I got tired of hunting AV device control commands in 200-page PDFs, so I built a searchable catalog

[vesalaasanen]

Every time I want to control a piece of AV gear from a script, I end up digging through a 200-page manual for the serial or IP command set, if I can find the document in the first place, then trying to extract the command in a sensible form before starting programming. Did that one too many times, so I started building a catalog of the control protocols instead.

AI4AV

It crawls control commands out of manufacturer-published documentation into a searchable catalog. Per-device command tables, source documents linked. The part I use day-to-day is the Claude Code / Codex skill: instead of copy-pasting protocol documents from GitHub into the model's context, the AI skill fetches just that device's command set on demand and writes the control code against it.

Over 2000 devices are supported right now, growing daily. My goal is to eventually get the vast majority of LAN and serial-controlled AV gear into this catalog. The data and the skill are both open source (ODbL for the catalog, MIT for the skill). The scraping pipeline that feeds it is the part I keep to myself. Also, I don't accept pull requests to GitHub since I want to keep the quality consistent.

The honest part: An automated pipeline generates these specs from manufacturer docs. Even though the system seems really reliable with the spot tests I've done, it might get confused with some manufacturer specs, especially if the original PDFs are fuzzy. Spec coverage is still uneven: deep on some manufacturers, empty on others. This is where you can help me. Drop an issue to GitHub if the specs are drifting from the original or if there is a device you would like to see in the catalog.

Free forever. Suggest a device or flag a wrong spec right on the page. Ideas and bug reports welcome. Give a star on GitHub if you find this useful.

 

[somebodyelse]

Nice idea, but how accurate is it? I randomly dived in at https://github.com/vesalaasanen/ai4av/blob/main/specs/rotel/rotel_rc_1580_serial.md and couldn't see enough data to implement it, notably no info on checksum calculation but other parameters weren't clear either. Scrolling down to the Provenance section none of the source URLs appear to be for this model. Looking at the first two, the protocol details don't match each other, or the one in the listing. It doesn't inspire confidence.

 

[vesalaasanen]

Nice idea, but how accurate is it? I randomly dived in at https://github.com/vesalaasanen/ai4av/blob/main/specs/rotel/rotel_rc_1580_serial.md and couldn't see enough data to implement it, notably no info on checksum calculation but other parameters weren't clear either. Scrolling down to the Provenance section none of the source URLs appear to be for this model. Looking at the first two, the protocol details don't match each other, or the one in the listing. It doesn't inspire confidence.

You're right about that one. This one shouldn't be marked verified, that's a bug in the earlier verifier, and I've flagged this one for a re-run.

The system is definitely not perfect, but steadily improving. The system is more or less automatic, since checking results manually is impossible for a single-person hobby project. The scrapers and verifiers are improved every time there is a reason for it. I launched a 4th-generation scraping and verification system today. I have flagged the 1st and 2nd generation results for re-check, but this, of course, takes time. I'm not trying to sell this as a human-verified 1:1 solution. But like Wikipedia, this is constantly evolving and improving in both quantity and quality.

 

[vesalaasanen]

Nice idea, but how accurate is it? I randomly dived in at https://github.com/vesalaasanen/ai4av/blob/main/specs/rotel/rotel_rc_1580_serial.md and couldn't see enough data to implement it, notably no info on checksum calculation but other parameters weren't clear either. Scrolling down to the Provenance section none of the source URLs appear to be for this model. Looking at the first two, the protocol details don't match each other, or the one in the listing. It doesn't inspire confidence.

Thank you! This was actually very helpful. There was a verifier bug that touched 300 specs, of which Rotel was one of them. Now all are re-run and updated.