RobBergenstock

I'm confused. I understand the license requirements, but not the part about WATCHNET and Watchout Display being unable to run on the same computer. Currently, that is exactly what we're doing. I have WATCHNET and Watchout Display both in the startup folder, and a license key for each, so that both run simultaneously and automatically. All of our runs under this configuration have been successful. Is there a danger to operating this way?

Hi all, It seems as though two licenses are required to run WATCHNET and Watchout Display on the same computer, though I'm not finding anything that specifically says whether or not that's the case. Is it? If so, I'm not sure I understand why. Any help in understanding this would be very appreciated. Thank you. - Rob

Update: At the recommendation of some, we installed Wireshark to capture/analyze the network traffic between our Watchout cluster and our PJ-Link projectors. We found that the failure to send commands occurs when those commands are attempted around the time that the Watchout/PJ-Link connection is severed (seems to be a 3-10 second window). For clarification, here is an example of a successful attempt, followed by a failed attempt... Success: Shutter Close command sent Wait either less than 50 seconds, or more than 1 minute 10 seconds Shutter Open command sent Failure: Shutter Close command sent Wait between 50 seconds and 1 minute 10 seconds Shutter Open command failed The above is a general approximation, but based on those times, we were able to determine when to expect those commands to fail. On another note, we have tried the same concept with a Panasonic PT-EX600 (with internal PJLink protocol), and it closes its connection after only 30 seconds. Currently, our solution to either case is to loop an auxiliary timeline with an empty carriage return to each projector. Our loop runs about every 15 seconds. This seems to keep all connections (including our Panasonic projector) open instead of risking that a command be sent during the previously mentioned time. We feel this is currently our best option, though perhaps there is something we haven't thought of. If there is anyone that sees any potential issues with this (or as always, if there are any questions), please let us know. Thank you.

Thank you all for your quick responses. I apologize for the delay in mine - had to handle some other projects. As far as offsetting the commands by .1 second, I should have mentioned we are edge blending our two projectors for one full stage image. Offsetting the commands even by that small a margin looks too noticeable in the space. Mike, thank you for your info on Watchout's order of events. Out of curiosity, do the TCP commands ever execute from the display computer? In the past, we have run RS232 commands out of our display computers, but even if we disconnect our display computer from our router, we can send the TCP commands just from production. I assume that because the nature of networking is that everything is talking to each other, it would naturally work as long as any sending/receiving devices are connected. But I'm curious to know if our aux timeline cues placed in our main timeline send those commands out of the display computers. I hope that makes sense... Since my original post, we went from our Netgear wireless router to a 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit switch. That improved the success rate up to an estimated 90%. This of course still leaves us with concerns over the other 10%. On another point of note, we have connected a separate computer to our switch to interface with our PJ Link devices directly. When we send shutter commands through that, it works every time. It seems like the core difference there is that the PJ Link interface isn't ever closing that TCP connection to the devices. What is the reasoning behind Watchout closing and reestablishing the TCP connections after a given period of inactivity?

Hello, I am having difficulty maintaining reliability on sending shutter and power commands to our projectors via PJ Link. The codes are successfully sent about 60-70% of the time, so I am trying to figure out what could be causing these intermittent failures. Our equipment/setup is as follows... Production Computer: Dell Optiplex 960 Display Computer: Show Sage Shuttle SH97R - using two thunderbolt outputs Netgear ProSAFE Wireless-N 8-port Gigabit VPN Firewall (FVS318N) (2) 150' cat5e cables (2) PJ-Net Organizers (POA-PN03C) (2) Sanyo PLC XP200L Projectors Networking/Codes... Router IP: 192.168.1.200 Production IP: 192.168.1.201 Display IP: 192.168.1.209 Projector 1 IP: 192.168.1.211 Projector 2 IP: 192.168.1.212 All have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 I am using a TDP connection to both projectors with the port number 4352. My aux timelines send the following codes to both projectors simultaneously: Power On: %1POWR 1$0D Power Off: %1POWR 0$0D Shutter Close: %1AVMT 11$0D Shutter Open: %1AVMT 10$0D As I said before, every so often one or more of these codes will fail to execute. This is sometimes accompanied by an error message in Watchout. Example... From String Output "#ProjectorName" of Output List, 2015-10-02 08:53:16 Warning: Failed delivering data: %1AVMT 11$0D Additionally, the shutter commands will occasionally send, but fail to execute at the same time (one will close or open its shutter a split second after the other). I'm not sure if these are two separate issues caused by two different things, or if there is one fix for both. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks! - Rob