105 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
105 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
 
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# Companion Buttons
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A [ProdDash](http://chronicles-ab.waterschurch.org:3000/michael/ProdDash) module
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that shows any button from Bitfocus Companion — any page, any button — on a
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dashboard tile, exactly as Companion draws it: colours, text, icons and live
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feedback. It is meant for status buttons and anything else that says what is
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happening right now.
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- **One tile, one or many buttons.** A single button fills the tile; several
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share it in whatever grid makes each one biggest, and resizing the tile
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re-flows them.
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- **Live.** Every time Companion redraws a button (a status turning red, a
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tally lighting up), the tile shows it. Identical redraws — a status page that
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repaints every second with the same picture — are not re-sent.
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- **Read-only.** Nothing in the module can press a button or change anything
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in Companion.
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## Using it
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1. **Admin → Companion Buttons:** enter Companion's address — the machine
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running Companion and its web interface port (8000 unless changed in
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Companion's settings). Use `127.0.0.1` when Companion runs on the same
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machine as ProdDash.
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2. **＋ Add tile → Companion Buttons.** A new tile opens the picker: choose a
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page from the list and tap the buttons to show. The numbers on the picked
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buttons are the order they appear in. **Done** shows them.
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3. To change the buttons later, use the grid icon in the tile's title bar.
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The gear has one switch, **Captions**, which writes the page name under
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each button.
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Hover a button for its page and Companion location (`page/row/column`).
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### What a tile follows
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Each picked button is saved with its Companion id **and** its page, row and
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column. While Companion still has that button anywhere, the tile follows it,
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so dragging it to another spot or inserting a page in front changes nothing.
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If the id is gone — a page re-imported from a `.companionconfig` gives every
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button a new id — the tile shows whatever is at the saved page, row and column
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instead. Either way the tile saves back what it found, so it stays current.
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A button that is gone with nothing at its place shows **Not in Companion**,
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and the status dot turns amber.
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### When Companion is down
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The status dot turns red, the tile says **Companion offline** and fades the
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last pictures to grey, so nobody reads them as live. ProdDash keeps retrying
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(1, 2, 5, then every 10 seconds) and the tile recovers by itself.
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## How it works
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Companion 4 and 5 have no HTTP route that returns a button's picture. Their
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own web buttons and emulator get them from the tRPC websocket on the web
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interface port (`ws://<host>:<port>/trpc`). The module's server holds one such
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connection for all dashboards and uses two read-only subscriptions:
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`pages.watch` (pages, names, which button is where) and
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`preview.graphics.controlId` (a button's PNG, on every redraw). That is
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Companion's internal API rather than a documented one, so a future Companion
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release could change it; it was built and tested against Companion 5.0.7.
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| Route | What it serves |
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| --- | --- |
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| `GET /pages` | Every page and the buttons on it — the picker's list |
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| `GET /image/<id>` | One button's current picture as PNG — picker thumbnails |
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| `GET /stream/<page.row.column.id>/…` | SSE `button` events for a tile's buttons: all of them on connect, then each redraw or move |
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A tile holds one stream for all its buttons, because ProdDash carries at most
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32 streams per page and a status board can show more buttons than that.
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## Requirements
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- ProdDash 1.10.0 or newer.
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- Node.js 22 or newer for the built-in WebSocket. The packaged macOS app and
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the Windows bundle ship Node 24; on an older Node the admin page says so.
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- Companion 4 or newer, reachable from the ProdDash machine.
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- No dependencies, nothing to install.
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## Files
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| File | |
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| --- | --- |
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| `module.json` | Manifest |
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| `server.js` | Routes, button subscriptions, the per-tile streams |
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| `companion.js` | The connection to Companion's tRPC websocket and the page list |
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| `client.js`, `style.css` | The tile and its picker |
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| `test/companion.test.js` | Tests: `node test/companion.test.js` |
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| `test/companion-mock.js` | A stand-in Companion: `node test/companion-mock.js 18000`, then point the module at `127.0.0.1` port `18000` |
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## Installing
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This module lives in its own repository rather than in ProdDash's catalog, so
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**Available modules** in the admin page does not list it. Install it the way
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the module guide allows for any module: copy this folder (without `.git`) into
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the ProdDash data directory as `modules/companion-buttons/` and restart
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ProdDash.
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| OS | Folder |
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| --- | --- |
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| macOS | `~/Library/Application Support/ProdDash/modules/companion-buttons/` |
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| Windows | `%APPDATA%\ProdDash\modules\companion-buttons\` |
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To update, replace the folder's files and restart. Bump `version` in
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`module.json` with every change.
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