Crestron CCS-UC-CODEC-200

[turbo]

I got one of these units to play with also. Very powerful little boxes! I wanted to document a few things I've learned so far:

• I was unable to reset the Administrator password and successfully login even after doing a factory restore, not sure why exactly
• The "Service" port is Ethernet and is connected to an internal switch of some sort
• The second gigabit RTL chip is also connected to the internal switch
• There are other devices on the board with IPs 10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.4 that try to open up connections to 10.0.0.1 on TCP ports 49348 and 49350
• Ubuntu treats HDMI1 as the first screen, HDMI2 as the second screen, and the TS port as a third screen by default
• The HDMI ports appear as "always connected" and seem limited to 1920x1080 only
• ESXi v6.7 works fine once you add the NET55_R8 package
• Cannot seem to change the boot device in the BIOS, it always resets itself back to the built-in SSD. Temporary changes work to boot from other devices though
• I managed to get macOS Mojave running, using the TS only - HDMI ports not functional (yet?)

The UEFI BIOS seems buggy, but it works OK in "BIOS" mode with UEFI disabled. I did hunt around a bit to see if there was an updated image out there but I haven't found one yet.

 

[Bbolt]

I got one of these units to play with also. Very powerful little boxes! I wanted to document a few things I've learned so far:

• I was unable to reset the Administrator password and successfully login even after doing a factory restore, not sure why exactly
• The "Service" port is Ethernet and is connected to an internal switch of some sort
• The second gigabit RTL chip is also connected to the internal switch
• There are other devices on the board with IPs 10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.4 that try to open up connections to 10.0.0.1 on TCP ports 49348 and 49350
• Ubuntu treats HDMI1 as the first screen, HDMI2 as the second screen, and the TS port as a third screen by default
• The HDMI ports appear as "always connected" and seem limited to 1920x1080 only
• ESXi v6.7 works fine once you add the NET55_R8 package
• Cannot seem to change the boot device in the BIOS, it always resets itself back to the built-in SSD. Temporary changes work to boot from other devices though
• I managed to get macOS Mojave running, using the TS only - HDMI ports not functional (yet?)

The UEFI BIOS seems buggy, but it works OK in "BIOS" mode with UEFI disabled. I did hunt around a bit to see if there was an updated image out there but I haven't found one yet.

All the units I have had dead CR2032 (backup) batteries and would reset the BIOS every power cycle.

 

[turbo]

All the units I have had dead CR2032 (backup) batteries and would reset the BIOS every power cycle.

that would make sense, but it remembers all of the other settings OK only the boot device won't stick. not really an issue once you get an OS installed.

so 10.0.0.4 is the touchscreen, and 10.0.0.2 is the Crestron AV board itself, both respond to CTP but don't list any interesting commands, only "VERSION" and "TESTDNS" not sure this is useful for anything but I found it interesting.

the heatsink does a great job, but the heatsink fans on my unit were super loud, so I unplugged 1 and moved 1 fan to the CPU fan header. now it responds to the load/temperature and it's MUCH quieter, pretty much silent even under load.

 

[PGlover]

What are you folks going to use these units for?

 

[aeg]

A few random notes on these.

They are 2" high (not 1U!) and the rack mount bracket mounts it in 2U.

It looks like it would be possible to squeeze in a single 3.5" spindle drive with all the boards still in place, by drilling mounting holes in the top cover -- but not two drives.

My unit came with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB Innodisk SSD.

 

[yeyus]

So i have been messing with this for a while now with no luck. I dont have the touchscreen yet and i think thats holding me back. but if i could just get some help getting into safemode i think i can figure some more stuff out. Currently digging through the registry and editing things to see what crashes it and what does not. Was able to remove the spashscreen with this

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\crestsoft\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
removed
UtsUserMessage
C:\crestron\bin\UtsUserMessage.exe
UtsSplashScreen
c:\crestron\bin\UtsSplashScreen.exe

Was also able to change the login to administrator but with no change.
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\crestsoft\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

DefaultUsername changed from lyncroom to Administrator
shell changed from eshell.exe to C:\Windows\explorer.exe
ShellOrg changed from eshell.exe C:\Windows\explorer.exe
--------after booting they were auto changed back to eshell.exe

And have been digging through the .bat files to see what they are up to but if you change most of them it either does not boot at all or just goes to a blackscreen.

G:\Crestron\bin\RunLMR.bat to G:\Crestron\bin\RunLMRo.bat
boots still no keyboard or change.

Also was able to rename alot of the folders on the 4 partitions but again most would cause no boot or blackscreen. Some would reappear after renaming

Also tried using easybcd to edit the bcd on the drive and force it to safemode. Resulted in no boot.

Seems like EWF is enabled, so all changes you make are only changed in an ramdisk overlay. If you want to persist any changes you make run EWFMGR.exe C: -COMMIT

I've been playing with the original disk image in a kvm VM and I'm trying to bring it out of kiosk mode (most of them seem to be Group Policies - gpedit.msc) to start playing with the custom drivers.

