Facility Control

Hey there,

I'm trying to add a toggle function to an existing Dashboard panel. I'm having trouble figuring out how to connect the toggle with the elements I want to control in Xpression.

Basically, I have a lowerthird template in Xpression that gets its info from a textfile in Dashboard - no problem so far. I'd like to add an image (that changes depending on the name) and another line of text (that stays static regardless of the name), and have these two elements be controlled through a toggle button in Dashboard.

My initial idea was to group the image/quad and text in Xpression, and have the toggle button turn the visibility on and off. Grouping the elements isn't a problem, but I'm stuck on the rest - how to have the image change depending on the name being input, being able to toggle the visiblity of just a specific element in a template... Any ideas or suggestion?

Would it be a better idea to have the image + new line of text be a separate template to the lowerthird template, that just overlays when it is needed?

You can feed data into the XPression using Datalinq.   There are several steps to do this, and I'll walk you through them.

1. Create some parameters in your DashBoard panel that will be used to drive what is displayed in XP.

Here is an example panel with 3 parameters (one for the name, one for the title, and one for the material of the image).

<abs contexttype="opengear" dblinqport="5647" gridsize="20" id="_top" keepalive="false">
<meta>
<params>
<param access="1" maxlength="0" name="Name" oid="Name" type="STRING" value="PersonName3" widget="default"/>
<param access="1" maxlength="0" name="Title" oid="Title" type="STRING" value="PersonTitle2" widget="default"/>
<param access="1" constrainttype="STRING_CHOICE" maxlength="0" name="Image" oid="Image" type="STRING" value="single_Image" widget="radio-toggle">
<constraint>getloug_Image</constraint>
<constraint>HomeRun_Image</constraint>
<constraint>single_Image</constraint>
</param>
</params>
</meta>
<table height="20" left="100" oid="Name" top="40" width="460">
<tr>
<label anchor="east" fill="none" insets="0,0,0,5" name="Name" weightx="0.0"/>
<param anchor="west" expand="true" fill="both" oid="Name" showlabel="false" weightx="1.0" weighty="1.0"/>
</tr>
</table>
<table height="20" left="100" oid="Title" top="80" width="460">
<tr>
<label anchor="east" fill="none" insets="0,0,0,5" name="Title" weightx="0.0"/>
<param anchor="west" expand="true" fill="both" oid="Title" showlabel="false" weightx="1.0" weighty="1.0"/>
</tr>
</table>
<param expand="true" height="40" left="100" oid="Image" showlabel="false" top="120" width="460"/>
</abs>

2.  In the top level abs, make sure you Enable Streaming, and give it a port that you want to use.

3. Start the XPression Datalinq Server, then click on "Add New...".   Pick the "DashBoard Datalinq Source" as what you want to add.   Give it the Host DashBoard computer (probably localhost), and the port you just specified above.  And hit OK.   You should then see something like this:

4. In your XP project, go to "Project -> Datalinq Manager".   Click on "Add", give it a name, and the host address (again probably localhost).   Leave the port as 8888.   Click on OK.   You should then see something like this:

Now your XP is setup to listen for changes to the parameters.

5. Create a scene with 2 text objects, and an quad for the image.

5.1 select the first "Text" in the object manager.

5.2 go to the "Data Source" tab

5.3 select "Datalinq"

5.4 click on the "Set..." button.

5.5 select your Datalinq source you just setup

5.6 click on the browse button

5.7 select the value of the parameter you want to use for this text.

click ok twice to close the dialogs.

6. Do the same thing for the next Text object.

7.  For the quad, you will need to create several materials, one with each image you want to use.  Go into the materials tab of the quad, and right click in an empty material slot, and New->Image.

This is what mine looks like:

Notice that the names of my materials is what I used for the constraints in my panel.   My constraints are set to HomeRun_Image, getloug_Image, and single_Image.   This is important.

8 Then in the Quad's DataLinq tab, 

8.1. Select the DataLinq source

8.2 Click on Browse,

8.3 Select the value of the Image parameter.

Once this is all setup, I have a panel that looks like this:

When I change the text, or click on one of the toggles, my XP take items that use that scene automatically update.

Is that what you wanted to do?

Yes, almost like that! Thanks for the reply, it's helped me understand a bit more how I need to think around this.

I've got around 300+ images that need to fit into this template however - basically 1 image per participant from a long textfile of participants, and it's not sure that each participant/lowerthird will need an accompanying image. So that's why I need so much flexibility...

Would it be possible to fit these controls into something like a dropdown menu? I've tried changing the toggle push buttons into a dropdown (choice parameter) for the Image parameter, but without success. Not sure if it's the dropdown not finding the parameters and publishing them, or if I need a separate button to actually publish the image once it's selected from the dropdown.

You should be able to just change the widget hint for the pictures to an "Editable Dropdown List".   

You should not need a separate button.   As soon as the parameter changes value, XP will be notified.