Altronics Redback A 4510 Operating instructions

A 4510 Software Programming Guide www.altronics.com.au
User manual revision number: 1.0 03/02/2017
Software Programming Guide
A 4510 Yearly Timer
Redback® Proudly Made In Australia
Distributed by Altronic Distributors Pty. Ltd.
Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Internet: www.altronics.com.au

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia2
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
1.0 RUNNING THE PROGRAMMING SOFTWARE
The software is provided on the supplied SD Card and is called “RedbackA4510TimerProgrammer”.
In order to access the program, the SD card will need to be connected to a Windows based device such as a PC or laptop.
It will need to be equipped with an SD card reader to do this. If an SD slot is not available then the Altronics D 0371A USB
Memory Card Reader or similar would be suitable (not supplied).
You will rst need to remove power from the A 4510 and then remove the SD card from the rear of the unit.
To remove the SD card push the card in and it will eject itself.
Make sure the Windows based device is on and card reader connected and correctly installed. Then insert the SD card into
the reader.
Go to “My Computer” or “This PC” and open the SD card which is usually marked “Removable disk”.
In this case it is named “Removable disk (F:)”. Select the removable disk and then you should get a window that looks like
gure 1.
It is recommended to run the program from the SD card.
Double click on the le - RedbackA4510TimerProgrammer.
The programming screen should appear as shown in Fig 2.
If the program doesn’t run then the .NET Framework might
need to be updated on your PC.
This must be updated to the .NET Framework 4, available
on the microsoft website.
Fig 1
Fig 2

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 3
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
If this is the rst time the program has been run, a new calendar will need to be created. Navigate to the “File” menu in the
top left corner and select “New”.
The window shown below will appear. The start and end dates will default to the current year with a 2 month overlap into
the following year.
NOTE: The calendar start and end dates can be set to a minimum of 1 month, up to a maximum of 2 years.
In our example we will select the default calendar.
Press “OK” to conrm the dates. The window shown in gure 3 should be created.
This is where all the timing information will be entered for the calendar year.
NOTE: The colour scheme for the calendar can be altered in the defult setup (refer to section 4.0 for more information).
Fig 3
2.0 ADDING AN EVENT GROUP
The software makes it very easy to enter the timing events for any calendar day. The timing events for a day can be grouped
and labelled into something meaningful to the user, such as “StandardDay”, “PublicHols”, “SchoolHols”, “StudtFreeDay”,
“AssemblyDay”, etc up to a maximum of 12 characters.
To add a group, simply press the “ADD” button in the Event Groups section of the window. The window shown below
should appear.

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia4
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
For our example we are going to start by adding the event group labelled “StandardDay”.
NOTE: No spaces or special characters can be used when creating the labels.
Enter the label, select a colour for the visuall representation of the day on the calendar as shown below and then press “OK”.
The Event Group created will now appear in the Event Groups as shown in gure 4.
Fig 4
Before we go any further we will save the calendar conguration. Navigate to the “File” menu in the top left corner and
select “Save”.
We will now create the other groups we would like to add.
We will add Event Groups for public holidays labelled “PublicHols” and an Event Group for school holidays labelled
“SchoolHols”. We can do this by following the same procedure just outlined or we can use the “Duplicate Event Group”
option (see section 6.0 for more details).
The result is shown in gure 5.
NOTE: When the save button is pressed the conguration will be saved to the root directory from which the software was
run. In our case we ran the software directly from the SD card, so all conguration information will be saved to the SD
card. If we wish to save the conguration elsewhere we could use the “Save As” option which would allow us to navigate
to another folder. There is no option to save the conguration with a preferred name.
The conguration le is saved to the CONFIG folder and the event group information is saved to the GROUPS folder.

