production – Page 4 – TechMinistry

How to create a custom Alexa Skill to play church sermons on Amazon Echo devices

We are an Amazon household. We buy stuff on Prime all the time. Sometimes, it feels like a daily task! We also really love the Amazon Echo devices and using Alexa for a variety of things. My boys love to ask Alexa to play fart sounds and we use it for music, timers, announcements, phone calls, sound machines at night, you name it.

One thing I have wanted for a while is the ability to easily play our church’s sermons on the Echo Dots in our house so I can listen while doing other things. In the past, I’ve simply played them from my phone and set up the output with the Echo acting as a bluetooth speaker. That works ok until I walk out of bluetooth range, of course, and it of course means my phone is tied up playing that audio.

Amazon has made it super easy to create your own Alexa Skills, which are like voice-driven apps. You can enable and disable skills, using the Alexa app, similar to how you install and uninstall apps on your phone. Using Alexa Skills Blueprints, creating your own church Alexa app is super easy.

Screen Shot 2020-03-04 at 9.27.35 AM — The Alexa Blueprints home page.

There are a wide variety of blueprints available, which are basically templates to speed up creating your own skill. This is especially great if you don’t want to or don’t know how to write in the programming language yourself to figure it out.

They have a pre-made template called “Spiritual Talks”.

Screen Shot 2020-03-04 at 9.28.18 AM — This is the blueprint/template that makes the process very simple!

To create your own skill, you will need:

Your podcast audio URL. We already post our sermons to iTunes and generate an RSS feed automatically through our church management software, Rock RMS: https://www.fellowshipgreenville.org/GetChannelFeed.ashx?ChannelId=28&TemplateId=1116&count=110
A Welcome message. When the skill is launched for the first time, Alexa will speak a welcome message. I used something simple: Welcome to Fellowship Greenville, South Carolina. Come and join us to worship every Sunday at 9am and 11am. Visit us any time to hear previous sermons.
A Returning message. When the skill is re-opened, Alexa will speak a welcome-back message. Here is what I used: Welcome back to Fellowship Greenville’s Sunday morning sermons podcast.
A skill name and logo. I used our church’s name and logo for this.

Once you’ve supplied all the information, you will want to publish the skill to the Alexa Skills Store. Someone will review it and once it’s approved, it will be publicly available. You can also privately share the skill if you don’t want to go through the publication process. I think they said to allow for 2 business days but mine was approved a lot faster than that. You can also make changes to the skill any time you want, but it will have to go through the re-approval process each time you make a change that you want made public.

Now, if people in our church want to use the skill, they just have to open the Alexa App on their phone, search for Fellowship Greenville in the Skills Store, and enable it.

Then, they can say things like:

Alexa, open Fellowship Greenville”
“Alexa, ask Fellowship Greenville for the latest message”
“Alexa, Start Fellowship Greenville”

So far, it’s working pretty great for us! I am excited about adding this feature for our church as I am always looking for ways to make our sermon content more accessible. The nice thing about this is that it uses our existing podcast feed, so I don’t have to do any extra work each week for the skill to get the latest content! It just works.

Go check it out for your church! If you don’t have an Amazon account, you’ll need to create one. The skill will be tied to that account, so make sure it’s an account you own.

Walkthrough: Setting up midi-relay on MacOS to control Chroma Q Vista 3 with a Stream Deck over the network

I have had a few people ask if I could post another walkthrough with more precision on setting up midi relay to control Chroma Q Vista (formerly owned by Jands) with their stream decks.

