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


k6ccc

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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.

 

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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).

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  • 2 months later...

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.

 

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