OSC Heartbeat Monitor Patch

Feature Requests
1

I’ve posted my first draft of a heartbeat monitor patch created in Max/MSP (6.1) here:
http://andrewnelson.com/?p=214

There’s a description on the page, but basically it will show a green or red status light depending on the continual receipt of the heartbeat message.

I added functionality to extract from the heartbeat string the time interval, arbitrary device name, and last octet of phone’s IP address. This means the monitor is configured if you know the port the heartbeat is sending to.

The augmented string:
OSC:/heartbeat/INTERVAL/PHONE_NAME/LAST_IP_OCTET
Example:
/heartbeat/10/Andrew/102

My feature request is for a couple more OSC messages.

If you found this functionality useful, it would be great to have an option to add these things to the heartbeat automatically.

I think it would also be nice if connected to the heartbeat’s sending or based on changes in status, an Armed/Disarmed status message could be sent by StageCaller. Probably safest/most effective with the heartbeat. Obviously you can just fire an arm or disarm cue, but the feedback is an added reassurance of communication.

Thanks,
Andrew

2

oh cool - thanks - that’s a great idea… I’ll add that into the next release

3

I just updated the monitor patch with a couple new features:

  • MIDI Trigger reflecting connection status. I used this to arm/disarm cues in QLab, making a seamless fail-over to backup audio cues (and back to StageCaller if the connection is restored).

  • OSC configuration support so QLab can load the monitor patch and configure all relevant options reliably and easily. This helps overcome trying to save settings in a Max Runtime environment as well.

Full description and downloads are still at:
http://andrewnelson.com/?p=214

I just used this at Lehigh University and the fail-over worked great through rehearsals and tech. In the end, the Verizon iPhone 4s we used had too weak a vibrate to hear, so I ended up using the audio cue always, but used StageCaller as well to light up the phone - staged in the round, so someone will always see the face of the phone.