What you will need:

MacOS running Vista 3 (Vista 2 will also work)
Node.js installed, or you can download the MacOS binary release of midi-relay here: https://github.com/josephdadams/midi-relay/releases
Bitfocus Companion installed and running on a computer/device (it can be the same computer running Vista, or another computer on the network)

To set it all up:

First, you will need to set up the loop-back MIDI port. Open Audio MIDI Setup. It’s in Applications > Utilities.
In the Audio MIDI Setup window, choose Window from the top menu, then Show MIDI Studio.
This opens the MIDI Studio window. You will see a few options here such as Bluetooth, IAC Driver, and Network. Depending on how you may have configured MIDI ports in the past, the number of devices here can vary.
Double click the IAC Driver device. This will open the Properties window. The main thing you need to do is click the checkbox for “Device is online” (if not already checked). You may also want to change the device name to Vista.
You can close out all of the Audio MIDI Setup windows now.
Now you need to start midi-relay running. Open a Terminal window and change directory to where you put the executable file for midi-relay. I put mine in a subfolder within the Documents folder. It’s important that you run the executable while the Terminal window directory is the same folder the executable is in, or things may not work correctly. Once you’ve changed directory to the correct folder, you can drag the executable file from Finder to the Terminal window, or you can type in the executable name manually. Hit enter to run it.
When midi-relay starts up, it will give you a read-out in the console of all the available MIDI in/out ports. You should now have one that says Vista Bus 1.
Open Vista. Go to the User Preferences menu by selecting File > User Preferences.
Go to the MIDI tab.
Under the MIDI Show Control section, set the Device ID to 0 (zero).
Under the External MIDI Ports section, check the box next to the Vista Bus 1 MIDI port.
Click OK.
In Vista, right click on the cue list you want to use with MIDI control, and choose Properties.
Go to the MIDI tab.
Now open the Companion Web GUI on the computer that is running Companion.
Add a new instance by searching for Tech Ministry MIDI Relay.
In the instance configuration, type in the IP address of the computer running Vista and midi-relay. If you’re running Companion on the same computer, you can use IP address 127.0.0.1.
Click Apply Changes.

To Send a MIDI Note On and advance a cuelist:

Add a new button in Companion.
Add a new action to that button, using the midi-relay action, Send Note On.
Under the options for this action, choose the Vista Bus 1 for the MIDI port.
By default, it will send channel 0, note A0 (21), with a velocity of 100. Vista does not look for a specific velocity value, only channel and note. Vista will listen to any channel by default, but if you set a specific channel in the Vista MIDI settings, you will need to make sure you send the correct channel from Companion.
Go back to Vista and in the Cuelist Properties, MIDI tab, click Learn next to the Play item. The Play command is what advances a cuelist. The Learn function will listen for incoming MIDI notes and makes setting the MIDI note slightly easier (and it proves that it works). You can also just set the note manually if you want.
Go back to Companion and click Test Actions (or press the physical button on your stream deck if you are using one), and the Learn box in Vista will go away, and you’ll see that the note you sent from Companion is now populated in the Vista settings.
Now every time you press that button in Companion, it will advance that cuelist. If you have multiple cuelists, you will need to use different MIDI note values.

To Send a MIDI Show Control message to go to a specific cue in a cuelist:

Add a new button in Companion.
Add a new action to that button, using the midi-relay action, Send MSC Command.
Choose Vista Bus 1 for the MIDI port.
The default Device ID is 0 (zero) but if you changed that in Vista, make sure it matches here.
The Command Format should be Lighting – General and the Command should be Go.
The Cue field should be the specific Cue Number in Vista of the Cuelist you want to control.
The Cue List field should be the specific Cuelist Number in Vista.
Now every time you press that button in Companion, it will go to that specific cue in that specific cuelist.

Here’s a walkthrough video of these steps:

[wpvideo HZriRGlS]

I hope this is helpful! If you’re using MIDI relay, feel free to drop a comment and share how it is working for you!

Using the iOS Shortcuts app to automate production workflows

I love automation. I love making things more efficient and consistent, and I’ve found that on a particular level, automating or simplifying certain tasks through automation can make it easier for volunteers when working in a church production environment.

The latest app that I’ve been enjoying is the iOS “Shortcuts” app that was added to my phone in a recent iOS upgrade. It allows you to use actions within apps or activity on your phone to spawn other actions. Things like “Text my wife how long it will take me to get home, when I leave work” by using the GPS location on my phone. Or, make a shortcut that when you take a picture using the camera app, it is automatically posted to Facebook.

