Enhancement: Long term future suggestion for S6 Master / slave modes

[k6ccc]

Sorry if I remembered the terms wrong, but I'm sure you will know what I'm talking about...

When S6 was in early beta there was a Master and Slave modes on the Show player that was stated to be future, and was removed in later versions since it was not going to be added for a while.  This suggestion relates to when this capability returns.  As I understand it, the concept was that one S6 instance (Master) could send sync packets to another S6 instance (Slave), and that the slave instance would have the sequences saved locally so that large amounts of data would not be needed to be sent across whatever networking was being used.  Similar to concept to the master / slave mode that the new directors have.  Also similar concept to what Falcon Player (FPP) has had for several years.

Now for my suggestion.  This is very specific to those of us using P5 and P10 matrix panels.  Currently we have no choice other than running FPP in E1.31 bridge mode in order to drive our P5 and P10 panels.  Since we already must run FPP to drive our panels, and FPP has a master / slave mode, any chance that a LOR Master could send compatible sync packets to an FPP instance as a slave?  Yes, it would require exporting the sequencing into .fseq format and loading it onto the FPP instance, but the performance should be substantially better.  The second part of that already exists in that S6 can already export .fseq format files.

OK, another solution would be for LOR to introduce a controller for P5 & P10 panels so we can ditch FPP completely....  And of course that controller should be able to operate as a slave.

 

[randyf]

FWIW, I would suggest to take this just a littler further with a player-specific (hopefully distribute) product.

With the availability of cheap Raspberry Pi's, I would have no problem putting one of these on or near a complex prop as a slave to whatever a dedicated show player is.  It also removes the complexity of having a full LOR instance running on a machine that is a dedicated player (to which I don't want to edit sequences in concern for getting them out of sync with the "official" sequence - nor should it have the issues with keeping previews in sync).

As shows get more complex, I'm guessing that the dedicated/distributed control system will be the prevalent scenario (some of which can be done with FPP/Hinks and/or xLights).

[yffej151963]

I was able to acheive something like what you describe. My goal was to mix in some purchased sequences without need to convert them to lor. This conversion seems to be very painfully tedious and error prone.

I created an extact matching controller/layout to my lor preview in xlights.

I exported all of my lor sequences to fseq using s6. I used xschedule to play these plus the purchased sequences.

I found there was one wrinkle I had to deal with. Xlights/fpp fseq files are somewhat different from those exported by lor. Lor writes 512 channels for each universe and Xlights packs the channel data. I wote a small utility that removes the extra data in the lor fseq.

My goal for next year is to convert the lor fseqs to v2 with sparse ranges. Xlights already supports this. I plan to use xschedule in fpp master mode. I want to have all of my controllers behind an fpp remote and fpp connect with the remotes.

This should put just the sequence data needed by each on the remotes.

 

[yffej151963]

A quick followup. I was able to achieve my goal of running my LOR sequences on FPP using the V2 format alongside my Purchased Xlights sequences. In addition to the above I needed to set my controllers to Xlights Only mode to prevent xSchedule from transmitting the data. I only sent timing info...

[k6ccc]

I'm hoping that the LOR Master / Slave mode (when it gets released) will work with FPP.  I have absolutely zero interest in moving the show playing to xLights.  Too many reasons that I need to continue using LOR - MIIP being one of the biggest.

 

[yffej151963]

"I'm hoping that the LOR Master / Slave mode (when it gets released) will work with FPP.  I have absolutely zero interest in moving the show playing to xLights.  Too many reasons that I need to continue using LOR - MIIP being one of the biggest."

 

I am not sure I understand... I am able to use FPP as a player if I chose to....What is MIIP? I haven't heard the term before.

[yffej151963]

I have been doing some searching and I think you may be referring to interactive input? I haven't tried to cross that bridge .... At least not yet. 😉

[k6ccc]

MIIP = Mobile Internet Interactive Playlist

It's BobO's addon to allow viewers to set the order of songs in the show.

https://miip.mobi/help/MemberDocumentation.html

 

[yffej151963]

Thanks. I had not heard of this. Use of this via LOR's player would creare creates a complication for me. At my home I can't have cat5 cables running because they have to cross walkways, etc.... I have elderly parents at my home and lots of grandkids. To prevent tripping hazards, I chose to go wifi using fpp remotes to drive 100% of my controllers. Hence my use of fppConnect combined with either xchedule or an fpp master as a show player. This configuration eliminates sync issues bcuz only timing data is sent while a show is running. No bulk pixel data is transmitted.

 

I did a bit of research and found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu57gINiAY8

I haven't done anything like this before so I am not sure about the use of either option.

