I recently developed a custom control interface which leverages the ability to send the RS-232 control protocol commands to the Cloud DCM1e / 46-120 MK1 with the CDI-46 card over the ethernet interface with TCP commands.

The DCM1e and CDI-46 does not allow you to label the message groups for the paging microphone in the settings, something that is quite frustrating if you want a unified control page you can use remotely to quickly play one of the preset spot announce messages.

Additionally, I allowed for the behaviour of the paging access for when an IP phone extension is dialed to be changed remotely – for example, if you only wanted the paging to sound in certain areas, and if you didn’t want the PM-SA message chime to sound first for whatever reason. The IP phone directly runs a HTTP script when it auto answers the paging call and when it is terminated to control the priority of the DCM1e and 46-120 mixer respectively.

I don’t believe anyone else has messed with it to quite this degree, and it took some clever scripting to get this working, with the help of Cloud’s technical department to confirm exactly how the control protocol works over Ethernet.

Controlling the PM-SA message groups over ethernet also eliminates the requirement of a timer for periodic messages; you can simply create a scheduled task on a Windows server VM hosting all the scripts to do this for you – no taking the PM-SA apart, no messy contact closure commands, and full remote control over the timing of the pre recorded messages.