Qlab network control of Christie DHD800

[Jake Perrine]

Hello Ninjas!

I am looking to send simple commands to a pair of Christie DHD800 projectors over a network.  I am able to interface with them via the web interface, but it would be a far better workflow to address them via Qlab.  I see in the manual they respond to Telnet commands, but I do not know how to put that into a Qlab script.  Here is the network manual for the DHD800 (Telnet commands start on page 50):

https://www.christiedigital.com/globalassets/resources/public/020-000246-01-dhd800-network-and-operation-user-manual.pdf

I also tried using the Projector Manager app to no avail.  Could not make it work.

Ideas? 

Thanks in advance!

-Jake Perrine, 

Artistic Director, Orcas Center

[Julien Favier]

Hi!

The easiest way to find the solution is to use the application PacketSender because it shows you the answers (or the muted words!) of the Christie.

As you can reach them vie the web interface, you know their IP's.

So either in PacketSender or in terminal, you can type the ip of one of the Christie, the port 10000 and try the different commands...

1. C00  Power on

2. C01  Power off

1. C05  Select Input 1

2. C06  Select Input 2

3. C07  Select Input 3

4. C08  Select Input 4

C1C Menu display on C1D Menu display off

I fact, in terminal you have to type "telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 10000"

xxx is your ip of course.

Then it could ask you a password... that seems to be the Network PIN code you can find on web interface

and then you can type "C05" to select first input.

In packetSender, you can really see what happens (sometimes you have to add "\r" after the command).

[Abdel El Asri]

Hey Jake!

Check chataigne : https://benjamin.kuperberg.fr/chataigne/en maybe it can help you.

It's very powerful and can communicate easily with qlab and projectors via pjlink or http (and lots of other things...). It's my latest discovery and I'm in love, it's like the one ring that rules them all :)

[Jake Perrine]

Hi, thanks for the reply.  A bit more detail, sorry:  

-I do have the IP addresses, and the web interface works great.

-MacOS no longer comes with Telnet, so I tried using NC (NetCat) which is similar, but for some reason won't let me get past the password prompt.  I've tried all permutations (using the web interface, set the password to no password, set the password to 1234, etc.) and for some reason upon entering the pw it replies with * and eventually times out.  I never get to "Hello" and a command prompt to enter a C00 type command.  Not sure what is happening there.  Happens on both projectors the same way.  I'm going to try Christie support on this one.

But assuming I can get in with NC and fire off those commands successfully, how would I get Qlab to send a terminal command to approximate this behavior?  What is the best way to send a string of commands (likely with wait commands built in to wait for the responses) like this?

Sorry, I'm an audio / video / lighting nerd and I'm at the edge of my networking / programming skills.  Thanks for everyone's help!

[Jake Perrine]

I will check out Chataigne!  Thanks for the info.  Looks rad!

[Julien Favier]

In QLab, you do a script cue with something like that

tell application id "com.figure53.QLab.4" to tell front workspace

do shell script "echo -n \"YOUR_COMMAND\" | nc -w 0 YOUR_IP YOUR_PORT"

end tell

or with packetSender, via a script cue in QLab

set hexcmd to "\YOUR_COMMAND\""

try

do shell script "/Applications/PacketSender.app/Contents/MacOS/packetsender -taw 500 YOUR_IP YOUR_PORT " & hexcmd

on error errText

-- errText is the response you get from the Christie

end try