1200x630wa — Look for this app on your iOS device.

If you’ve ever used the service IFTTT, you’ll find familiarity with the Shortcuts app in some of the concepts. Of course, the integration into the phone at a core level with Shortcuts is much nicer. One thing I particularly like is that, once you name a shortcut, you can simply say, “Hey Siri, [shortcut name]” and it will run it.

And, Shortcuts can make HTTP requests (GET, POST, with JSON, etc.) as actions. So, it’s super easy to add a shortcut that triggers a Companion button or a task in a Ross Dashboard custom panel, for example. And that’s one of the ways I’m using the Shortcuts app.

In our production workflow, we use Ross Dashboard custom panels that I created to control nearly every aspect of our video system (and slowly, audio and lighting as I create the connections). It’s very easy to trigger a button via HTTP request, so I set up several shortcuts that I can use to save me time, especially when I am away from the production area or not near a computer running one of the Dashboard panels, as long as my phone is connected to the production network wifi (or I’m connected via VPN if remote).

Photo Nov 18, 2 22 59 PM — Here are a few of the shortcuts I’ve created.

Photo Nov 18, 2 23 21 PM.png — All this particular shortcut does is make an HTTP GET request to my master Ross Dashboard Custom Panel, which is listening to Port 5400, and triggers the GPI, “aud1_psl”.

Screen Shot 2019-11-18 at 2.23.52 PM — It’s the same as clicking on this yellow button, but I can run it from my phone, as long as I am connected to the production network!

So, just like that, it’s very easy to do something like this: “Hey Siri, go to Pre Service in Auditorium 1”, and have all of the lights change (by sending a midi-relay command to a MIDI Show Control message to our Vista lighting console) and the program screens go to the pre-service loop (by sending a RossTalk command to execute a custom control on the Carbonite to change inputs).

Here’s a video of it in action!

[wpvideo URjPHb4M]

Go check out the Shortcuts app if you aren’t using it already in your production workflow!

ProPresenter 7 and the Top 8 Features I would like to see

If you are a user of Renewed Vision’s ProPresenter software, hopefully by now you’ve heard that they just released version 7 for both MacOS and Windows.

The new version is more similar between the two operating systems than ever before, and there’s a lot of new features, most notably the UI design. One other enhancement that I am excited about is that all of the add on modules (alpha keyer module, communications, MIDI, SDI/NDI output, etc.) are now all included as part of the software license. This will be great for us because now we can have these features available to all of our ProPresenter installs, whereas in the past, the pricing model was a limitation for us.

I have been slowly checking out the new version and we will be purchasing an upgraded license soon to roll this out in our various venues within the coming months.

With all of the new features that ProPresenter has, I thought it would be fun to include the Top 8 Features of ProPresenter that I hope to see implemented. Here they are, in no particular order:

Tally Integration. If you’ve followed this blog, you have probably seen where I’ve mentioned the ProTally software I created to help fill in the gap here so our volunteers could know when their ProPresenter output was on-air. So while tally protocol support (whether it be TSL or data coming directly from something like an ATEM switcher) would likely render tools like ProTally obsolete for a lot of use cases, it would make the experience so much better for the end user, and I’m definitely a fan of that.
HTTP GET/POST slide cues. This would be awesome. Some people do a workaround right now where they put a “web element” on a slide and make it invisible, but a true communication cue to send GET/POST (along with JSON data) whenever I click on a slide would be a great way to open up some automation efforts to trigger other software.
Hide Audio Bin / Re-arrange the interface. This is a simpler one, but the ability to hide the audio bin that we aren’t likely to use as well as being able to re-arrange the UI would be nice to have.
Customizable border on the current active slide. A lot of our volunteers have expressed that it would be nice to have a way to quickly see which slide is active, and sometimes the current border box around the active slide isn’t easy to see. So a way to make that border thicker, change the color, make it blink, etc. would be a nice feature.
A built-in, free, amazing sync option. I’ve written about how we currently do cloud syncing in ProPresenter by using Dropbox and sharing all the libraries to all the machines. It works fine for what it is. But a way to truly share playlists, themes, media, etc. from one ProPresenter install to another, built in, would be awesome, especially if it could use the drive/file sync tools we already use, like Dropbox.
Go To Next Timer showing a countdown. Another simpler one, but it would be really nice if any time a slide was on a advance timer, if the UI showed how much time was left before it advanced (in minutes/seconds).
Web interface to show slide information, clocks, etc. A page where I can view the slides, the current/next slide, timers, messages, etc. A “producer’s page” of sorts. Right now, we use PresentationBridge for this. We would keep this web page open in our control rooms for the director to see so they know exactly where we are at in a presentation or song.
Published and supported REST API. It would be great to have a published and supported interface where we can control ProPresenter remotely. A lot of people have done great work to reverse-engineer the ProRemote app, and that protocol is getting a lot of use through projects like Companion. But something officially documented and supported would be truly great. And on that note, some kind of official support for stream decks would be great too! Whether it is acknowledgement of the Companion project or another avenue.

So there’s my top 8 feature requests! I’m excited about this new version of ProPresenter, because with their ProPresenter+ plan, we are going to see more regular feature updates. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can demo it for free!

Live Camera Production: A Technical Walkthrough of our Video System

I talk about programming and software and building solutions here a lot, but I thought I would write a post about something else I’m passionate about: live camera production. At my church, for the last 15 years or so, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to direct cameras for the annual Christmas program. We call the program, “Jingle Jazz”, because the music is mostly centered around a jazz format. In church terms, it’s an “invest and invite” event where people can bring their friends, neighbors, and co-workers for a great first exposure to Fellowship Greenville and have a fun relaxing evening filled with various styles of music.

This is one of a small handful of times a year where we get to maximize the potential of our volunteers and systems and put it all to the test. I always try to challenge myself to make it better than the year before, whether that’s adding more cameras, equipping volunteers, or even automating something.

In years past, I had a huge role involving writing scripts, creating and producing videos, and working late night after late night after late night and put “all of me” into this event to make it happen! In recent years, the workload has been balanced a lot better, and my job role has shifted some, so now I am not having to do so many late nights prior to the event. I did still manage to get in almost 16,000 steps one day last week though!

Photo Dec 16, 1 07 04 PM — The steps I took in one day. Pretty high for me!

This year, I set a target goal of 14 cameras. I put out a call for volunteers and 11 people signed up! We used our primary auditorium cameras, older (like 12-15 year old) cameras using component to SDI adapters, borrowed production equipment from the communications department, rented 4 cameras, and I even traded some of my programming time to a local university in return to borrow some cameras and lenses from them. Overall, I felt like we were able to keep costs down by being good stewards of what we already had, and renting where needed.

One thing I did in advance that really helped me to succeed was to plot all of my patching across patchbays and plates in a spreadsheet. It helped me think through all the limitations I might face, especially when multiple cameras needed a signal/data cable as well as genlock/reference. Some of the cameras didn’t support genlock, so I had to frame sync those within the switcher. The Ross Carbonite switcher has 6 frame syncs, so after I ran out of syncs on the switcher for Auditorium 1, I actually sent signal to our switcher for Auditorium 2, synced them, and sent them back to the other switcher on aux sends! It took both control rooms to be able to pull off this many cameras, primarily because of the camera equipment we had available.

Photo Dec 14, 10 28 27 PM — This spreadsheet kept me in line to make sure I didn’t forget to patch anything!

For intercoms, everyone was on a wired Clearcom. We used a combination of belt packs we already had plus adapters I made to work with some older stuff we used to use. The two mobile stage cameras used Unity Intercom bridged to our Clearcom system.

Photo Dec 12, 7 57 03 PM — The view during rehearsal.