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 5
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
Fig 5
For our example we will now select the days of the year we would like to generate into standard school days. In the Event
Groups window select the StandardDay group. Now move your mouse over the calendar and you will notice that the days
will change to the “StandardDay” group’s colour (In our example this colour is green). Pressing the left mouse button will
change the highlighted day to this colour and in turn SET the selected day to a standard school day as shown in gure 6
where February 8th has been selected. We will call this the “Single Day” selecting mode. To undo the selection press the
right mouse button on the same day, and the day will become deselected.
Fig 6

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia6
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
Now you could go through the entire calendar selecting single days but it would be very time consuming.
You might also notice that if you hover the mouse over the S,M,T,W,T,F,S letters representing the day of the week, that par-
ticular day will be highlighted for the entire month. We will call this the “Same Day” selecting mode. Press the left mouse
button on these letters to select that day for the entire month as shown in gure 7, or press the right mouse button on the
day letter to deselect.
Fig 7
It is also possible to highlight multiple days of the calendar. We will call this the “Multiple Day” selecting mode. Press the left
mouse button on a day to select it, now hold down the shift key and move the mouse over the calendar. You will notice that
the selected days will ow over the days and months. For the purposes of our example we will select all days of the calendar
as shown below (gure 8).
Fig 8

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 7
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
NOTE: In this mode Saturday and Sunday cannot be selected, unlike in the “Single Day” or “Same Day” selecting modes. It is
also not possible to deselect multiple days so be sure you have selected the correct days. The easiest way to deselect mutliple
days is to use the “Same Day” deselection process.
We will now enter all the (Western Australian) school and public holidays, using a combination of “Single Days”, “Same Day
“ and “Multiple Days” methods. The result is shown below in gure 9.
Fig 9
The basic calendar is now setup for the current year as well as the rst two months of next year. At this stage additional Event
Groups could be added for Student Free days, School Carnivals etc.
3.0 ADDING EVENTS FOR A GROUP
With the Event Groups setup, we now need to program the events that will occur for these groups.
In our example we will program the events to occur on a standard primary school day. Begin by selecting the StandardDay
group from the Event Groups window. Next press the “ADD” button below the Events window (just above the Daylight
Saving window). A New Event window as shown below should appear.
Fig 10
An event can now be programmed from this window. A description of the event can be added (such as Pre bell, Morning
Tea etc), the start time and the duration can all be entered. There are four options for the output associated with this event.
The Bell option will play the MP3 audio le in the “Bell” folder of the SD card.
NOTE: Only one MP3 le is allowed in the “Bell” folder.
The Prebell and Music options will play the MP3 audio les in the “Prebell” and “Music” folders of the SD card.
NOTE: If more than one MP3 le is in either of these folders, then each time these outputs are activated the audio les will
be randomly played.

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia8
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
The last option for the output is the RELAY option, which when used has no audio output, but will activate the Bell and
Common 24V DC switched outputs.
The rst event we will program we will label “PrebellMusic”. We will use this event to play a music track to notify students
that the rst bell will sound soon and that they are to start making their way to their classrooms. Type in the label name, and
then enter the start time and duration the MP3 is to play. NOTE: The start time is in 24 hour format.
NOTE: The durations for the Prebell, Bell, Music and Relay outputs can all be set to a default time (refer to section 4.0 for
more information).
We will select the output as the Prebell, so that when this event is activated the MP3 les in the “Prebell” folder of the SD
card will be played.
NOTE: If more than one MP3 le is in the Prebell folder, then each time this output is activated, a random MP3 audio le
(from the Prebell folder) will be played.
Fig 11
Enter all details and then press the “OK” button. The Event should now appear in the events list for the StandardDay group
as shown below in gure 12.
Fig 12
The Prebell has been programmed to start at 8:25 AM and play the MP3 le in the “Prebell” folder for ve minutes.

