Devices

This page is related to Elementi GUI and Browse panel.

Introduction

All the HMP devices within the same local network (i.e. LAN) as the PC running Elementi can be automatically discovered and listed under "Devices" tab in Browse panel - the player status is shown through predefined icons, thus facilitating device management and monitoring.

Furthermore, USB storage devices connected to that PC are also detected and the user can manually add other HMP devices (using their serial number and IP address) and / or Publish Locations (can be web servers, ftp servers or shared folders).

From Elementi, you can publish your projects onto these devices or open them for direct access to the content stored on them.

Notes:

• Elementi S can mange up to 10 HMP devices and Publish Locations are not supported. To overcome these limitations, you need Elementi M or Elementi X.
• If players are not automatically discovered by Elementi (see the troubleshooting section below), you can manually add them into Elementi.
• Elementi does not perform any scanning itself - instead, it queries the Bonjour service and / or SSDP Discovery service running on that PC to get the list of available HMP devices, then it compares the results with its internal list, updates the status of the existing HMPs and adds the newly discovered ones. For more details, see the Device discovery page.

Devices tab (Elementi GUI)

Click on the "Devices" tab within Browse panel to see the list of available devices. There are two listing views to choose from: "Icon View" and "List View"; you can switch between them using the right-click menu.

Icon View

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

• For HMP devices, the large icon contains the HMP type (model), its generic picture and the HMP 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 HMP devices is the status icon), followed by the device name.
Type	Type of device such as HMP130, HMP200 or Server (for #Publish Location).
Serial number	Serial number of the HMP device; empty for servers.
Firmware version	Version of the firmware - available only for automatically discovered devices.
IP Address	IP or link-local hostname for automatically discovered device.

Device name

The HMP name shown in Elementi is automatically retrieved / updated upon device discovery through Bonjour or UPnP protocol. To change that name, right-click on the player icon, select HMP 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 instance, when the player is within another LAN, it must be added manually because it cannot be discovered, as this is normally prohibited between networks, then you can rename it in Elementi - you can ignore the warning shown by Elementi in that case.

HMP status icon

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.

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..." 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.

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.

How to

Open a device

To open a device into Elementi to preview or change its content, simply double-click on the device 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 HMP device and select the "HMP Control Center" option.

Notes:

• For Elementi S users, the project present on the HMP is opened as read-only to prevent unwanted changes. To modify the content, you need to have that project saved within Elementi and to publish it from there - if you don't, then copy the project locally, modify the content, then 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 HMP.

Add new device manually

To add an HMP device manually, follow these steps:

1. Open the Devices view.
2. Using the right-click menu, select New Device....
3. Enter the HMP serial number, the HMP IP address (v4) and select the HMP model.
4. The access to the HMP content is normally password protected, in which case you need to:
   1. Enable the "Security" option.
   2. Enter an username with content access rights - this is usually either "admin" or "content"; on HMP300 and HMP350 devices, you can also add other users with content authoring rights.
   3. Enter the password which corresponds to that user.
   4. If required, enable the "Use HTTPS" option for enhanced security when connecting to HMP300 and HMP350 devices.
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 HMP300 and HMP350 devices. 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 HMP is usually not trusted by your PC (see 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 HMP from Network > Server Certificates page of HMP 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 HMP is usually not trusted by your PC - in this case, 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 HMP devices 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. Before that, these would need to be entered 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 HMPs within your network.
• If you can see a device appearing automatically but you cannot publish to it, check the Proxy settings.