Triggering a FPP show externally

[spaulgal]

I have a xlights light show on FPP. This light show is part of a larger show which also contains video and audio. The A/V content is played from presentation software called Pro presenter. It's an audience show that is played once an audience is seated by hitting a play button.
In 2022, we put the light show on FPP and using the "Big buttons" plugin, we simply pressed the "big button" on FPP simultaneously with the start button on Pro presenter to launch the show.

I'd like to automatically trigger the FPP light show using the Pro presenter start button if possible. I know Pro presenter can send out Midi notes (by attaching the behavior to the play button) and I know an FPP show can be triggered using the GPIO pins. I do not readily know how to marry those things and am wondering if there is a better way to achieve this?

As a related aside, the Big Buttons plugin did give us issues in 2022. Not sure why, but the button did not always trigger the show. Seems like it would occasionally crash the player. we'd like something more reliable. We are not against using xschedule or even the xlights timeline itself instead of FPP to fulfill unifying playback of the show.

 

[Indigogyre]

After some quick looking around you might want to try and interface the FPP and Pro Presenter using MQTT. It looks like Elgato who makes the stream decks have a plugin for controlling pro presenter. I know FPP will also interface with MQTT so you might be able to trigger everything from the FPP instance when the sequence starts.

just a quick thought.

 

[spaulgal]

Sweet! I'll give this a look. Thanks.

 

[Dave_Szoka]

Check out https://bitfocus.io/companion

companion can directly control Pro Presenter and can send OSC to FPP to trigger sequence's etc

 

[spaulgal]

Thanks. I got the Stream Deck app controlling ProPresenter.

I also installed the Bitfocus Companion app. My ultimate goal here is to trigger FPP sequences from Stream Deck along with the Pro Presenter presentation. There are several OSC options in Companion. Which should I use to trigger FPP? I'm also wondering about the other necessary steps in Companion including configuring a button.

On FPP, I installed Dan's OSC plugin. I believe I configured it correctly to play a particular sequence. I cannot find documentation, so I'm unsure what to put in the Path field. I put the URL of the host computer of Companion for now.

On the stream deck software, I dragged in the Companion button.

Thanks.

 

[spaulgal]

Any chime-in's?

 

[spaulgal]

Or-- are there docs, white papers or videos on the FPP OSC plugin? I do see the GitHub repository but I'm not seeing any docs there.

 

[MikeKrebs]

This video talks about MIDI. Since you mentioned that initially, maybe this will work. I didn't watch but the midi part starts at about 30 minutes

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE4I5igbAuE&t=1013s

 

[dkulp]

Or-- are there docs, white papers or videos on the FPP OSC plugin? I do see the GitHub repository but I'm not seeing any docs there.

Once installed, there F1 help page on the OSC configuration page provides some limited help/docs.

 

[spaulgal]

Thanks. I got my first button in the Companion App to trigger an FPP sequence. Very cool.
I'm struggling a bit to get the 2nd button working and to get the Companion trigger to work on Stream Deck, but I'm working those issues.

 

[spaulgal]

Our entire multimedia stage show can now be launched from a single Stream Deck button. Many thanks for developing the OSC FPP plugin Dan

In case it may be helpful to someone else, here's what we did:


The Bitfocus Companion App can be used as an intermediary between FPP and Stream Deck.

In Companion:

1. In the Connections tab, connect the “OSC Generic” option from the list of available connections.
2. In the OSC Generic settings, set the Target IP and Target Port. This can presumably be any number, as long as the numbers match in both the FPP OSC plugin and Companion.
3. In the Buttons tab. Click Create Button > Regular button.
4. Under “Press Actions” select “OSC - send message w/o arguments”
5. For path, enter /fpp/1/button1 (or the proper button number which corresponds to the path in the FCP OSC plugin.

In FPP:

1. Install the Open Sound Control Plugin.
2. In the plugin settings enter ‘/fpp/1/button1’ for the path and set the Listen port to correspond with the “Target Port” set in Companion.