Good news, everyone! I’m pleased to announce that Remote Central and Philips have reached an agreement and we are now able to offer everyone free access to the latest beta version of ProntoEdit Professional 3.0 software (also known as PEP3), as well as related control panel and extender firmware upgrades. With this new software you’ll gain additional capabilities for your Pronto Professional control panel, including:

• Master Project View – allows multiple control panels to be configured and stored in one master project file. This enables programmers to reuse system settings, IR codes, macros and graphical assets over an entire project, greatly improving the overview, consistency and overall efficiency of programming Pronto systems in larger installations. Installers can also use existing ProntoScript modules within PEP3. Existing XCFs can be imported into a Master Project File.

• TSW9500 support – besides creating files from scratch, PEP3 also allows a “smart conversion” in just two mouse clicks from existing TSU9600 and TSU9800 configurations. All hard button functions that were present on the handheld panels will be re-organized, so conversion truly becomes “plug & play”. Hard button functions that do not fit on the in-wall panel’s five firm keys are copied to an overlay page. This page can be triggered by firm keys or even in a macro and will, like elevator doors, slide in from left and right.

• Overlay pages – these are pages that can hold virtual hard keys. Virtual hard keys are necessary in order to exchange projects between different control panels with different hard button selections. Overlay pages can be called from within an action list. When called, the overlay page will appear on top of the current page as an extra layer.

• Link to hard keys – due to some Pronto models missing certain hard keys versus other models, a mechanism to replace their functionality was introduced. When selecting a button, you are now able to link that button to a missing hardkey. Doing so will make the button behave as if it were the hardkey being pressed. Once you have linked a soft button to a hard button, the action list will become the action list of that hard button.

  As you know, there is only one hard of each hard button in an activity. Linking two soft buttons to the same hard button in one activity will hence give 2 edit possibilities of the same hard buttons action list. If you change it in one place, you will notice the chance in the other place as well, simply because you are always referencing the action list of a single hard button.

• Punch-throughs – the new punch-through feature can be configured so that the action lists of certain hard buttons will operate system-wide.

• ProntoScript Library List View – ProntoScript libraries are now presented with a cleaner and more practical overview list of library properties.

This is still considered beta software, however as Philips has closed the Pronto division this will be the last version ever released. Although PEP3 can co-exist with PEP2, please remember to back up all of your important Pronto data files (such as configurations and galleries) before installation. The beta has been in use for some time now with no major reported issues, but as there may still be bugs remember that this is “use at your own risk”.

Philips will not provide software support to anyone using this editor version, so if you have any issues please post them to the Pronto Professional Forum here on Remote Central.

Click here for ProntoEdit Professional 3.0!

Remember that ProntoEdit Professional 3.0 is only for use with Pronto Professional control panels: TSU9300, TSU9400, TSW9500, TSU9600 and TSU9800. If you have any other model Pronto remote control, including the “ProntoPro”, this software is not for you! The latest versions of ProntoEdit for your remote can always be found in one of our Pronto File Areas.

For those who would still like access to the official Pronto website, I am continuing to provide activation keys for those who meet the minimum qualifications. Please see this forum post which has instructions on how to request a code. Nearly every downloadable file on the Pronto site is already available here on Remote Central in the Pronto Professional File Area, except for ProntoScript modules, which I will still be adding as time permits.