I'm trying to make a user-friendly cue display via my show control system. I've got a touchscreen that I want to give my operator Go, Stop, and Back buttons (or a Stop/Back button). In addition, I want to show them what cue they are currently on, and what the next cue will be when they hit Go. Right now I have a couple non-ideal options, but I want to suggest some possible improvements that would make doing something like this much easier.
Current Options:
- Put send strings (either UDP or OSC) in the external links section of every cue. The downside to this is that I have to remember to do it for every cue and it's a lot of typing of redundant typing if I want the string to contain both the name/number of the current cue and the next cue.
- Listen for /eos/out/active/cue/<list>/<cue> and /eos/out/pending/cue/<list>/<cue> on OSC. This only give me the list and cue numbers, not the name of the cues. Also, my show control system can't actually parse the numbers out of the OSC command, only arguments.
- Set OSC Cue Send String to something like /cue=%2,%1. At least I can get the values out of this, but this only works for the active cue, not the pending cue, and again only gives the cue numbers, not labels
- Listen for /eos/out/active/cue/text and /eos/out/pending/cue/text on OSC. This is the only way to get the labels of the cues, but it comes with a lot of other information I may not want in the string that I'd rather not have to parse out.
Suggestions:
- Add list number, cue number, and cue label as arguments to the /eos/out/active/cue and /eos/out/pending/cue command, or add new commands for them (i.e. /eos/out/active/cue=<cue list number>,<cue number>,<percent> and /eos/out/active/cue/label=<cue label>)
- Allow including the cue label in an OSC Cue Send String with %5
- Either allow interpolations in the OSC Cue Send String for the pending cue in addition to the active cue, or add a second configurable event OSC string for sending the pending cue
- Allow parameter interpolation in cue send strings so I can set all the send strings to something like "Cue %2/%1: %5" instead of having to type something like "Cue 1/10: Blackout"
- Replace the OSC Cue Send String settings with just a Cue Send String setting that automatically decides if it is an OSC command or UDP string the same way send strings in the external links of cues do.
These are just some different ideas. My ideal would be with suggestions 2, 3, and 5 to have two settings that allow me to define custom strings that can either be OSC commands or UDP strings that both send whenever a cue is fired, one with info about the active cue and one with info about the pending cue, that I can interpolate the cue list number, cue number, and cue label.