 

[scabskunk]

Seems like EWF is enabled, so all changes you make are only changed in an ramdisk overlay. If you want to persist any changes you make run EWFMGR.exe C: -COMMIT

I've been playing with the original disk image in a kvm VM and I'm trying to bring it out of kiosk mode (most of them seem to be Group Policies - gpedit.msc) to start playing with the custom drivers.

Any chance you could strip the drivers for the touchscreen and other things? forgot to pull them off before i re installed.

 

[yeyus]

@scabskunk I'll look into it.

For now I've been playing with HDMI capture


It's still complaining about some filter library but it seems promising.

It seems that the FPGA board registers as a custom media driver on windows using a driver by an intel acquired company called Omnitek. It looks very custom and we are really lucky that they dropped some demo SDK project with partial sources in the Program Files folder.

My hopes were that HDMI video capture was actually implemented as a network socket in the internal switch but it seems handled through PCIe

 

[yeyus]

Got video capture working:

http://imgur.com/a/GEBijqb

Video source is an Amazon Fire Stick.

Steps:
1. Grab Omnitek drivers (PCI Device 1AA3:*) from original windows distro. You will need the inf and sys files, in my image they were in the Windows Driver Store.

dism /Online /get-drivers /format:table

2. Grab Omnitek folder from Program Files. It contains a sample app and some incomplete source code for such app.
3. Install Omnitek drivers in W10 or whatever version you like.
4. Install VC++ 2008 Redistributable package.
5. Register the OmnitekSourceFilter.dll using regsvr32.exe
6. Open the sample app you pulled from your machine. Profit.

The HDMI capture seems to be very low latency and did not stutter at all. I've to work on the audio and investigating if this video input can be made a generic DirectShow input next.

Has anyone explored how to disable HDMI 2?, right now using the default Intel drivers installed by windows I can't change the default display arrangement in which all 3 (Touch Display, HDMI1 and 2) are all active and the desktop extended. I tried to make HDMI1 and 2 duplicates but I could not.

 

[scabskunk]

any chance you could share the drivers? I didn't backup the drive and the price of the units has gone way up.

 

[v3n0m]

@fohdeesha awesome work, I like the possibilities of this little system.
Could you please share how you made the TS1051 function on HDBT? I've got an identical system, but the panel only works on the touchpanel port of the UC codec :-(

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bbolt]

This mPCIe -> PCIe adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XRRQ6P6 works. There is a 4-jumper block near the mSATA/mPCIe slot that switches the slot mode. I have tested several video cards and the BIOS screen is available if you don't have the touchscreen. OPNSense with an i350 ethernet board runs well. The x16 PCIe connector is misleading, mPCIe only supports 1 lane, so the slot is PCIe x1 Gen2; ~4Gbps total bandwidth available . There is just enough room between the front panel and the fans for the connector and a half height card.

 

[turbo]

There is a 4-jumper block near the mSATA/mPCIe slot that switches the slot mode.

This is some great info! are you referring to the JP7 block? There's also J27- I have been curious what that's for, as well as JP12.

The unit I got last year is still running great as a headless server (aux/video board power disconnected)
I have a second unit I was hoping to get working with UEFI boot but I believe it needs a BIOS update that I have not been able to get.

 

[Enderstorm25]

Crestron make a free program which allows you to connect to a RL2 (CCS-UC-200) Unit via the network. The tool is called "Crestron Remote Client"

Default credentials :
CCS-UC-CODEC-200 (RL2) = Administrator : <blank>

It eliminates the need for a touchpanel.


I will be experimenting and posting more findings shortly.

 

[Enderstorm25]

I have found the following :


After making a backup of the MSATA, i wiped it and tried to put win11 on it. (I have put win 11 on stuff even older than this in the past) but no matter how hard i try and using all the tricks to install on unsupported hardware, it would always bluescreen during the upgrade.

I Wiped it again and put stock win10 on it.
The power button on mine always seems to stay red and does not actually do anything after upgrading from win 7.

I imported all the drivers from the win7 version and transferred the OmniTek program folder.
If you encounter issues opening the omnitek program, I had to install both the 64 and 86 version of the VCREDIST.exe (As mentioned in another post)
The program then complained about not having the filter registered. To fix this i ran the following command in cmd
cd "C:\Program Files\Omnitek\Crestron DVI Demo App (x64)"
regsvr32 OmniTekGenericSource.dll

The program now launches.
The "DM In" port works perfectly (Its just a HDBT receiver port) and so does the HDMI / VGA for the image capture.


I think this can be adapted somewhat easily into a directshow input or a simple virtual camera driver but I don't have any experience in that.

Using ChatGPT i used a program called "GraphStudioNext" and created a working graph from the filter file OmniTekGenericSource.dll
I attached its output pin to the input of an Enhanced Video Renderer and ran the graph. The video playback works without a problem inside of GraphStudioNext.


Not sure if any of that is useful for anyone, but these boxes run very well and boot super fast in win 10.

 

[yeyus]

This is actually amazing development, I got to the point to have their own tool working on W10 but being able to pipe the video as a native source is actually very useful to repurpose these machines