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Hi there

I have a few questions regarding millu node as an autonomous player in an art gallery enviroment, where the power to the gallery space gets turned on in the morning and off at night and everything is expected to run for months without intervention to the computers. The staff is at most expected to turn on the power to the projectors and monitors, but not to deal with startup and shutdown procedures of attached computers, so usually we would use brightsign players, but in an increasing number of installations changes to the content and the projection are made until the day of the opening which make the use of brightsign players less than practical.

So I have done a couple of installations with a Mac Studio running Millumin and feeding up to four displays via thunderbolt, but now I have a request for an installation where it logistically makes more sense to run either twelve brightsign players or six mac minis connected via ethernet with each mac mini only feeding two displays for a total of 12 outputs.

I was hoping to use millu node for this, despite its ongoing beta status and so my first question is how to setup millu node so it starts automatically after the computer boots with the project in full screen. It seems like it should be possible but I haven't been able to make it work. I selected a "startup project" in the preference setting of millu node, even tried giving it a startup time, but it doesn't start the project, so I am assuming that I am doing something wrong.

Secondly when I start the project manually in millu node it sometimes starts in window mode, but I heve not been able to determine why.

And lastly what is the best way to synchronize the video of a multitude of millu nodes when they all run autonomously (though this isn't something I have tested yet so I might eventually find the answer to it myself) ?

Thanks for any pointers

Best

Ruppert

Comments

  • Hello @ruppert,


    "is how to setup millu node so it starts automatically" :

    -> Your are doing fine, but it's seems there is a bug that prevents to add startup project on some version of macOS. To solve it, you can create the folder "LaunchAgents" in "~/Library/". The problem will be solve in the next release of Millunode.


    "Secondly when I start the project manually in millu node it sometimes starts in window mode, but I heve not been able to determine why."

    -> When Millunode is manually start on a project that displays on the main screen, the fullscreen is deactivate by default. So it doesn't hide the interface. But if the project displays on another screen, it will be fullscreen. Anyway, if the project is auto-launched, it will be fullscreen whatever the screen it displays to.


    "what is the best way to synchronize the video of a multitude of millu nodes when they all run autonomously"

    -> For now, there is no solution to synchronise all the nodes. The best you can do is to control all the node with Millumin so the column will be launch almost at the same time. But I am not sure that fit what you describe your project is.


    I hope that solve some of your problems,

    Sincerely your,

    Nicolas

  • Thanks Nicolas!

    That does pretty much answer all my questions. I wasn't aiming for frame sync between different computers, as long as they are within +/- 0.5sec from one another I should be fine and the few tests I have done launching columns through OSC that has been the case.

    One last thing though:

    Is there a way to turn off the default save prompt when you quit Millumin and happen to be in a different column then when you last saved the project? Not a big issue, I just instructed the museum staff to simply turn off the power to the computer, to avoid them saving the show in a different start state then intended, but maybe there is a more elegant way to handle this.

    Anyway Thanks again!

  • Hello @ruppert ,

    "Is there a way to turn off the default save prompt when you quit Millumin"

    -> In the last beta of Millumin, there is an option in the preference panel named "ignore save warning" that prevent this prompt to appear when you quit Millumin :


    Sincerely your,

    Nicolas

  • ...encore une fois mille fois merci!

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