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 9
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
Now let’s repeat the process for the rst bell of the day which will
occur at 8:30AM. We will enter the details as shown in the gure to
the right. The start time is set to 08:30:00, with a duration of 3
seconds. The output is set to Bell, which will activate the one and
only MP3 audio le allowed in the “Bell” folder of the SD card.
After the details are entered we press OK to conrm, only to receive a error message “Unable to save Event”.
This has occurred because there is an overlap of times. The “PrebellMusic” Event and the “FirstBell” Event overlap at
08:30:00. If we change the duration of the rst event (PrebellMusic) to 4:59, then the rst event will nish at 08:59:59 and
then the overlap is removed.
To change the PrebellMusic Event ,simply highlight this event and press the edit button. The Event window will appear and
then the changes can be made. Once done, the FirstBell Event can be programmed and saved and will appear in the Events
list as shown in gure 13.
Fig 13

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia10
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
To make the programming of the events easier, default durations can be setup for the outputs. For instance you may require
the Bell to always activate for three seconds. The default duration can be set to 3 seconds and hence whenever the Bell is
selected as the output for an event, the duration will automatically default to 3 seconds. (Note: This can still be modied to
any time). To set the defaults refer to section 4.0.
We will now enter the rest of the events for the school day as shown below. The Bell output has been selected for the rest
of the events for the day, including morning recess, end of recess, lunch, end of lunch and end of the day.
NOTE: If we had an event we wanted to create which was similar to another event already programmed, we could copy this
event and then make changes. This can be achieved by using the “Duplicate Event” option (refer to section 5.0 for more
details).
Fig 14
We will save the calendar conguration again by navigating to the “File” menu in the top left corner and selecting “Save”.
With the events for the Standard School Day entered, its now a matter of entering the events for the other Event groups
following the same procedure.
Make sure the conguration is saved and then remove the SD card from the Windows based device following windows safe
card removal procedures. Make sure the A 4510 is OFF and insert the SD card into the slot in the rear; it will click when fully
inserted.
The A 4510 can now be switched On. If all is well, after the startup screen is displayed the current time and list of the events
should be displayed on the screen.
NOTE: When the save button is pressed the conguration will be saved to the root directory from which the software was
run. In our case we ran the software directly from the SD card, so all conguration information will be saved to the SD
card. If we wish to save the conguration elsewhere we could use the “Save As” option which would allow us to navigate
to another folder. There is no option to save the conguration with a preferred name.
The conguration le is saved to the CONFIG folder and the event group information is saved to the GROUPS folder.

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 11
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
4.0 DEFAULTS
It is possible to change the colour scheme of the programming screen and also set default duration times for each of the
Bell, Prebell, Music and Relay outputs.
Navigate to the “Edit” menu in the top left corner and select “Defaults...” as shown below in gure 15.
Fig 15
The Defaults window should appear as shown below.
From here the Weekday Cell colour, Weekend Cell colour, Month Tile colour and Day Legend colour can be changed to any
colour in the full colour spectrum.
The default durations for each of the Bell, Prebell, Music and Relay outputs can also be set here. For our example we will set
the Prebell duration to 4 minutes and 59 seconds, the Bell duration to 3 seconds and the Music duration to 4 minutes and
59 seconds as shown below.
Now whenever we create a new Event the duration of the selected output will default to these settings.

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia12
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
5.0 DUPLICATING AN EVENT IN A GROUP
In section 3.0 we illustrated the processes involved in creating the Events for a Group (In this case the StandardDay Group).
With each of the events the start time, duration and output had to entered manually.
The programming software has the ability to copy (or duplicate) an event which may speed up the process if similar events
are to be programmed.
This process will be demonstrated in the following example.
As we programmed for the start of the day with a prebell music event, we will do the same for the call to return to class after
lunch. An event labelled “EndLunchMus” will sound ve minutes before the lunch break nishes to notify the students that
they should start to make their way back to class. For the output of this event we will use the “Music” output. This will use
the MP3 les in the music folder of the SD card. This can be useful if a different set of music tracks is required for an event.
This event is very similar to the “PrebellMusic” Event we programmed as the rst event of the standard day. We will duplicate
this event and then modify it create an after lunch break event.
Begin by highlighting the “PrebellMusic” Event in the StandardDay Group. Navigate to the “Edit” menu in the top left cor-
ner and then select “Event, Duplicate” as shown in gure 16.
Fig 16
The Duplicate Event window should now appear with the “PrebellMusic” event properties as shown in gure 17.
Fig 17

