I'm back!

[flowblok]

I've not been frequenting these forums recently (i.e.: since January), so I'd just like to issue a small notice announcing my existence.

To the people who PM'd me whilst I was away - sorry, but my settings seem to have been changed when the forum got updated, so I haven't been able to see any of your messages until now.

A while back, I wrote a few (i.e.: three) trigger interfaces for Vixen. I didn't seen much work on the trigger interfaces, so I just left it at that.
If people would like, I have Serial, Parallel and Network trigger plugins available, and I can take a look at them, fix any bugs I find (I have vastly improved in my programming since last year!), and post them - and if K.C. wants to, he can issue them with the program.

Unfortunately, I've had HSC stuff to deal with, so I haven't been able to do improve my setup for this year, but I'll still be running last year's stuff, and maybe with a few more sequences.

[alwysrit2]

Hi FlowBlok, I would be interested in more details on your triggers, especially the network trigger. I will be using multiple systems this year for halloween and my current plan is to use the client/server for cross system communication.
Thanks
-Don

[flowblok]

You can find my Network trigger plugin attached to this post:
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=236#post1615

The Parallel trigger is in the post above it.

[rlilly]

Peter,

I'm quite interested in your efforts here. I plan to do some testing with it.

I plan to have Vixen running on two computers for my display, one running the show, and the other running the LEDTriks.

What I'd like to do is have the show computer use the Vixen launcher to generate a trigger on the Triks computer, in order to snychronize the Triks message displayed to the show music.

The two computers will be connected via a wireless network.

Can your network trigger be used to accomplish the trigger side of the equation? If so, can you give a description on how it should be set up?

[BuzzKill]

would it be possible to provide some basic code for how you would fire the network trigger? Like some perl or PHP that could be run with something like a button on a web page?

[flowblok]

From memory :???:, the network trigger sets up a TCP/IP server *, which listens for ASCII characters. Each ASCII character you send through the stream will trigger a different event, corresponding to it's ASCII character number - hence pressing 'A' will trigger the 65th trigger event.

BuzzKill: I haven't coded in Perl, and I haven't used PHP for a few months :(, so I can't provide any code. When the user clicks the button, you would connect to the server's IP address on TCP port #(Whatever you set it to), and send a byte through, dependent on whatever trigger you wanted to send.


rlilly: Interesting idea, I believe that currently the idea with LedTrix boards is to run them off the same computer as your sequence.
Disclaimer: I'd imagine that running your sequence off different computers would not be perfectly synchronised.
However, to do what you've described, you'd need to use the Vixen launcher to trigger a program, which sends the trigger event when your sequence starts. I'd recommend that you have the # of the trigger event in the program arguments. I haven't got a program which does this, but it wouldn't be especially hard to write - but you should use C/C++ to do it. If you PM me nicely next week, there's been a rumour that I'll have plenty of free time then. :)
Anyhow, you'd have a different trigger number for each sequence, and at the start of each sequence, your program launcher would send the trigger, which would then start the sequence on your 2nd computer. This could also be used for distributed setups, however, please note that the network latency will result in a slight delay in the sequence starting on the second computer.

* At the start, I mentioned that it was a TCP/IP server. I haven't actually looked at the code for a year, so it may be that I'm making things up, and it's actually just trying to connect to a server, which then would then send it the events to it. But most likely not. :)

[rlilly]

Thanks, Peter.

Though it looks like I'm out of luck on this idea. Triggers are only allowed to start Vixen Standard Sequences, not LEDTriks Sequences or any script....

On to the next idea.

[flowblok]

I thought there was some mechanism for attaching an LedTrix sequence to a Standard Sequence, but I couldn't find it then, so I must have imagined it.

K.C: Why no LedTrix sequences in Trigger responses?!

Unless K.C can intervene, I'd say the next thing to try would be scheduling both sequences to come on at the same time, and synchronising clocks.

[rlilly]

Oh I've proven that approach. That's my ultimate fall back. To make the Ledtriks script timed the same as the show script.

It's doable, just not optimal.

I'd like to add the flexibility, if you know what I mean.

[rlilly]

Folks,

KC has come through once again! He sent me an upgraded 'Triggers.dll' which allows LEDTriks sequences and script to be triggered events.

So I'm back on the road to getting flowbloks network trigger to work!

Thank you KC!

[rlilly]

You can find my Network trigger plugin attached to this post:
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=236#post1615

The Parallel trigger is in the post above it.

Has anyone had success in implementing the network trigger?

I can't get the trigger server to indicate it's listening to a port. I've gotten a different server to respond, but not this one.