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How to quickly configure your ALIF4000 units to get up and running
This is a step by step guide on navigating the ALIF4000 Start of Life (SoL) process. It's assuming no security is required as we will not be setting any passwords for the admin interface.
Videos will be available soon at the start of each section with a transcript below.
Point to Point (P2P)
This section looks at setting up an ALIF4000 extension where there is a single receiver and transmitter. In the manual P2P also describes when there are multiple receivers and transmitters but just without an AIM to manage them. For the sake of this page, to distinguish between a single receiver to a single transmitter and multiple receivers and transmitters, we'll be using the term P2P and MiniMatrix as separate terms.
To set up ALIF4000s in P2P we'll need them to be in a factory fresh state. This can either be achieved from unboxing or after using the factory reset function of the units. They then need to be connected together, either directly by a cable or over an isolated network. Once connected, powering on the transmitter followed by the receiver will trigger the units SoL process auto-configuring them in P2P.
If you have a monitor on the receiver you will see it start with it's auto-configuration page as shown below.
Once it has finished configuring itself it will generate a default preset known as "Zero-conf Preset". This preset is configured to connect to a transmitter that is also running on it's auto-configured settings. Only one of these can exist on a network at any given time. You'll see the first stage of this appear as the following screen.
The receiver will report that the signals are lost on the top right of the screen while it looks for the transmitter. But once it finds and connects to the transmitter these will then connect.
Once this connection is made the configuration is complete. You can check that everything is finished by raising the OSD with the details hotkey of "ctrl + alt + c". You will see from here the Zero-conf Preset as the first preset in the OSD list.
With this your ALIF4000 units have been set up in P2P mode. From this state you can turn this into a MiniMatrix by adding additional receivers and transmitters. The details on how to do this are included in the section below. Once the units have been configured in this way you'll need to factory reset them again to add them into a system with an AIM.
MiniMatrix
This section looks at all the steps of setting up a MiniMatrix starting with a receiver and then moving on to the two different ways of adding transmitters. That is; adding an already configured transmitter and configuring a transmitter from the receivers interface.
With a keyboard, monitor and mouse connected to the receiver you'll be initially presented with the welcome "start of life" screen. Here you'll need to set the language used in the OSD and your keyboard language layout. Once that is done you'll be prompted to enter the details of the receiver (name, description and location). These are simple text entry field that can be used to make administrating the unit as easy for yourself as possible. After filling in the details you'll need to click "Apply" and the page will briefly refresh and apply the changes.
The next step is to configure your transmitters or to add already configured units. To do this, we need to navigate to the presets tab and click the "+" icon. From here we're taken to a configuration page for new presets. This is where we interact with our transmitters that are on the network.
For simplicity here we're going to use the "Auto Configure Preset" function that will take all of it's signals from a single transmitter. You can mix and match as with AIM but this functionality is outside the scope of this guide. From the "Auto Configure Preset" drop down we're going to select our unconfigured ALIF4021T. This will be the unit that has the part code followed by it's ending mac address as a default name. After selecting this the preset will fill with the configuration to connect to this transmitter. You then will need to fill in the details of this preset with something that is useful for your users and yourself to recognise what this connection means. After which you can hit apply to save this.
We then need to configure the transmitter itself. To do this we navigate to the "Transmitters" tab and click the cog icon to navigate to its admin pages. You'll then be presented with another configuration wizard which is denoted green for the transmitter. You'll then need to enter the basic info for the transmitter to help make administrating it as easy as possible for yourself. These are once again just text entry fields, the same as with the receiver. Once done, just hit "Apply" to save the settings.
With that we've added and configured an unconfigured transmitter to our receiver. Now to look at adding a transmitter that has already been configured. It's much the same process but without the need to follow the last step which is configuring the transmitter itself.
Navigate to the "Presets" tab and click the "+" icon. And, this time, select the named transmitter from the "Auto Configure Preset" function. After selecting this the preset will fill with the configuration to connect to this transmitter. You then will need to fill in the details of this preset with something that is useful for your users and yourself to recognise what this connection means. After which you can hit apply to save this.
These two presets will then appear in your OSD and can be accessed either through selecting them from the OSD or using the numeric hotkey indicated on the left hand side of their assigned slot.