bump the master volume up, and false to bump it down.
Input	Card	R/W	Read or set the current input. Since the Theta as no fixed inputs, they are just all mappable, this field is is just a numeric field with a range of 1 to 12.
MainStandby	Boolean	R/W	This is the 'revive field', the one that stays available when the device is in 'dead if off' mode. Read it to get the current standby mode, and write to it to set the standby mode. NOTE that this is standby, NOT power. So write False to take it out of standby mode and power it up.
MasterVolume	Card	R/W	Read the master volume level or set it. Because this will override the internal maximum volume level setting, it is limited to the 0 to 45 range in the driver. You can change the driver if you wish, to allow the full range.
Mode	Card	R/W	Read or set the current audio mode (effect.) This is an enumerated field and the values are: Matrix, Special Matrix, Dolby Digital, DTS, Stereo, Analog Direct, Analog Matrix, Mono, CS II Cinema, CS II Music, CS II Mono Matrix, DPL IIx Movie, DPL IIx Music, DPL IIx Mono Mx, DTS NEO:6 Cinema, DTS NEO:6 Music.
ModeDesc	String	R	Text description of the current audio mode.
Mute	Boolean	R/W	Read or set the master audio mute.
RemoteCmds	String	W	Allows you to invoke various remote control commands via CQC. This is an enumerated field and the values are: Button1, Button2, Button3, Button4,  Button5, Button6, A-D, Balance, Display, Up, Down, Left, Right, MuteButton, ModeButton, Setup, Status, TapeOut, Phase, RemotePower, EQ, SelectDown, SelectUp.
Source	Card	W	Set the source for the currently selected input. It can be from 1 to 6. If you select a source that has not been mapped to the selected input in the CB configuration, then it will be ignored.
VideoJack	Card	R	Indicates the value of the current video jack selected.