Stardraw.com Offers Free Custom Device Drivers

Stardraw.com Offers Free Custom Device Drivers

In a major strategic move, software providers Stardraw.com have announced their intention to provide custom device drivers to registered users of their award winning control application, Stardraw Control, free of charge. The move extends and enhances last years Free Driver Initiative, by which someone buying a new license of Stardraw Control 2010 could have one custom device driver written for free. Now, registered users may request as many drivers as they wish, at any time, and expect a guaranteed turnaround within 30 days.

Commenting on the policy, CEO David Snipp explained, As an open-architecture, universal control platform, the great thing about Stardraw Control is that anyone can create their own drivers. The application contains many tools to make this easy, and the source for existing drivers is readily accessible, which means that you can cut and paste to create new ones with very little effort. Weve long known that many users do not have the time or inclination to cut code, so an initial response was to offer our services to provide one free driver when they bought the program. However, we understand that if Stardraw Control is to realize its full potential as the ultimate control application, one that truly can control any device over any protocol, weve got to make that statement true for everyone, including those that dont want to write their own drivers. The only way to do that is to offer the creation of drivers to all of our users as a service.

In many ways this is a logical extension of what weve been doing for over a decade with our design/documentation products. continued Snipp. Just as data is a key element of the value proposition for those applications, so drivers are key to the value of Stardraw Control. In terms of features, power and flexibility were confident that the application outstrips anything else available on todays market technically, and the advantages of our commercial model have been proven by the reaction to Stardraw Control in the marketplace. The provision of drivers is the final piece of the jigsaw: we went part of the way with our Free Driver Initiative for the duration of the last year, but its now policy to provide ALL drivers on request. Its the right thing to do.

Once written and published, the driver is instantly available to ALL users through Stardraws transparent product update process which runs in the background whenever the application is launched and synchronizes local drivers with those available through Stardraws webserver. Everybody wins, confirmed Snipp. Our users get control of the products they need with no outlay in cash or time, and the Stardraw Control platform itself benefits from a raft of newly supported devices that people need to control in the real world.

Registered users of Stardraw Control 2010 can request the creation of drivers for the products of their choice through the Stardraw.com Drivers Request forum. There is no limit on the complexity of the driver, which can be uni-directional, i.e. issuing commands only, or bi-directional, i.e. offering command and monitoring functionality, but there are some logical conditions:

The device must be remotely controllable and communicate over an existing, supported transport protocol (e.g. TCP/IP, RS232, KNX/EIB, SNMP, Ethersound, Cobranet etc)

The device command protocol must be open, documented and supported.

The driver will contain standard command/monitoring functions but may not contain esoteric and/or configuration functionality since it is intended for control of the use, not the configuration, of that device.

Full details are available on the Stardraw.com website and from authorized Stardraw Control resellers.

Notes to Editor

Since 1995 Stardraw.com has been a leading provider of software solutions to the entertainment technology sector, offering a range of award-winning system design, documentation and control applications as well as providing OEM software solutions for corporate customers. With offices in London and New York, regional partners and an installed customer base of almost 40,000 users spanning 82 countries, Stardraw.com is focussed on serving the international marketplace, and delivers leading-edge solutions that exploit the very latest in software technologies.

LINK:	https://www1.stardraw.com/company/press/PressReleases/FreeDrivers.asp...
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