This is part of the instruction readme that stumped me a little bit. The command line commands mentioned, where abouts can you enter these commands? If the python script prompt/exe is run then the command line is locked and doesn't allow text input. The web interface is accessible although its been assigned a dhcp address 192.168.0.17 rather than the 192.168.1.2 listed in the instructions. Luckily none of this should be a problem at work as our network there seems to be fine but would be nice to nail down the cause of this just in case our infrastructure changes.

one slight addition to the project I thought of this morning was it wouldn't take much to use the same codebase to do an "ON AIR" light, possibly just add to the Python so any units set to an id of 00 would show the status of recording and streaming from the same XML that you are reading the tally data from .

Planning to try and use my prototype in anger on a real job on Saturday so will report back after that

cheers

Ian

Hi DynamoBen,

Firstly a big Thanks for your excellent project!

I’m presently proto-building your project and left with one question: Do I need to load the eeprom with the files loaded from your data directory as per instructions? I’ve noticed that your code does interact (write) with the memory with initial values already? I guess I’m overlooking something here?

Kind regards,
Piet

Thanks to the pandemic I've been using vMix a fair bit along with these tally lights. I've been considering updating the project so that you could connect these lights directly to vMix. While not nearly as configurable or flexible they would work like any other tally light connected to vMix and eliminates an additional piece of software. (the current method would still work, this would be an additional feature)

Thoughts? Interest?

If I can get VMix fixed I would be interested in the new approach, but at this point it looks like I will be moving on because it no longer works for me.

So I have tested this with cheaper hardware: a LOL1n NodeMCU Compatible ESP8266 CH340 Board ESP 8266 ($12 AUD on ebay here

Different pin numbering as follows:
D1 is the front tally (GPIO5 on the Huzzah)
D5 os the operator tally (RED Led | GPIO13 on Huzzah)
D7 is the operator preview (RED Led | GPIO14 on Huzzah)
D6 is the reset switch. (GPIO12 on Huzzah)

Hope this helps if someone is making a lot of these, 1/3 the price if it is not cheap enough already :)

(Note in testing it seems there may be a slight latency in the cheaper board compared with the Huzzah, only noticeable with fast switching / fading back and forth, on the fourth or fith fade / switch it reacts a bit slower)

UPDATE: Latency seems to have been fixed by selecting the board type: "Node MCU 1.0 ESP12E" in the Arduino IDE when uploading the firmware. Latency now seems identical to Huzzah based tally.

I just committed a new version of code that allows you to select multicast (the original way) or vMix TCP. If you use the vMix TCP protocol all you have to do is enter the PCs hostname and the vMix port and you are ready to go, no additional application to run or special shot naming.

I've not done a ton of testing yet or updated the readme but it seems to work if you want to try it.

https://github.com/DynamoBen/WIFItally