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 13
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
We will change the Event name to EndLunchMus and change the start time to ve minutes before the end of lunch bell as
shown in gure 18. We will select the output to the Music folder instead of the Prebell folder as we want to play a series of
different music les.
NOTE: The Event name can be the same as another event, but the times cannot clash.
Fig 18
The new event now appears in the Event list for StandardDay as shown in gure 19.
Fig 19
We will save the calendar conguration again by navigating to the “File” menu in the top left corner and selecting “Save”.
NOTE: When the save button is pressed the conguration will be saved to the root directory from which the software was
run. In our case we ran the software directly from the SD card, so all conguration information will be saved to the SD
card. If we wish to save the conguration elsewhere we could use the “Save As” option which would allow us to navigate
to another folder. There is no option to save the conguration with a preferred name.
The conguration le is saved to the CONFIG folder and the event group information is saved to the GROUPS folder.

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia14
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
6.0 DUPLICATING AN EVENT GROUP
The A 4510 software has a Duplicate Event Group feature which can speed up the programming process. With this function
any Event Group can be duplicated and then edited.
In the previous examples a standard school day has been programmed into the timer software.
What if Monday’s timetable was different to the other days of the week because every Monday the school has an assembly.
We could add another Event Group for Monday’s and program the events for the group manually, or we could use the du-
plicate Event Group function to copy the “Standard Day” Group and then modify the event.
The process will be illustrated by the following example.
We begin by selecting the “StandardDay” Event group from the Event groups window.
The duplicate Event Group feature is accessed by navigating to the “Edit” menu in the top left corner and then selecting
Event group, Duplicate as shown in gure 20.
Fig 20
The Duplicate Event Group window should now appear with
the “StandardDay” event group properties as shown in
gure 21.
Fig 21
Type in a different name, change the colour and then press OK. For our example we will use the name Mondays and change
the colour to yellow as shown in gure 22.
NOTE: The same name cannot be used for the new Event Group.
Fig 22

www.altronics.com.au Redback® Proudly Made In Australia 15
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
The New Mondays Event Group created will now appear in the Event Groups as shown in gure 23.
Fig 23
We will then edit the events for the newly created Mondays Event Group and add an assembly at 9:30 am. Finally the rele-
vant school term Monday’s will be selected on the calendar. The result is shown in gure 24.
Fig 24

www.altronics.com.auRedback® Proudly Made In Australia16
A 4510 Software Programming Guide
7.0 DAYLIGHT SAVING
The A 4510 has an optional Daylight Saving mode which is entered through the Programming Software.
In Australia, some of the states have Daylight Saving which begins at 2am on the rst Sunday in October when clocks are
put forward one hour. It ends at 2am (which is 3am Daylight Saving Time) on the rst Sunday in April, when clocks are put
back an hour.
To initiate the Daylight Saving mode, press the “Add” button on the bottom left of the programming screen under the Day-
light Saving Window. The Daylight Saving window should appear as shown below.
From here the dates can be entered. Select the date for the clocks to move forward and then press OK. The date should
appear in the Daylight Saving window. Press the “Add” button again to enter the Daylight Saving window once more and
enter the date for the clocks to move back an hour and then press OK.
For our example we have selected the dates as shown below.
These dates will then appear as shown below in the Daylight Saving window. Daylight Saving mode is now active and will
take effect at 2am on the specied dates. NOTE: The daylight saving dates need to be updated every year.
We will save the calendar conguration again by navigating to the “File” menu in the top left corner and selecting “Save”.
The calendar is now complete.
NOTE: When the save button is pressed the conguration will be saved to the root directory from which the software
was run. In our case we ran the software directly from the SD card, so all conguration information will be saved to the SD
card. If we wish to save the conguration elsewhere we could use the “Save As” option which would allow us to navigate
to another folder. There is no option to save the conguration with a preferred name.
The conguration le is saved to the CONFIG folder and the event group information is saved to the GROUPS folder.