Controlling QLab with the hub for buttons far away from the Mac

MagAa

Hello flic!
Magnus from the National theatre of Norway here.
I want to use some buttons in a play, so the actors can trigger cues in Qlab themselves.
The buttons are too far away from the Mac to use bluetooth, so I thought I could set up a wifi network. QLab can receive osc-messages.

I saw another reply in an old thread here quoting "EMIL" : think the easiest would be to just set up a http server on your computer and then use the Internet Request action on the Flic hub. Then your http server can then further make osc requests or whatever when a button event is received.

But i´m no programmer, so how do I set up a server and how do I make this server send osc requests?

I hope someone can help me. And I know that these buttons are wanted on other plays, if we can make them work with QLab!

Magnus

ika.komura

@MagAa

Hi Magnus! Old colleague from Nationaltheatret here.
I guess you already had your show, and found a solution by now.

But i've written a simple Node.Js Server to achieve what you want.

you'll Need the hub, but that could be connected with WIFI or Ethernet near or on the stage.

Then my script receives the HTTP request from the hub to the show computer running the server, and sends OSC messages to QLab.

I have made an Alpha version of this, and i will upload it on my github tomorrow.

https://github.com/IkaKomura

Håper det står bra til!

Bernt Karsten Sannerud

MagAa

QLab is listening for osc on port 53000, and osc message is /cue/{cue_number}/go
Here is the dictionary, if it helps.

https://qlab.app/docs/v5/scripting/osc-dictionary-v5/

For our use in the theatre, I think we'll mainly use this message. And then put buttons around for the actors to push.

MagAa

@oskar Hei Oskar!

This is the scenario:
We have two old telephones, I will trigger the ringing sound from QLab, and when the actor answers the phone, they will push a flic that plays a cue to stop the ringing.

I have tried just with my Mac via Bluetooth (this works), but the phones will be to far away from the computer running Qlab.
I can set up a local closed wifi network that only the mc and the hub are connected to.

oskar

@MagAa Hi!

I think there should be a way to solve the issue you are having, but yes it would require some programming, but if I know more about the specific scenario maybe I can help!

The main question is what you would like to use instead of a computer to connect the button to, are you thinking a phone or a Flic Hub?

In the case of the Flic Hub, it will probably be possible to write a script using our Flic Hub SDK (https://flic.io/flic-hub-sdk) that will send a specific OSC command to a host.

If you want to use a phone, you will have to use the approach suggested by emil and run an HTTP server on a computer somewhere that translates the messages to OSC. This will probably be a bit more complicated.