I knew I wanted to record what I call the “tech cut” that combines the multiviewer feed plus the intercom chatter this year so we could save it for review and training. The Carbonite switcher has two multiviewer outputs, so I dedicated one of them to viewing all 14 cameras for the recording.

Photo Dec 13, 11 50 35 AM — Another view of the control room.

Because the boxes were so small, I wanted a way to be able to see any camera on a larger screen, so I rolled in a TV cart and patched it to a MiniME output and controlled it from a Stream Deck (with Companion). Using Custom Controls, I was able to also have the multiviewer show a white box around whatever source was active on that TV cart. Here is a video of that in action:

[wpvideo z5nxUcc4]

One thing that I really am glad we did this year was to treat the LED wall that we have center stage as more of a lighting/stage element than something that our video team needed to drive. It was nice because the lighting guys controlled it all and I didn’t have to think about it! We used PVP and had motions and Christmas-themed b-roll on the screen most of the time, and occasionally cut to a graphic here and there as needed.

Like any service, it takes people to make it happen. We have great volunteers and staff here that I get to work with and lead.

As we were wrapping up this event, and I watched everyone serving with such joy even though it was a lot of late nights, I was reminded of this quote from author Simon Sinek:

When we work hard on something we don’t believe in, it’s called stress. When we work hard on something we believe in, it’s called passion. – Simon Sinek

Working and serving in tech ministry has to come from a place of passion, or it will always be stressful. Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

May we always work heartily on what we believe in. Not just programming, software, or live production, but seeing God transform lives, and people pursuing life and mission with Jesus.

If you’d like to watch our tech cut, here it is!

Custom Reports in Planning Center Online, Part 2

At my church, we have two venues where we run worship services simultaneously. This means that when I am running reports and printing paperwork for all the teams, there’s a lot to print! Using the PCO custom reporting tool is great because it saves so much time.

If you didn’t read Part 1 where I first talked about this, hop on over and check that out.

Lately, rather than printing reports one at a time with each plan, I’ve been using the matrix view in Planning Center to view multiple plans at once and print reports all at the same time.

Screen Shot 2019-09-26 at 9.26.05 AM — The matrix view in PCO is very powerful and helps when you want to look at several plans at once.

My custom matrix report is similar to the normal plan report, but this one supports multiple plans, obviously. It loops through every plan, and then every position in the plan (based on the teams I have chosen), and then generates a sheet for that position, customized with their checklists, notes, etc.

My most recent edit includes a custom array for sort order, because the default is to print the position reports alphabetically. Rather than rename my positions, I opted for the custom sort.

Screen Shot 2019-09-26 at 9.26.49 AM.png — The print order array can be customized so that reports are sorted in the order you want.

This saves time every week because now they print out in the order I need to pass them out!

If you’d like to get a copy of this custom report, head on over to the GitHub repository I set up for it: https://github.com/josephdadams/PlanningCenterServicesReports

Controlling Chroma-Q (Jands) Vista with MIDI Show Control and a Stream Deck using Node.JS and the Web MIDI API

At my church, we use Chroma-Q’s Vista lighting platform (formerly owned by Jands). It’s a great platform and easy for volunteers to execute pre-programmed lighting cues. Every large worship space we have on campus with a lighting system runs some version of Vista, whether on a physical console or a PC.

We generally program our lighting to use one or two cuelists and volunteers just advance cue by cue within that list for the service. It’s pretty straightforward and works well for them.

Sometimes, we need the ability to advance cues in a list remotely, when we’re not near the lighting console, and that’s where this latest project began.

Most lighting consoles can be controlled using some form of MIDI command. Older ones require a physical connection, others can use network connections. By using a loopback/virtual port, Vista can receive both MIDI notes and MIDI Show Control commands.

A lot of people have been able to accomplish this type of remote control over the network using a protocol called RTP-MIDI. This protocol is very easy to use and computers can broadcast/discover each other over the network, so it makes it a lot quicker to get up and going.

