Facility Control

How do I play music on Dashboard? I intend on using a timer to create a loop of alternating graphics that alternate with a time interval of the song i intend to play but I dont know how to play music on dashboard.

Where do you want the music to play out of? The graphics engine or your PC running Dashboard?

I would like to know how to play music from the graphics engine, if possible also from my PC running dashboard. 

What graphics engine are you using? XPression?

Yes, I would be using XPression as a graphics engine

Well then it would a simple take command to the XPression. The XPression would have to have an audio only take item in the sequencer with the appropriate audio file attached. Then match up the take id with the take command you send.

So the command should be:

Replace "10.0.0.0" with the XPression ip address

Replace "1000" with the take id

rosstalk.sendMessage("10.0.0.0", 7788, "TAKE 1000");

This will cover playing it on the XPression out of which ever framebuffer is assigned to the take item.

Playing the audio file locally can be done in smart ways but I wouldn't recommend it because DashBoard was not designed to do this. If you were to this it would be along the lines of controlling a third party audio playback system on your machine or running a windows batch file. Both of which aren't ideal scenarios. So I guess this poses the question, why do you need the audio to play both locally and out of the graphics engine?

I've gone about this one the same way as Antony describes above basically... And external when needed.

Setting up a scene for this is perfectly doable and can be done fairly easilly.
Just follow his steps above...

HOWEVER!

If you want to have larger/bigger playlists (in my case, sports arena), you might want to take a look at third party.
I use QLAB for our audio when it's just to play Audio.
QLAB can be controlled easilly through UDP commands and works like a charm. Do a little work, and you can also fade in/out music as well.