Creating a log of songs played in show - and optionally E-Mailing that log

[k6ccc]

If you play your show on a director, you can ignore this message as it does not apply.

 

For those that play your show from a computer, you should know that you can open the Control Panel Status Display and see what's going on in fairly substantial detail, and you can copy that status display to your computer clipboard, and paste to something, but you have to manually do it.

 

Would you like to be able to have the computer create a log file automatically and save it to your hard drive, and optionally have that log file E-Mailed to you at whatever time you wish?  I can show you how.  What I'm doing uses a combination of Windows Commands called from Sequence Editor, some batch files, and a scheduled task.  It's actually pretty easy, and in case you're wondering, you DON'T need to run a mail server to E-Mail the logs.  If there is enough interest, I will put together a web page that shows you how to do this.  If you would like to know how to do this, reply to this message.  If only one person wants to know, I'll just get together with that person, but if more than one, I'll put together a web page showing how with screen captures and explanations.

 

This is an excerpt of the log file from yesterday showing the first two cycles of my evening show, then skipping ahead to the end of the evening show and the beginning of the night show (the only difference is the background sequence that turns the amplifiers for the yard speakers only runs in the evening show), then skipping ahead again to the end of the night show.

 

12/20/15 17:00:03 Show announcements.
12/20/15 17:01:31 Wizards in Winter.
12/20/15 17:04:38 Christmas Canon.
12/20/15 17:08:56 Jingle Bells.
12/20/15 17:11:36 Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.
12/20/15 17:15:08 God Bless the USA.
12/20/15 17:19:36 Extended Merry Christmas clip.
12/20/15 17:19:48 Deck the Halls.
12/20/15 17:23:32 Carol of the Bells.
12/20/15 17:26:58 Soldier's Silent Night.

12/20/15 17:30:41 Show announcements.
12/20/15 17:32:09 Wizards in Winter.
12/20/15 17:35:15 Christmas Canon.
12/20/15 17:39:33 Jingle Bells.
12/20/15 17:42:13 Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.
12/20/15 17:45:45 God Bless the USA.
12/20/15 17:50:13 Extended Merry Christmas clip.
12/20/15 17:50:25 Deck the Halls.
12/20/15 17:54:08 Carol of the Bells.
12/20/15 17:57:34 Soldier's Silent Night.

<skipped a couple hours worth>

12/20/15 20:54:02 Deck the Halls.
12/20/15 20:57:46 Carol of the Bells.
12/20/15 21:01:11 End of the evening show. Speakers going off.

12/20/15 21:01:48 Show announcements.
12/20/15 21:03:16 Wizards in Winter.
12/20/15 21:06:22 Christmas Canon.

 

<skipped a couple hours worth>
 

12/20/15 22:53:09 Extended Merry Christmas clip.
12/20/15 22:53:20 Deck the Halls.
12/20/15 22:57:04 Carol of the Bells.
12/20/15 23:00:30 End of the night show.

 

 

[WhitePlainsNY]

I use the data to show my song schedule on my website: http://www.nychristmaslights.com/Songs.html

[k6ccc]

I take it you are doing something similar to what I am, but in your case updating the website in real time?  That's kinda cool!  Are you running the website locally or are you FTPing the file to a remote website in real time?

[jlarson]

I am interested.

[WhitePlainsNY]

My song schedule is the same each night. I just run the show without controlling the lights and then take the output of the status as a text file. Manipulate the data so its easy to read and post it to my website...one and done!

[k6ccc]

Mine is pretty much the same every night too, except the weekend runs later. This is for my benefit to know it worked right.

[EmmienLightFan]

My show PC is not connected to the internet at the moment, but I could connect it.

 

 

I would like to know how you do this. My show PC has a scrolling text display on the front which can display a TXT file. If I could have the show PC displaying the current sequence, that would be cool!

 

 

 

Can this show all the LOR control panel's activity? Including show starting, stopping, errors and hopefully not any Chinese characters

Edited December 23, 2015 by EmmienLightFan

[k6ccc]

That makes two requests.  I will work on putting directions together on a web page.  Because it's almost Christmas, I expect to be somewhat tied up between Christmas stuff and I've got to spend some part of the afternoon tomorrow doing a repair on my pixel star.  But I should have it completed over the weekend some time...

 

No.  I don't know of anyway to re-direct the LOR status display in real time.  That would be a question to LOR...

[wmilkie]

I've never seen a pc like that with scrolling text

What brand is that?

[EmmienLightFan]

The PC case is made by a company called Moneual. The case is really nice and looks very professional.

The PC was a media PC that was spare so I installed Windows on it to use it as my show PC.

It has 4GB of RAM and an AMD duel core processor.

The display on the front has a piece of software to control it. The display can show a VU effect when audio is coming from a certain program. This year I had that on during show times.

[k6ccc]

Created a web page that shows the steps.  The page can be found at:

 

http://newburghlights.org/SongLogging.html