Screen Shot 2019-06-06 at 3.44.05 PM

This is great, and I’ve used it, but I wanted to design something particular for our needs. (1) I wanted something I could run on any PC or Mac to accept commands from a wider range of sources, and so many devices nowadays can send HTTP requests. (2) I wanted something that primarily triggered over TCP, because while RTP-MIDI is great and fast, it uses UDP traffic that can’t cross vlans/subnets. TCP traffic easily can.

So, I broke this project down into two parts: a server that listens to HTTP requests and relays local MIDI, and a module for Companion that allows the Stream Deck to send requests to that server. The server is flexible to support other devices that may want to trigger it, and the Companion module is perfectly paired to work with it.

The server runs a simple REST API that returns a list of local MIDI ports and can accept Note On, Note Off, or MSC (MIDI Show Control) commands. It accepts JSON data via HTTP POST which is then used to build the hexadecimal data and send the MIDI commands.

The HTTP side of things in Node.js uses the Express framework. The MIDI side uses the Jazz Soft JZZ.js library.

The server runs directly on the Vista computer to relay the MIDI commands on a virtual MIDI port which Vista is listening to.

Here is a video of it in action!

[wpvideo ZvMtBNPa]

If you want to do this yourself, setting up the Vista side of things is pretty straightforward.

First, if you are using Vista on a PC and haven’t already, downloaded LoopMidi, you can get it here. It’s free software that creates a virtual MIDI port on the PC.

Once that is configured, open Vista and go to the MIDI settings in User Preferences.

Screen Shot 2019-06-06 at 1.41.54 PM.png

Under the MIDI tab, select the External MIDI port “LoopMidi” (or whatever you named your port). If you’re going to be using MSC, be sure to make note of the Device ID you select.

If you want to advance a cuelist using MIDI Note On commands, right click on the cuelist and under the MIDI tab, select the Note you want to send for the “Play” command.

Screen Shot 2019-06-06 at 1.42.24 PM.png

I hope this is helpful for you! You can dowload a binary release of the MIDI-Relay server from my Github. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The Companion module will be made available in a release build at some point.

Using a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a blink(1) light for silent notifications

At my church, we often delay or “time slip” the preaching of the service in the room where the pastor isn’t physically present. To do this, we record the sermon video as it happens live, and then play it back out either a few seconds or few minutes later.

This has been a good workflow for us. Often though, in the delayed auditorium, it’s helpful for the worship leader to know when the server is ready to play back the delayed sermon video. We usually communicate this over the intercoms into the band in-ears, whenever there’s an appropriate break to do so, like when they aren’t actively singing, praying or talking. That works well, but sometimes it means we have to wait longer than we should to be able to let them know we are ready to play back the video.

So, I thought, if we had a simple cue light that we could use to let them know when we’re ready, I wouldn’t need to have my team wait to communicate. The band could just look at the light and know we are ready for them. It would also give that boost of confidence before they hear from us in the in-ears.

To create this system, I bought a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a blink(1) USB light. If you haven’t heard about the blink(1) light, I wrote about using it in this post. I bought the Pi Zero in a kit that came with a black case and power supply.

91VrInDBG3L._SL1500_ — I bought this kit off Amazon for $27.

I had initially envisioned this light being located on stage but after talking to my team, they actually preferred that it be located on top of the camera back in the tech booth, so they could easily see it.

Here is the notification light. This is easy to see from the stage. That’s a professional gaff tape install. Currently we move this device back and forth between auditoriums as we alternate which room is the video venue.

I’ve been learning Python recently, so I whipped up a simple Python web server that accepts HTTP requests to then light up the blink(1) light. For now, I’ve limited it to red and green. Red = problem like we aren’t sufficiently delayed, the server is not ready, etc, green = ready/good for playback anytime, and clear/no light = no status. I set up the Pi to start this web server when it boots up, so it’s very easy to set up.

