Elector Gears for XPression

Owned by Frank Chan (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 25, 2022
4 min read

Elector Gears for XPression is an agent for Elector that manages the XPression graphics package projects and populates the Elector database with information that is used by the Elector Player for XPression.

When a new XPression graphics project is ready or an existing XPression project has been modified, run Gears to update the available scenes in the Elector database. Those scenes will then used in the Playlist Builder module in Flow to create Elector Player playlists for broadcast. You can also delete old projects that are no longer needed.

For information on the scene and tag naming format, please see the documentation on Elector Player Tags.

Elector Gears for XPression should be installed locally on the same system running XPression Studio or BlueBox as it uses an instance of the Ross XPression engine to run. 

Access Gears for XPression

To access the Gears for XPression agent, run it from its desktop icon on the XPression system.

Note: The version of the Gears agent installed must match the version of XPression Studio installed. Check the XPression version that the agent was built for located in the status bar at the bottom of the main UI. If your XPression installation is upgraded to a new version, you will need to upgrade your Gears agent as well. Contact Bannister Lake Support for assistance.

Database Connection

On launching Gears for XPression, you will be shown the Preferences dialog first. This dialog will allow you to set or confirm the settings that are needed to connect to your Elector database. Connection and user authentication values would have been correctly configured during the initial installation. Use caution when modifying these values. Contact Bannister Lake Support for assistance.

  1. Modify the Flow credential values and/or the MySQL database connection values and settings as needed.

  2. Click OK to save your changes.

Gears for XPression UI

In the UI, there are 2 vertical sub-tabs. These are the ‘Update Scenes’ and ‘Delete Projects’ sub-tabs.

‘Update Scenes’ sub-tab

Used for adding or updating XPression scenes in the Elector Database.

  1. Select the Projects directory on the system that contains the Elector XPression Projects using the browse button (…).

  2. The grid control in the top left part of the ‘Update Scenes’ sub-tab will show the projects that are in the Projects folder.

    1. Note that any XPression file (.XPF) that has a name starting with '!' will be ignored and not added to the grid. This is a way to hide temporary or unused versions of the project files.

  3. Select one or more projects in the grid that you wish to update by clicking in the checkbox beside the project’s name.

  4. Check the ‘Delete scenes no longer in project’ option if any of the projects selected have already been ran through Gears previously and have been modified such that there are scenes that no longer exist or have been renamed.

  5. Click on the ‘Update' button to process the selected projects.

  6. When completed, a list of scenes will populate the ‘Scenes Added/Updated’ grid at the bottom of the tab.

‘Delete Projects’ sub-tab

Used for cleaning up old or unused XPression Projects in the Elector Database.

  1. Press the ‘Refresh’ button to ensure that the latest list of all Project Files are shown in the grid.

  2. Select the project files that you no longer need by clicking in the checkboxes.

  3. Click on the ‘Delete Projects’ button.