Author Topic: Conductor Updates  (Read 17027 times)

Offline duane.mosley

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #15 on: January 14, 2014, »
my conductor was connected to the network the entire season. I never had an issue with songs going dark or any issues with the sequences playing. i was constantly changing stuff on my card so i left the cables connected at all times. i was hard wired into my computer which was wirelessly connected to a netgear wireless modem.
Florence, KY


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Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #16 on: January 30, 2014, »
Ok, So I have the network causing it to blank the lights out, The volume bug which we thought was already fixed as we had seen it on the beta but fixed it or so thought we had, and one member had it play out of sync at the start of the seqences when there is more than one seq in a show, We want to add the ability to run shows manually instead of seqences so we can restart any missed shows.

RJ
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Offline arw01

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #17 on: January 30, 2014, »
A config to do it manually or the option to notice it's in the range of the show and to start as soon as it powers up and is ready.  e.g. if we tell the wife who calls to tell us there are no lights, to unplug it count to 10 and plug it in.  I would love not to have to talk her through getting out the laptop, going to the webpage, click here, click here, ok got lights..

better to just unplug it dear, ok got lights, great, have a nice night!

Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #18 on: January 30, 2014, »
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A config to do it manually or the option to notice it's in the range of the show and to start as soon as it powers up and is ready.  e.g. if we tell the wife who calls to tell us there are no lights, to unplug it count to 10 and plug it in.  I would love not to have to talk her through getting out the laptop, going to the webpage, click here, click here, ok got lights..

better to just unplug it dear, ok got lights, great, have a nice night!

This has been discussed before and the issue is that not everyone has a single show run for the whole evening. I know I dont. We schedule say 4 shows to start at different times to run a night, if I did this it could run over on the next show and miss starting it as the system does not check for a show to start when one is running. How would this be over come? I am not sure I guess starting manually still creates the issue. what causes it to not run when it was scheduled ?   I would rather fix that but no one has brought up an issue with it failing to run.

RJ
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Offline keitha43

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #19 on: January 30, 2014, »
What caused a past issue for me was a short power outage and the conductor didn't start back up when the power came on like my computer used to. Now I use a computer backup battery.

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Offline twooly

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #20 on: January 30, 2014, »
Yeah the issue I've had is powering the conductor up after the start time of a show and the only way around is to take the card out change the schedule and then put it back in.  Yeah you can do a battery backup but doesn't solve it for cases of you having to power cycle everything because something is wrong connection wise .  Plus battery backup is a little overkill I think but thats me.

You can have multiple shows in a night still its a check of some sort to see if anything is scheduled during the time when its powered back up.  Or maybe I'm thinking of what your multiple shows a night example is. 

Example
Show 1 runs from 5pm - 6pm
Show 2 runs 601pm to 8pm
Show 3 runs 801pm to 10pm

So if you power it on at 530pm show 1 would be picked up and it would play until its normal end of 6pm and normal for the others.  Or you power on at 603pm show 2 starts and runs normal until 8pm
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Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #21 on: January 30, 2014, »
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Example
Show 1 runs from 5pm - 6pm
Show 2 runs 601pm to 8pm
Show 3 runs 801pm to 10pm

So if you power it on at 530pm show 1 would be picked up and it would play until its normal end of 6pm and normal for the others. 

But see that is the problem if the show is from 5 to 6 it is 1 hour long. If you start it at 5:30 it will play to the end but this would be at 6:30 so the 6 show would not play. Am I making sense. The shows play to the end they do not stop part of the way through.

RJ
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Offline twooly

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #22 on: January 30, 2014, »
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Example
Show 1 runs from 5pm - 6pm
Show 2 runs 601pm to 8pm
Show 3 runs 801pm to 10pm

So if you power it on at 530pm show 1 would be picked up and it would play until its normal end of 6pm and normal for the others. 

But see that is the problem if the show is from 5 to 6 it is 1 hour long. If you start it at 5:30 it will play to the end but this would be at 6:30 so the 6 show would not play. Am I making sense. The shows play to the end they do not stop part of the way through.