We trigger the light using a Stream Deck Mini running Companion located at the video server. The operator has three buttons, and each one sends an HTTP request to the Pi Zero to trigger the light.

This Stream Deck Mini is running Companion and sends HTTP GET Requests to the Pi Zero server.

I also have a command set for each button action on the stream deck to update a button on another stream deck in the other control room, so each director knows the status of the video server. This doesn’t replace our intercom communication, but it certainly augments it!

Overall, we’re very happy with this notification system! All in, it cost us about $55 for the Pi Zero kit and the blink(1) light, and of course, the code was free. 🙂 It’s available on Github if you need it! That’s where I will provide updates as I add more features to this.

ProTally 1.7 with support for Roland Smart Tally!

In my last post, I mentioned my partnership with Tony at Calvary Chapel in Las Vegas, writing software to support their Roland V-60HD switcher.

As I was reading the specs on that switcher, I noticed it had a feature Roland called “Smart Tally”. It allows users to pull up a web page on their phones and monitor sources for being in Preview or Program live as the switcher is used.

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118170-lamroland2-3-org

I knew I just had to add this support to ProTally, so while working to implement the remote control module, I snooped how the Smart Tally service worked and came up with a way for ProTally to monitor for tally changes the same way mobile users accessing the server directly would.

It was actually pretty straightforward: When a user goes to to the IP address of the Roland V-60HD in a browser, they are presented with a list of addresses. Clicking on any of these addresses then loads a page where the browser repeatedly requests this url in the background:

http://[ipaddress]/tally/[tally address]/status

This status page simply returns three values: unselected, selected (in Preview), and onair (in Program).

Since I wouldn’t have access to the Roland switcher to develop and test with, I needed a solution to be able to test locally. I’ve been learning the Python programming language recently, so I decided to whip up a simple web server in Python to emulate this page request, with it turning one of the three values based on the seconds of the clock. If the time of day was between 0 and 20 seconds, it would return unselected. If between 20 and 40, it would return selected, and finally, if between 40 and 60, it would return onair. This was a simple way to emulate the setup of having a Roland switcher with Smart Tally.

Screen Shot 2019-03-28 at 2.34.47 PM — This simple Python script made testing a lot easier!

This feature has been released, so you can go get it now up on the Github repo!

Controlling a Roland V-60HD video switcher with a Stream Deck and Companion

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted through the blog by Tony Perez, longtime staff member at Calvary Chapel in Las Vegas. He asked if I could help their team to control their Roland V-60HD switcher through a stream deck using Companion.

God has given me a heart and passion to be a resource for other churches, so I jumped right in and started reading the TCP protocol specification for their video switcher. The protocol was simple enough, basically just a telnet protocol to send parameters with a terminating character to designate the end of the command.

rol-v-60hd — This is the Roland V-60HD video switcher.

I had to take a sick day recently to take care of one of my kids who had an ear infection, so while he was resting, I sat down and prototyped a module for Companion to control their video switcher.

Tony and I then set a time to talk on the phone and do a TeamViewer session, and after doing some slight debugging, we had it working!

The protocol is pretty straightforward. For example, with this command:

\u0002CUT;

The switcher will perform a cut between the current on-air source and the preview source. “\u0002” is the ASCII control code “02H” which tells the switcher that a command code is coming. “CUT” is the command , and the semicolon terminates the command.

We were able to implement every video-related operation and some of the system operations that seemed necessary to control remotely from a Stream Deck.

So, with just a few short hours of work, now his team can control their Roland V-60HD video switcher from anywhere on their network! This will be a great help and add to their flexibility.

Screen Shot 2019-03-28 at 2.12.50 PM.png — You can see some of the options available for the module in this screenshot.

This was a fun project to get to help with, especially since I had not ever seen or used this particular video switcher before, and I was able to help a ministry on the other side of the country.

Here are some pictures of the module in action!

The module is open-source and part of the Companion project now, so anyone else who has this switcher can jump in and use it too! You can view the module code here.