AI4AV catalogs control specifications for the gear AV integrators install: projectors, displays, audio DSPs, video matrices, lighting controllers, and the long tail of smart-home devices with a serial cable, an RS-232 port, or a TCP control endpoint.

The catalog is machine-readable. The pipeline cross-checks each command against a manufacturer source document before the spec ships.

The problem #

If you have written a Bitfocus Companion module, a Q-SYS block, or a custom control script that talks to a projector over RS-232, you know the workflow:

  1. Find the manual. Sometimes easy, other times next to impossible.
  2. Find the control appendix. The half-readable table is near the back, broken across page boundaries.
  3. Translate the table into your control system's driver format.
  4. Repeat for every other device on the install: the matrix, the audio DSP, the lighting controller, each with its own manual, its own appendix, its own framing rules.
  5. Ship it.

AV integrators have paid this tax for decades.

What changed #

LLMs can read PDFs. They fill the context window doing it. A manufacturer manual runs tens to hundreds of pages; the control appendix you need is five of them. Hand the whole file to an agent and it burns tokens on warranty pages, mounting diagrams, and translated safety notices. Do this for every device on a rack and the agent runs out of context before writing a working line.

The output is unreliable even when the context holds. Ask an AI assistant for the RS-232 power-on command for a specific projector and you get a plausible string that may or may not work. AV control commands fail silent: a wrong checksum returns nothing; a wrong terminator hangs the session.

AI4AV ships one small, structured spec per device. The agent loads only what it needs, and a verifier matches every command to the manufacturer source before publication.

How it works #

Each device family in the catalog ships as one spec file. The spec captures:

  • Transport. RS-232 with baud rate and framing, or TCP with port and authentication, or HTTP with endpoint paths.
  • Actions. Each documented control command, with payload bytes and expected response.
  • Feedbacks. Events the device emits on its own: lamp hours, fan failure, signal lock.
  • Safety interlocks. Commands you must not fire on auto-pilot, like lamp warmup and lens-shift limits.

The format is open and stable. The full catalog mirrors to GitHub. Specs are free for any use, including commercial.

The companion agent skill, ai4av-lookup, installs into Claude Code, Codex, or any runtime that supports skills. You ask the agent to control a device by name. The skill pulls the matching spec. The agent has what it needs to scaffold a working control script.

What is in the catalog today #

The current snapshot covers display, projector, audio, video routing, lighting, and smart-home control across most of the names you would recognize on a typical install: Sony, Panasonic, Epson, Barco, Extron, QSC, Biamp, Shure, Yamaha, Sennheiser, Kramer, Lutron, Bose, Denon, and several hundred more. Browse the catalog to see what ships today.

The pipeline runs around the clock. New manufacturers join the queue. New specs ship every hour. The goal is every controllable AV device in one catalog, with new releases catalogued the day their documentation drops.

How to use it #

Install ai4av-lookup into your AI tool. Ask the agent to write the script; the agent pulls specs by device name and produces working code.

Funding #

AI4AV is sponsorware. The data is open and free. Sponsorship from AV manufacturers, integration shops, and individuals who depend on the dataset pays for ingestion, schema work, and verification. Become a sponsor on GitHub Sponsors.

See also: About AI4AV, How to contribute, News.