[ItsMeBobO]

This is off topic from the OPs question.   I would also cheer for an LOR large pixel matrix interface.    But I dont understand the master / slave issues. 

 

The name MIIP is showing its age.   When it was first developed in 2010 I had a flip phone and my wife had a blackberry which could display a web page I used for testing.   The first icon was actually a blackberry before the blue bulb filament seen in this forum.   The youtube above seems like an administrator page only which is similar to S6 interface.   You dont want to let a drive by guest into that to hijack the show.   The miip guest can request a song to play sooner by voting for it.   Seconds before a sequence finishes playing the votes are polled to determine the next song with the most votes winning or default to the song played longest ago with many ways to adjust that.   All the images are hosted on my server.   https://miip.mobi/member/songartbig.php not a protected page. 

Another important difference is miip webpages are not hosted locally.   Miip sites run a client program which communicates with my paid host to display the voting/status pages for the guest.  The client sets the required LOR things to cause the highest vote song to play.   The hosting cost is covered by me for all who are using it.   But if people want a special domain instead of subdomain.miip.mobi they have to pay for that.    

Miip is not a modern program.   It is actually approaching its end of life while I hope LOR provides a suitable replacement.  I do not promote it very much because I do not believe it will scale up without a rewrite. 

Edited April 7 by ItsMeBobO
typo

[k6ccc]

18 hours ago, ItsMeBobO said:

But I dont understand the master / slave issues.

 

Let me explain it.  First let me explain what works in Falcon Player (FPP).  Remember that currently in order to run a sequenced P5 or P10 matrix (except as a pure video display) we have no choice other than to run FPP.  FPP can operate as a simple E1.31 controller and then use that E1.31 data to drive a P5 / P10 matrix.  This works fine except that it is a large amount of data to process and send in real time.  It can cause issues on larger matricies simply generating and delivering this large amount of data.  FPP also has a Master / Remote mode where the FPP instance that is running the show (the Master) only has to send timing data to Remote FPP instances.  Each Remote FPP has the player files saved locally and the Remote FPP will play the sequences as commanded by the Master FPP.  This completely avoids the need for the Master FPP to generate E1.31 data for potentially hundreds of E1.31 Universes, and more important the need to transmit that large amount of E1.31 data.  This is particularly and issue for people trying to send this data over WiFi.

When S6 was first in Beta, there was a Master / Slave mode that was a future feature.  My original request was that when this Master / Slave mode is introduced, was that it be compatible with the FPP Remote mode.  This should give substantially better performance for larger P5 / P10 matricies.

 

[dkulp]

On 4/2/2024 at 4:36 PM, k6ccc said:

MIIP = Mobile Internet Interactive Playlist

It's BobO's addon to allow viewers to set the order of songs in the show.

https://miip.mobi/help/MemberDocumentation.html

 

FPP has Remote Falcon ( https://remotefalcon.com/ ) which I believe completely covers this use case.  Lot of FPP users use it to allow viewers to vote on what to play next and such.  

 

[k6ccc]

I knew that Remote Falcon had been introduced a few years ago.  As I understand it, Remote Falcon performs a similar task to what MIIP does.  Since I am not using FPP to run my show (only to drive P5 / P10 matricies), I had never even looked at it.  Just seen a few comments about it on the FPP forum.

Having just read through the docs (once I found the right place - the docs link on the RemoteFalcon web page is wrong) made my head want to explode.  I'm fairly computer techie, but setting it up appears to be way beyond me.

 

[dkulp]

3 hours ago, k6ccc said:

I knew that Remote Falcon had been introduced a few years ago.  As I understand it, Remote Falcon performs a similar task to what MIIP does.  Since I am not using FPP to run my show (only to drive P5 / P10 matricies), I had never even looked at it.  Just seen a few comments about it on the FPP forum.

Having just read through the docs (once I found the right place - the docs link on the RemoteFalcon web page is wrong) made my head want to explode.  I'm fairly computer techie, but setting it up appears to be way beyond me.

 

For simple setups, it's fairly easy (and several youtube videos can walk you through it).   You can grab one of the pre-made HTML templates and be setup in a few minutes.   Much of the docs are for people that want their own web site hosting and custom HTML and such.   Lots of "power" available which can make some options relatively complex, but the simple setups are fairly easy. 

 

 

[k6ccc]

It would be nice if the official documentation mentioned that.  The two methods discussed, one starts with installing Docker which is a stopper right there, and the second would take some serious research to even know what half of it was talking about.  And both require a fairly good proficiency in linux.

In any case, I have no intention of changing from using LOR and MIIP.