A very successful (and quite eventful) 2019 is over and I wanted to give a brief recap and outlook of what we plan to achieve in 2020 at Obsidian Control Systems.
It has been an incredible 2019 which saw the introduction of a lot of new hardware for ONYX and NETRON and of course the introduction of DYLOS. Our team of developers and support members expanded throughout the year, allowing us to develop faster and offer timely support around the world. Also our distributor network expanded further through 2019, making Obsidian Control Systems truly a global brand dedicated to entertainment lighting control.
In January 2019 we had the first production model NX2 at the NAMM show, which started to ship in large volumes to customers in March. The response in the market has been great for the NX2. For a fun review of the NX2 check out this “unboxing” video from Stan Pruitt:
At NAMM we also showcased the first prototype of the NX4, which was received to great reviews for its form factor, processing power and of course its motorized faders at an incredible price. It’s a flexible and well thought out console surface that combines all the experience of our design team and merges together the best parts of the console lineup into one compact and accessible desk. The NX4 started shipping to customers this fall.
Every year the ProLight and Sound tradeshow in Frankfurt, Germany is the highlight of the annual tradeshow calendar of the entertainment industry, and Obsidian showed up with its biggest news so far:
We worked hard to finalize and announce our new DYLOS pixel composition system and showcase its concept and ease of use on the Obsidian Control Systems booth during a very busy show. DYLOS, which stands for Dynamic Light Operating System, ran on NX4 desks with close to 60 Universes of mapped LED tape and performed great. We had incredible feedback and input, and most of our engineering team was on site to take notes so they can convert the user discussions and improve and refine the engine and UI for even better interaction. Providing a pixel engine that has the power and interaction of a fully featured media server while keeping it easy to access as part of the existing programming and playback workflow of the ONYX platform has proven to be the right choice. It offers fast access to the features without really having to learn anything new. It’s a natural extension of the way the ONYX platform works and we are quite proud how it all turned out.
We hoped to finalize this for the end of 2019, but it wasn’t a good time to release software before the Christmas and New Year holidays. So our development team ate lots of Christmas cookies, enjoyed some well-deserved family time and is now polishing up the version for public release at the beginning of January 2020. It’s a late Christmas present, but we are adding a surprise to the gift box to make it worthwhile.
We are quite excited to see this hit the market and see a lot of shows and events run with the powerful DYLOS engine. It will be fun to see how it will be integrated into cues and fx and we are really looking forward to lots of videos and pictures of DYLOS on our social media feeds. It’s a lot of work for us, mostly stuck behind a pc screen, so seeing the results out in the field is a great reward for the endless hours put into the software. So don’t be shy and share plenty!
2019 also saw the introduction of a complete new product range:
NETRON is a comprehensive range of Ethernet to DMX Gateways and RDM Splitters. These devices are designed to the same rigorous standards of the ONYX range with solid rugged hardware, smart mounting options and connectivity with a best in class feature set and great pricing. We strive always to offer great quality and value in our products and NETRON is a good example of our philosophy.
NETRON was first previewed during the Infocomm show in June and most of the devices have started shipping to customers last month. By the end of January everything will be in ample supply and looking at the amazing feedback and interest we have received we expect this to be a great addition to the Obsidian product range. This has the potential to be an industry leading range of devices and we are already looking ahead how to carefully expand it.
For a quick recap of the NETRON products check out my brief introduction from Infocomm 2019.
2020 will continue to see large changes inside ONYX which started already with the DYLOS system. The platform moved to a true 64bit environment, Windows support was consolidated to Windows 10 with the phasing out of Windows 7 support by Microsoft, which unfortunately also meant the end of updates for the aging M1, M2GO and M6 systems. M6 will have a complete processing and graphics upgrade kit, but with delays in Intel’s supply of embedded processors the release has been postponed into the spring unfortunately.
Now that DYLOS is in place the team is working at some fairly large housekeeping items that are needed for the next phase of feature revisions and introductions. As the platform has evolved over more than 15 years there is a periodic need for “remodel” to keep code clean and neat and allow new features to be added. Some of this has been going on in parallel with DYLOS, unfortunately often this important work is under the hood and not so obvious. But its important to perform these tasks to keep the platform working well into the future and allow faster addition of feature requests going forward.
For DYLOS the team plans to add support for more pixel parameters and expand the set of FX and generators to provide even more creative options.
On the main console side the team is working hard to adjust the code to add missing features and commands, which will be the main focus for quite some time.
We made a lot of progress in 2019 and introduced a lot of items to the market, created a new webpage, and introduced a major feature pack with DYLOS, so its been quite busy for all of us here. Please understand that we do listen carefully to all feedback, the positive ones as well as the critical ones. If a certain item is not implemented as asked it is usually for a very good reason, not because we don’t care or ignore your feedback. Some items will require quite deep code changes which take time or are not possible until other things are adjusted. But the team is very aware of any frustrations and aims to resolve them one by one. So while there are gaps we are quite proud of what we have achieved in 1.5 years as a new company, and we ask for your patience as the team continues to revise and improve the platform to meet the needs of the industry.
With 2020 we enter a new and exciting decade. In the middle of 2018 our team moved to its new home in the Netherlands and we started the new dedicated brand and factory for Obsidian. We retooled a full product range all within just 18 months and added 12 Obsidian products to our product line.
- NX4
- NX2
- NX Wing
- NX Touch
- NX DMX
- ONXY Key
- EN12
- EN4
- EP4
- RDM10
- RDM645
- RDM6XL
We have seen amazing adoption of ONYX by the market and our new Obsidian sales force around the world and all of us here are thankful for the opportunity to reimagine this platform under the new ownership and its very supportive management.
But the biggest thank you goes out to our incredibly loyal user base which has been expanding drastically since the relaunch of ONYX. There are a lot of controller choices out there and we are grateful you choose to work with our products.
Thank you all so much for your trust into us.
Happy New Year to all and thank you to the amazing team at Obsidian Control Systems.
Sincerely,
Matthias
Product Manager