RJ

Makes sense so the firmware is just storing the start and length?  Maybe logic to have the start and end times. 
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Offline egenoup

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #23 on: January 31, 2014, »
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Example
Show 1 runs from 5pm - 6pm
Show 2 runs 601pm to 8pm
Show 3 runs 801pm to 10pm

So if you power it on at 530pm show 1 would be picked up and it would play until its normal end of 6pm and normal for the others. 

But see that is the problem if the show is from 5 to 6 it is 1 hour long. If you start it at 5:30 it will play to the end but this would be at 6:30 so the 6 show would not play. Am I making sense. The shows play to the end they do not stop part of the way through.

RJ

I now see your point RJ...  But Not everyone creates their schedules  according to the length of their shows.  My 2011 shows were 50 minutes long and your suggestion/work around may have worked then.

In 2013 my show shrunk to 6 minutes.  I run my show repeatedly from 6 to 9:30.  If there were any problems starting the show, I was hosed (and it happened quite often at the beginning).  I had to remove the CF card and go to a computer to create a schedule to start a few minutes in the future, so I could run back outside and plug the CF card back in.  Hopefully I could get it all accomplished before the show is supposed to restart.  Once I worked out all the issues and settled on my show and hardware, it all worked mostly flawlessly.

It is not easy to create 6 minute schedules using the current application, but if it were easier I would have.  Maybe just an option (as in check box) to run a show continuously would partially solve the problem.  If the scheduled show start time is missed, I could then just get on my computer and manually (and remotely) start and stop the show for that evening.  I do not mind manually starting the show, but it would have to continue running until I stop it.

Hope this helps, even if it just a a small contribution.

Charles/Egenoup

Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #24 on: January 31, 2014, »
Charles you can do this in the current setup. you create a show and schedule it as one schedule to run from xx to xx and it does it for you. So I maybe able to have it do a check on startup for those cases and start it if it is a repeating show. It is the other one that I would not have anyway of causing this to work. So I will look at it for you.

RJ
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Offline Steve Gase

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #25 on: January 31, 2014, »
With apologies, I also think the current scheduler is confusing and limited.


Other scheduling solutions in the software world treat events with a prioritization (an ordered list).


When the song is finished, and
if the current time is "contained" in schedule #1, then perform schedule #1 actions... otherwise
if the current time is "contained" in schedule #2, then perform schedule #2 actions...
if the current time is "contained" in schedule #3, then perform schedule #3 actions...
if the current time is "contained" in schedule #4, then perform schedule #4 actions...
etc.
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Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #26 on: January 31, 2014, »
See then I must be the stupid one,

I can not understand how confusing telling something "on Thursday at 8pm run this show" can be. Or "on thursday at 8pm run this show until 9pm".

I believe people are trying to read more in than it is.

That is all it does. the issue is people are saying they want it to be powered up at 8:25pm and to play a show that should have been played at 8pm. Current the system would assume it played the 8pm show and would look for the next show to play. It does not log what shows it has played. It assumes previous shows have played. If you had a show scheduled for 8:30pm in the above cases then you can not play it if you started the 8pm one.

This is all I am trying to explain. On the cases of you saying play abc show from 8pm to 9 pm we could do this.

RJ
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Offline twooly

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #27 on: January 31, 2014, »
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Charles you can do this in the current setup. you create a show and schedule it as one schedule to run from xx to xx and it does it for you. So I maybe able to have it do a check on startup for those cases and start it if it is a repeating show. It is the other one that I would not have anyway of causing this to work. So I will look at it for you.

RJ



I'm like Charles where my show is only ~15 mins long but I have it repeat for a couple hours.
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Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #28 on: January 31, 2014, »
See in my case my show is 15 min but they run every 30 min cause we need time for people to empty the lot and time for the people to get parked for the next.

Think movie theather.

RJ

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RJ
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Offline fyb2000

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #29 on: January 31, 2014, »
I am not sure, but I do believe the issue talked about in those latest messages does already exist with the current software.
No matter how the software detects if it is done with a scheduled event (end time, versus start time+duration), it will check if it should stop the current schedule before starting the next song in the queue. It will not stop in the middle of the current playing song.
How does the conductor software acts if that final song ends up still playing while another sequence is to be started?