Chipmunk AV Controller is a .NET application capable of controlling audio visual equipment, home cinemas and performing general automation tasks. Chipmunk enables the easy creation of macros and commands to control devices via plugins. Chipmunk can also receive incoming events from equipment. Chipmunk incorporates a Lua scripting engine which has been integrated with Microsoft's .NET Framework, enabling users to interact with and extend core functionality. A simple plugin API & SDK makes it easy for .NET developers to create their own plugins using any .NET language such as VB.NET or C#.

This new release targets the latest Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework and comes with an improved user interface, logging manager, and three new plugins. The new logging manager means that Chipmunk can now log incoming events, outgoing commands, and system status messages. The Plugin SDK has been simplified making plugin development even easier. Chipmunk now comes with ten plugins pre-installed:

* RS232 Serial Plugin - for bidrectional serial communication
* USB-UIRT & RedRat3 Infrared Plugins - for receiving, transmitting and learning IR commands
* Global Cache GC-100 Plugin - for RS232, IR, Relay, and digital sensor input control
* Web Server Plugin - for controlling Chipmunk from a web browser. Supports Lua Server Pages.
* Time Scheduler - for periodic, daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling of events
* Remote Control Server - for running software remote controls over wireless networks
* X10 CM17A Firecracker Plugin - for sending on/off/dim/brighten commands via X-10
* On Screen Display Plugin - for displaying HTML or plain text messages

Chipmunk also comes with a drag-and-drop remote control designer, universal software remote control for the Desktop and Pocket PC, and sample plugin source code for developers. To coincide with this release, we have also launched Chipmunk AV Controller Forums at www.chipmunkav.com/forums/.