Hey,
Running QLab3 on a Mac Pro tower (OS 10.8-ish) hard wired to a TP-Link high gain output router (hidden SSID, MAC address filtering, ARP binding MAC address to IP Address, dedicated to StageCaller traffic only) 2 iPhone 4 (1 is a backup) with latest release of StageCaller and most up to date iOS they can have (iOS 7.4.2 I think) with static IP’s. Phones have heartbeat (via MIDI) acrivated and Active in background option on. I am triggering phones via OSC and upon initial setup seemed very stable. Over the duration of rehearsals and now into tech the phones seem to become less and less stable. I have shut down the app and the phones regularly since running into some instability and that hasn’t seemed to have corrected it. I am using the MIDI monitor suggested in previous posts to monitor the Heartbeat. In the course of a 2 hour tech run today I had the phones dropping off the network (according to the MIDI monitor) but still triggering via OSC or sometimes they were on the network and sending a heartbeat but wouldn’t trigger via OSC. Any ideas as to where I should start would be appreciated. Also the phones first started to show instability when moved up to the reaheasal space where they in the same room and not more than 20 feet away for the router.
(sorry - I was having email issues with the previous mailhost for this forum… but I may have fixed everything now)
I’ve heard of some issues with the iPhone4 radio, but most complaints on the iPhone4 were about long term connections… and most complaints quieted down after the heartbeat feature was added…
I test on an iPhone4s - I can leave the phone for 2+ days and it’ll maintain its own connection without issue… but that’s a 4s…
if the phones are dropping off the network I’d suspect the TP-Link… I don’t know much about that routers config… but I’d make sure that the router has the latest firmware (oddly, this has fixed a number of old linksys router issues)
I should mention that there’s always the problem of radio interference on whatever channel the router is broadcasting on - I doubt this is the problem, but it’s worth mentioning… an easy way to check would be if your setup works in a controlled environment far away from stage, but not on stage… although I have no idea what kinds of interference sources to look for and I don’t want to recommend you going on a frequency snipe hunt
well… that’s not much help… but it’s a start - as always, if you’re in the NYC area I’d be happy to drop by and debug this issue with you
Hey Jay,
The run of the show I needed the phones for has since ended, but thanks for responding.
I think I may have figured out what the issue was. I had been using a laptop to screen share my show/QLab computer so I was able to be out of the booth for tech. It was on the same network as the phones. When I finally stoped using the screen sharing the phones behaved perfectly and were very stable. Great app!!!
I am unfortunately very very far from NYC but thanks for the offer
