Getting Started Getting Started: Viewers
Wednesday, 26 June 2024
This is intended as a beginners guide to understanding the functionality of remote Viewers within the LUCA suite.
Master Patch is the main central data inputting and management hub of the LUCA platform. However when users want to get data back out of Master Patch, this is where remote Viewer applications come in.
Stage Viewer
Stage Viewer is the main remote viewer application for Band Data in the LUCA Suite.
Stage Viewer is cross platform being available on Apple and Windows machines. A portable version of Stage Viewer is also available for iOS and Android devices such as tablets and phones, allowing the user to access Master Patch in whichever way best suites their needs.
Connecting to Master Patch
All remote viewer applications will need to connect to an instance of Master Patch via a network. This can be a closed network, such as the user might build for a temporary event, or a more permanent network such as an office and warehouse network, or even the internet.
In order for remote viewer applications to connect to Master Patch they need three pieces of information.
- The IP address of the machine running Master Patch
- The Port number of the machine running Master Patch
- The Password as set in the instance of Master Patch
IP Address
The remote viewer application will need the IP address of the machine running Master Patch.
Note, this is NOT the IP address of the machine running the Stage Viewer application.
It is important to note that if the IP address of the machine running Master Patch changes while Master Patch is running and has viewers connected to it, that all viewers will loose connectivity and will have to re-connect to Master Patch. Master Patch will also have to reload, or have the server state toggled from 'Active' to 'Disabled' and back again.
Port Number
The default port number for Master Patch is 3500.
If port 3500 is already in use by another application on the machine running Master Patch at the time Master Patch loads then Master Patch will dynamically assign itself a free port.
If you want to check which port Master Patch is running on then you can navigate to Preferences -> Network where the current port being used by Master Patch is shown.
If the user is attempting to use Stage Viewer and Master Patch on the same machine, then the IP address used to connect to Master Patch must be set to 127.0.0.1
Password
Master Patch has the ability to assign a password to the session in order to protect from potential malicious users.
If a password has not been set in Master Patch then the user of the remote viewer application can leave this field free when connecting to an instance of Master Patch.
Reconnection
If for whatever reason the connection between Stage Viewer and Master Patch is lost then Stage Viewer will automatically commence a reconnection process where it will continually attempt to re-connect to Master Patch, then when Master Patch comes back online Stage Viewer will automatically send a request for updated data and any publishes that it missed while it was unable to communicate with Master Patch.
The user will be alerted if the connection to Master Patch is lost and some information as to what might have caused the connection issue.
Live Data
Viewer applications benefit from a live link to Master Patch which allows real time updates of data, alerts, and easy messaging.
Some of the benefits include:
- Publish Alerts
- Messaging
- Clock Data
Publish Alerts
When Master Patch publishes changes to the network, remote viewers are given an obvious alert to inform them of the changes. The alert details what has changed with the publish.
All alerts require an acknowledgement. Upon acknowledgment Stave Viewer will then request Master Patch for the latest data and will re-render in real time the new data.
In this way it is impossible for users to be looking at out of date information.
Messaging
Users of Stage Viewer on desktop benefit from having a fully featured chat client allowing silent communication with other team members.
To learn more about the messaging functionality of LUCA check out our article on the Messaging Page
Clock Data
Stage Viewers have access to the networked clock of Master Patch.
The clock allows all users to keep an eye on the expected time until the next moment of action, and like all things LUCA benefits from the live data link with Master Patch so that if times change in Master Patch then all clients are automatically kept up to date.
