Both the branding and ticker players can be triggered by automation systems. Trigger Master serves as an optional hub to the players. Instead of the players reading automation directly, Trigger Master can read the automation pipe (IP or COM) and then push the commands out over another IP pipe. This is essential for COM because only one process can open a COM port making it impossible for both players to deal with automation over that port. Instead, the triggers come to Trigger Master and then echoed over IP so both players can read them.
Trigger Master is essential for IP too because automation systems usually expect to send commands out over a single IP port where the IP port is a server (as opposed to a client). So, automation wants to connect to a single IP port so it can send triggers to both branding and ticker players.
Best to think of Trigger Master as 2 pipes. One for receiving automation triggers (COM or IP) and the other for communicating with one or more players.
In the Main tab of Trigger Master, we display
IP address of the system running Trigger Master
Player Connection: The IP port for the player(s)
Automation Connection: This is the IP port for automation. In this group, there is support for Trigger Master serving as either IP server or client. Acting as a server is more common but both scenarios are needed. The field Automation Server is the ip address of the automation server in the case where automation takes the role of server. But the more common case is Trigger Master being the IP server and hence, there’s no need to including an IP address for automation.
While automation systems can push triggers (aka commands) out over IP, it’s also possible to send commands over a com port either exclusively or simultaneous to an IP port. The COM tab is used to define the COM port used:
To help test communications with players, Trigger Master allows manually sending out triggers from the Manual Trigger tab:
Finally, the Preferences tab provides a way to optionally have the player(s) reply back to automation. So, it goes in the reverse direction of the trigger. This can be used to acknowledge to automation that a trigger has been acted upon.
Also, there is support for Regular Expressions to format automation commands before being pushed out to the players. This is a useful way to reformat automation commands especially in cases where automation doesn’t meet Chameleon’s specifications.
Trigger Master is designed to act like a System Tray application. When closing the app, it doesn’t shutdown but instead gets tucked away in the system tray. To relaunch it (show it) from the system tray, either double click it there or right-click the mouse to get options including launching it or shutting it down.
