Empeg Slave Display

Question :

Would it be possible to have 2 empegs connected over ethernet , both of them running together so the controls on one operate the and they show the same screen.

Only one of them actualy playing music.

C.

[slashdot]
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
[/slashdot]

Theoretically possible. Theory tempered by a lot of practical roadblocks, the foremost being that significant changes would be needed to the player application to make it 'net aware and to add in these options, and I doubt they'd even make the priority list. Unless the empeg guys have a customer with the same need who's paying for development.

So you're looking for a program that would read data from the network and write it to the display? Probably requiring that you quit the player program and run this one instead.

Maybe a VNC client? I'm not sure what the framerate is on the existing VNC server for the empeg. (wfaulk ported that, right?) Maybe a different program would give better results, but shouldn't be too hard to code for someone who knows how to do that -- which isn't me

VNC is pretty much an ``as fast as the network can go'' protocol. I was toying with throwing some optional delays in there, but I stopped working on it, as very few people appeared to actually be using it.

It would be helpful if you could post a version with a command prompt option to show just the 128x32 instead of the whole fascia.. I'm using it for a Palm client.

Hi Bitt,

hey you know I never thought of using a empeg to control another Empeg,
but if you're goinng to do it - then using VNC makes good sense.


I must admit that I never used the VNC server you wrote for my Empeg as I don't currently need to control it remotely except from a PC running IE (which Hijack lets me do now), so a seperate VNC client never appealed, however using a VNC client on one Empeg to control another makes sense in some cases.

So how much work do you think is required to create a native Empeg to Empeg (only) "VNC" client for the Empeg to control a remote empeg that hijacks all the front panel buttons (and presumably IR commands) and take the updatesfrom the remote screen and overlays it on the regular screen?

And is it worth doing? Would anyone else find that useful too?

Hijack already allows third party applications to intercept all the buttons they want to register, and provides a screen blitting mechanism, so...

Personally I wouldn't find it very useful as I only own one empeg

[/taking life for granted]
But I do own 1 empeg

Being kinda new to empeg, I just found the VNC client. Do I understand correctly that it can display the empeg screen on your computer? Kinda like real computer's VNC? So, is it essentially a complicated video output? Man, what I wouldn't do to have SoundFlag projected on a wall at parties.

Yeah, empegVNC is a standard VNC server that lets you view the empeg's screen on a PC. It even lets you control the empeg.

It's pretty awesome really - I'm not sure if I'm one of a few or one of many, but I use it an awful lot without even thinking about it!

A.

Wow, that's what I thought! I have to get out of my 1.03 cave and into the hijack superhighway. How's the refresh rate on the visuals? Man, if it's real-time, I'm going to be so psyched. LCD Projector here I come!

Whoa... if I knew about that I would have installed it on my machine at work a long time ago. Time to go looking for the client.

It's real-time - I get about 10fps over a wireless network, so it should be a bit smoother over a wired network (I only get about 3mbps over wireless with encryption enabled).

Found out something else neat today too - you don't have to press the buttons - the arrow keys on the keyboard will control the four buttons just as well! Awesome!

Clients are available (free, of course) for a huge number of platforms from here.

A.

I use VNC all the time. It's my favorite way to remote control my empeg!