Running Gamma in an exhibition environment

vvvv gamma general
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  1. seltzdesign

Quick question: Are there any resources/turorials/forum posts you know about concerning running Gamma in an exhibiton environment where you have a dedicated computer that has to start up/shutdown on its own, start VL in fullscreen, etc.? Thanks

  1. tebjan

sebescudie has recommended chataigne as an automation tool. I would also be interested in his latest review and whether he would still recommend it.

Chataigne | Chataigne

  1. boris.vitazek.stx

from my experience its important to pick pc with bios that has scheduled start, you can shutdown with gamma, otherwise I did not have any problems of starting gamma and not having app fullscreen, but that would be probably even better if you compile the app

  1. lecloneur

you need to start VL or start the app you exported from VL ?

  1. catweasel

I use a vvvv or VL app to do it and to watchdog the patch, simply UDP heartbeat to check if the process is alive, if it isn’t kill it and relaunch. I did have a vvvv in contribs I think, I can try and find my VL if you like?

  1. As boris says the most important thing is the wake on alarm and power on on power loss in the bios

  2. catweasel

WatchDog.zip (47.9 KB)

  1. Its not pretty, but it works :) You can export it to exe too.

  2. lecloneur

just curious how/why the process wouldn’t be running anymore ?

  1. seltzdesign

Excellent info, thanks everyone. I’ll check out the WatchDog file! It will be a .exe running for quite a while (a few years). It would turn off every evening and then start again in the morning. I saw something about Deep Freeze, where basically the harddisk is more or less locked and it can somewhat guarantee that nothing is ever changed or updated (looking at you, Windows).

  1. lecloneur

normally there isn’t any reason why a process would stop, I’ve got some installation running made with Gamma the only problem was the Windows defender eating the .exe file just when I was about to copy it on the computer

  1. also put the .exe on startup app with auto fullscreen (for stride) and it’s been running smoothy so far

  2. a scheduled restart help to flush memory also

  3. motzi

seltzdesign
Excellent info, thanks everyone. I’ll check out the WatchDog file! It will be a .exe running for quite a while (a few years). It would turn off every evening and then start again in the morning. I saw something about Deep Freeze, where basically the harddisk is more or less locked and it can somewhat guarantee that nothing is ever changed or updated (looking at you, Windows).

I’ve had good experiences with the BIOS timer boot thing and turning off every night.

I also tried the UWF feature available windows enterprise (deep freeze/ram overlay of disks), but it was rather not successful due to windows always trying to update (which at some point caused huge traffic as downloaded updates were always lost on restart and then redownloaded). I’d be curious if someone has a way of configuring windows in a way that it behaves nicely with that feature…

  1. lecloneur

normally there isn’t any reason why a process would stop, I’ve got some installation running made with Gamma the only problem was the Windows defender eating the .exe file just when I was about to copy it on the computer

in beta times i had it sometimes that the process would crash (with a notification window), but would not be autokilled. having a watchdog lets you check if the process is still alive and not a zombie. so a watchdog is a good idea imho.

  1. motzi

in one of the long running installations i used the windows “aufgabenplanung” (taskplanner?) to define tasks when to boot the application. defining tasks there it allows you to run them also from commandline/executor which i called from the watchdog. it allowed a little more fine grained control when to start the application than when just using batch-files (and it will be logged in the windows event viewer). it felt to me that it is a clean “windows way” of doing stuff, but there is no particular advantage in my opinion to using just batch-files in autostart…

  1. chk

all these hints are too valuable to be buried in the chat :/ what about taking care of documenting them in the gray book (in the best practices section) or at least create a forum topic out of it?

  1. sebescudie

Wow sorry just seeing I was mentioned here : yes, I’m still using Chataigne for startup/monitoring/watchdog purposes on installations, works like a charm.
I also use it for project specific stuff (state machines, timeline, inter app communication) if needed, but it’s always there at least for the whole startup, watchdog and monitoring stuff

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  1. catweasel

lecloneur
just curious how/why the process wouldn’t be running anymore ?

Program hanging, or suddenly quitting, its not common, but can occur, I have previously had it so that more than 3 restarts of the app, will reboot the pc. That I have seen from memory leaks etc. Ideally You should have debugged all that, but it can slip through

  1. bildwerk

sebescudie
Wow sorry just seeing I was mentioned here : yes, I’m still using Chataigne for startup/monitoring/watchdog purposes on installations, works like a charm.

can join in here, chataigne is really nice for multi programm/multi machine installations

motzi
in one of the long running installations i used the windows “aufgabenplanung” (taskplanner?) to define tasks when to boot the application. defining tasks there it allows you to run them also from commandline/executor which i called from the watchdog. it allowed a little more fine grained control when to start the application than when just using batch-files (and it will be logged in the windows event viewer). it felt to me that it is a clean “windows way” of doing stuff, but there is no particular advantage in my opinion to using just batch-files in autostart…

task scheduler gives you more options - also in combination with event viewer. so for example if your program crashes, you can connect a task from the scheduler to the specific error message, like restart the pc to get in a clean state, restart the program, send an email…

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I have successfully used Winaero tweaker to disable windows update. I believe that it was a recommendation from @catweasel years ago.

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for “disabling” windows updates i usually use the little helper WUB from Sordum - works like a charm

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Winaero is good because its just a few check boxes and also can stop notifications and driver updates too as well as configuring out lots of things that annoy me in windows :D less since win 10 though

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https://www.amyuni.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3030

I’ve just come across this which seems really useful, for when you have a full screen app and need to remote in to the pc. Unfortunately you seem to have reinstall every reboot, and click a driver confirm window, ideally it would just be there for your patch window every time. But still I’m sure it will be useful, I’ve had 4k portrait desktops I’ve had to remote into, this will at least allow you to quickly attach a virtual monitor as another screen without having a headless dongle or another display. There is a bat in the download folder, just run that as admin to install.

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Actually you dont need reinstall the driver every reboot, at least i did not have to. You need to start the software on every reboot though → autostart.
Also note its only refresh rate is 60Hz and not to change. Depending on your setup this might be an issue when you need everything at 50Hz for example. I have seen vvvv having perf issues in mixed refresh rate setups. If anyone knows a way to set the refresh rate on the virual display please share.

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Maybe it can be added to the inf file?

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yes i was looking into the inf but was quite clueless. might try again some time, thanks for the links!

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Ah yes, that cool, always starts as mirrored though, be great if you could define it extended, but still good enough, I’ve just been using it this week