Facility Control

I have a panel with a lot of parameters that will be running on an Xpression pc, and controlling the Xpression as the main user interface. The panel runs fine, but once I add the calls to Xpression (which work correctly, and recall the right sequence items), it appears to redraw the interface, or reload the grid file every x number of button clicks - say 6-10, or randomly after a click.

As I currently only have one Xpression call in a function called by the buttons in the grid file (see simplified example below), I can easily comment it out, and the behavior goes back to normal. The Xpression is running in the background, and minimized. Bringing it to the foreground makes no difference.

function lowerThird(page)
{

rosstalkex.sendMessage(params.getValue('Xpression_IPAddress', 0), params.getValue('Xpression_RossTalkExPort', 0), "TAKE " + page + ":" + (1 -1) + ":" + 0);

}

On other panels I have created in the past, I have only seen this behavior when using the grid file to move items in and out of playlists. Any thoughts on what the root issue is, and how I can mitigate it? 

Further to this, additional experimenting suggested that this only occurs when Xpression is running, regardless of if there is a project loaded .  On a hunch I changed the Xpression_IPAddress variable from localhost as it is running on the same machine (127.0.0.1) to the actual local ip address, and now it seems fine, and is working correctly!

Very interesting...

Hi Dave

I will pass this to the team to take a closer look but wanted to offer an alternative workaround for you to try:

Right now your panel is using a version of RossTalk called "RossTalkEX" - this is a newer version of the protocol that maintains a connection with the XPression and communicates via the XPression API instead of the fire-and-forget relatively simple protocol used by the original RossTalk. You should be able to modify your XPression device to use RossTalk instead of RossTalkEX. This option is there when you create your device but you can also right-click on your XPression device to edit it and switch protocols:

You won't have access to quite the same number of commands you have available in RossTalkEX but, unless you are doing some very advanced behaviors, it is likely that traditional RossTalk exposes what you need.

Hope this helps

James

Thanks James - that didn't seem to solve my issue - in fact, regular RossTalk doesn't seem to work at all for me despite adding it in Xpression, so I left it as RossTalkEx with the actual local IP, and everything was fine - for a while.

My original reloading issue recently came back, as I have now added the next layer of complexity to my panel. Most of my calls to the Xpression are as shown above - direct RossTalkEx commands to take or clear a specific page, however, I do have a new section which requires me to move pages into or out of a sequence, which I have done with this style of command:

params.executeCommand("XPression.1", "cmds.move_take_to_group", {"takeid": page, "groupid": sequenceGroup}, null);

This required adding an Xpression.1 context as a datasource. As soon as I do this, although it works correctly, the panel reloads every 5 seconds or so making it unusable. I don't understand what is causing this issue.

Is there any other way to move take items to a group from Dashboard I could try?

I think anything that adds or removes take items from your XP sequencer will cause the XPression to send a reload command to the DashBoard panel since there are new items to take into account.   I don't know why it's reloading every 5 seconds though.  Are you adding/removing/moving sequence items every 5 seconds?     

I can't think of any other way to move take items from groups from DashBoard.   The XPression Plugin was really meant to view the current sequence items, change their attributes, and to be able to take them on air.   It was not really meant to create and manipulate those seqence items, although there are some commands that allow you to do that (like the one you used).

There may be a way to create a Visual Basic script in XPression and triggering that script using an api call, but I don't know much about that.   You may want to post the question in the XPression forum.

Thanks Ben - that makes more sense - I didn't realize there was supposed to be an auto reload. Having studied the behavior more closely, it may only be reloading once, but if I get click happy with adding and removing things from the sequence in Dashboard, it appears I can get it stuck in a reloading loop. If I am patient and not stress testing it - it reloads once. I had a runonload function in my panel which resets things, and is part of the reason it gets in a loop I can change to avoid that. It would be great if I could disable the auto reload Dashboard functionality entirely - I'd rather it not reload at all. I have no referenced objects in my grid file that need updating. 

Dave