[PD] A little help in automating pd?

[Daniel Wilcox]

Thanks guys.

On 5/5/07, marius schebella <marius.schebella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I don't know if it has advantages, but it is possoble to open/close
> patches from another patch. Maybe an advantage would be that it is
> faster, because you don't have to resart pd. but I don't know how to
> handle crashes...


Currently, I call ps every now and then to get the status of pd using pd's
pid.
If it has stalled I can kill and restart it.  I'm setting up my whole system
as
a Linux daemon that runs in the background and handles patch control and
input devices.  It starts jack for me and connects all of my midi
connections.
Currently, I'm using udev to tell the daemon when a new device is connected
so it will start a new listener that sends OSC from the device  or to shut
it down
on a removal (device = sdl joystick). That way, everything is plug and play
since
I have no way of setting anything up without a gui and mouse/keyboard.  If
anyone
is interested, I'm thinking of making a release available to try out.  There
is a client mode
that will only handle the devices so multiple machines can send input info.
(ahh OSC power).
It's all hackish alpha, but it is starting to work ...

anyway, have a look at
> manuals/pd-msg/2.message_and_pd/2.open_close.pd


I swear I went through the whole manual and didnt notice this!

you open a patch by using a message to pd (starting with ";pd").
> the first argument is open, the second the patchname and the third the
> directory. to close you give the argument menuclose and then the prefix
> "pd-" and the patchname. some time ago it was not possible to use
> abbreviations for directories (like a dot). maybe this works now. but
> you can always use the full path name. regarding closing, many people
> are talking about a "closebang" but I am not sure if that is about
> shutting down pd or closing a patch. it should provide a clean shutdown.
>   maybe this affects serial connections? I don't know. For me it worked
> the way I described it above and I had no problems.
> [that is a message(
> [;pd open mypatch.pd /home/marius/pd(
> [;pd menuclose pd-mypatch.pd(


Awesome .. I will have to try this out!

marius.
>
>
> Daniel Wilcox wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > So this is my first post to the list.
> >
> > back story:
> > I'm running pd in Linux on a small wearable computer.  I do not
> > use a screen, mouse, or keyboard, just an arduino box with a button
> > and some other doo dads to control patch loading / activation.
> >
> > I've successfully automated pd in Windows using a python windows
> > testing library to grab widgets and send keys to applications, but the
> Gnome
> > alternative cannot see tcl/tk widgets ... I'm better off running without
> > a gui anyway. :P
> >
> > I've hacked a quick controller patch using the ;open message for a show,
> > but that was only
> > a temp fix as I have no way to close patches from within pd ... or is
> > there?  I do not
> > want to have to open an entire set of patches at once as my machine only
> > has 256 Mb of ram
> > and, if I start using lots of samples, this could be a problem.
> >
> > So now I'm exec launching and SIGINT'ing pd in C :
> > - lauch pd with the current patch and remember the process id
> > - the patch contains an osc object to receive all of my controllers
> > - sigint pd when I'm done (btw Whats the cleanest kill signal to send?)
> >
> > Now my questions are:
> >
> > - Is there a built in way to close an open pd patch from within pd ...?
> >
> > My thinking is that I can open pd with a small control patch that
> > receives messages to open and close
> > patches.
> >
> > - If not, has anyone made an automation object? Would anyone be
> > interested if I attempted
> > to write one?
> >
> > - Does having a built-in method to do this provide any advantage over my
> > current solution of launching/killing pd?
> >
> > The advantage I have now is that I can monitor the running status of pd
> > so if it crashes, which it has done when using
> > the aforementioned temp hack, I can safely kill and restart on the
> > current patch.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > --
> > Dan Wilcox
> > danomatika
> > www.robotcowboy.com <http://www.robotcowboy.com>
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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>


-- 
Dan Wilcox
danomatika
www.robotcowboy.com
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