Devices

This page is related to Elementi GUI and Browse panel.

Introduction

"Devices" is one of the tabs of the Browse panel in Elementi GUI, listing these types of devices:

• Elementi-compatible players
• Publish Locations
• USB storage devices connected to that PC

You can group your devices into collections, publish a project on one or more of these devices, or open a device to preview or change the content stored on it.

Views

There are two listing views to choose from: "Icon View" and "List View"; you can switch between them using the Menu → View options on the toolbar or the right-click contextual menu.

Icon View

This is the default view and lists the devices using large icons and the device name underneath them.

• For players, the large icon contains the player model, its generic picture and status icon.
• For Publish Locations, a generic drive icon is used.
• For collections, a generic gray folder icon is used.
• For removable devices, a USB key icon is used.

List View

This is a traditional list view and can be used to see more information about the listed devices and for different sorting orders. The following columns are present:

Name	A small icon (for players is the status icon), followed by the device name.
Type	Type of device such as HMP350, iBX410, or Server (for #Publish Location).
Serial number	Serial number of the player; empty for servers.
Firmware version	The version of the player's firmware; available only for automatically discovered devices.
IP Address	The IPv4 address or the hostname address (for automatically discovered device).

Players

The HMP350, HMP300, and other DSOS player models with a DSOS Feature Set activated are compatible with Elementi. The DiVA players are not compatible.

Elementi can automatically discover players within the same subnet as the PC running Elementi. If players are not automatically discovered (see the troubleshooting section below), you can manually add them into Elementi.

Notes:

• Elementi S can mange up to 10 devices and Publish Locations are not supported. To overcome these limitations, you need Elementi M or Elementi X.
• Elementi does not perform any scanning itself, but queries the Bonjour and SSDP/UPnP discovery service running on that PC to get the list of available players, then it compares the results with its internal list, updates the status of the existing players and adds the newly discovered ones. For more details, see the Device discovery page.

Device name

For automatically discovered players, Elementi updates the device name using the information provided by the player.

• If you want to change the device name, you must do it from Control Center (right-click on the player icon, select the "Control Center" option, then follow these steps to change the device name).
• Renaming the player in Elementi can only be used when it is not automatically discovered, otherwise that name will be overwritten next time Elementi communicates with that player.

For players added manually, you can ignore the warning shown when trying to rename it in Elementi.

Status icon

The player status is shown through predefined icons, thus facilitating device management and monitoring.

Icon	Description
Green tick	Device has been auto-discovered by Elementi and is available.
Blue settings wheel	Device has not been configured yet.
Red cross (X)	Device has previously been discovered, but is not currently accessible.
Orange exclamation mark (!)	Device is in Safe mode.
Orange cross (X)	Device is in Recovery mode.
No icon	Device was manually added, but has never been discovered by Bonjour.

Publish Location

The Publish Location feature of Elementi M and Elementi X offers the possibility to publish content directly on a web server, thus facilitating content deployment for large setups involving a centralized content server or for those cases when is not possible to push content directly on the HMP (for instance, due to firewall / NAT usage).

 

See the full article on Publish Location for more details. This feature is not available for Elementi S.

Collection

To ease up the management of devices, Elementi allows grouping the devices into collections (in the same manner as grouping resources). A collection can contain devices, publish locations or other collections.

To create a new collection, right-click inside the "Devices" view, select "New Collection..." option, and enter the desired name.

A device can either be copied or moved (cut) into a collection, and the same device can be present in multiple collections.

Open a device

To open a device into Elementi to preview or change its content, simply double-click on the device's icon/row; alternatively, you can select the device and press the "Enter" key (Ctrl+O combination), or right-click and choose "Open Selected".

If you've never accessed that device before, you are asked to enter the username and password to get access – these credentials can be saved to avoid entering them every time. If successful, the content present on the device is displayed within the Browse panel; for Elementi X, the WebDAV properties of the device are shown within the Edit panel.

If you want to open the player configuration interface, right-click on the player's icon and select the "Control Center" option.

Notes:

• For Elementi S users, the project present on the player is opened as read-only to prevent unwanted changes. See how to copy the project in your Elementi, then you can modify the content, and finally publish the project back onto the player.
• For Elementi M and X users, the content is not protected for direct modifications, nevertheless, it is strongly recommended to use the publishing feature of Elementi, instead of uploading content directly on the player.

Add new device manually

To add a neew device manually, follow these steps:

1. Open the Devices view.
2. Using the right-click menu, select New Device....
3. Enter the player serial number, its IPv4 address and select the player model.
4. The access to the player's content is normally password protected, in which case you need to:
   1. Enable the "Security" option.
   2. Enter a username and a password. The user must have content authoring or admin rights.
   3. If required, enable the "Use HTTPS" option. See more details below.
5. Click the OK button to add the new HMP device.

Note:

In some cases, manually added devices might be automatically removed from "Devices" – to prevent this, simply copy those devices into a collection.

Use HTTPS

The "Use HTTPS" option activates enhanced security when connecting to players. This feature was added in Elementi 2017, however, it works best within Elementi 2018 which implements TLS-SRP.

In Elementi 2017, this feature requires installing a server certificate on your PC and/or on the player because the default self-signed certificate generated by the player is usually not trusted by your PC (see the note below). Therefore, you should first obtain a server certificate signed by a trusted CA (Certificate Authority) for that player and then add that certificate onto the player from Network → Server Certificates section in Control Center. Also, make sure to enter the FQDN mentioned within that certificate in the "IP address" field above, instead of the IP address.

The default self-signed certificate generated by the player is usually not trusted by your PC; an "issuer not trusted" connection error is displayed by Elementi. Strictly for troubleshooting purposes, you can enable "Ignore SSL certificates validation" option on Elementi from Menu → Settings.

Warning:

This should not be used in production environments because it disables all security checks of secure HTTP connections to any web server, making them insecure!

Export & import devices

The list of devices and/or collections present under the "Devices" view can be copied to another machine using the export - import mechanism.

To export devices:

1. Switch to the Devices view.
2. Select the devices and/or collections to be exported.
3. Using the right-click menu, select Export.
4. Select the location to save the generated XML file.

To import devices:

1. Switch to the Devices view.
2. Drag and drop the XML file from File Explorer.

Notes:

• Automatically-discovered players present in the root of Devices view cannot be exported. If such devices are selected for export, a warning dialog box will appear with the text Dynamic devices cannot be exported. To be able to export these devices, you need to add them into a collection.
• Starting with Elementi 2020, the credentials needed to access the exported device are encrypted and saved in the generated file, so you don't need to entere them again upon import within another Elementi installation.
• When importing, the new devices included in the XML file are added to Elementi; this will not remove already-configured devices.

Troubleshooting

• If no devices are discovered, check that the Bonjour service is installed and started. If it is not, reinstall the latest version of Elementi (make sure to allow installing the Apple softwares at when the Elementi installer ends). The current version of Bonjour installed with Elementi is 3.0.0.10 (you can check this by opening Control Panel → Programs); this version is not available for direct download, however installing iTunes will install Bonjour 3.0 as well.
• Bonjour is using multicast DNS packets that usually get lower priority or discarded on crowded WiFi networks, thus devices might not be discovered in such cases.
• If you cannot see more than 10 devices in Elementi, you are probably running Elementi S – you need Elementi M or Elementi X to see all the players within your network.
• If you can see a device appearing automatically but you cannot publish to it, check the Proxy settings.