Watching the radio mics

1. Point it at the rack

Settings → Wireless → Add source. A source is a Sennheiser EW-DX receiver, an HTTP address that returns the readings, or a file on disk that something else keeps up to date. An EW-DX receiver needs nothing in between; for anything else Cuerunner reads one simple JSON document, and anything that can produce it will do. The format is here; it is about ten lines.

Demo is a simulated twelve-pack rack with a pack in trouble, one low and one that never reports. It is there to see what the panel does without a receiver on the bench.

Sennheiser EW-DX

Cuerunner talks to the receiver over the network, so the receiver and the show computer have to be on the same one. In WSM, turn on third-party access for the receiver and set its password. Then open Settings → Wireless: the receivers on the network are listed under On the network, and Add makes one a source and puts the cursor in its password box. The password is kept on this computer, not in the show, so a copy of the show does not carry it.

It looks when you open that page and when you press Look again, and never in the background. Nothing is added by itself, and a show with no source here has no wireless alarms and sends nothing to the network. A receiver that does not appear can still be added by hand: Add source, choose Sennheiser EW-DX, and type its address.

Each receiver is one source, and every channel with a transmitter linked to it appears as a pack: name, battery, signal and frequency. A channel with nothing linked shows nothing, so a pack patched to it counts as offline until it is switched on. Packs on AA cells report a percentage and no minutes remaining.

The first time Cuerunner connects it remembers which receiver it is — the serial number printed on it — and the certificate it presented, and shows both under the source. If the receiver's address changes, Cuerunner looks for that serial on the network, carries on from wherever the receiver is now, and says so under the source; nothing needs re-entering, and the show still names the old address. If a different receiver turns up at the address, or the certificate changes, Cuerunner refuses to connect rather than trust it silently, and does not send it the password. Press Trust again when you have replaced the receiver.

2. Enter the plot

The plot is optional. A channel that is reporting appears in the panel by itself, under the name its receiver gives it, so a receiver shows something the moment it is added. The plot is what you add when you want more than that: Show Settings → Mic plot is the rig as you know it — pack 4 is channel 4, and channel 4 is whoever is wearing it. It is the expectation, and it is what makes a pack that never reports an alarm rather than a blank row.

A swap mid-show is a change of who is on which pack, recorded where the report can see it: change the performer on a pack row and the swap is logged with the time.

3. Read it during the show

The Wireless tab in the dock sorts by trouble rather than by number: critical battery first, then a pack that has gone quiet, then a low one, with everything healthy below. Each row carries the pack, the performer, battery and RF as bars and numbers, the frequency, and whether the channel is muted.

The wording is exact, because the difference matters at 19:55:

• Unpatched — no channel assigned. A patch waiting to be made, not an alarm.
• Silent — assigned, but has never reported. The rack may still be booting, or the pack is off.
• Offline — reported before, and has now stopped for longer than the threshold. This one raises an alarm.

A Sennheiser EW-DX receiver also says what it itself complains of, and it is shown under the pack: encryption error — no audio is critical — the pack is linked and nobody hears it — and RF overload and audio clipping are worth knowing. Each raises one alarm when it appears, and clipping, which comes and goes by the second, at most once a minute.

Alarms appear above the panel and in the transport bar, so a battery warning finds you even with the dock closed. The thresholds — battery low, battery urgent, signal weak, how long silence counts as offline — are in Settings → Wireless.

4. Before the doors: the check

Check in the Wireless header answers one question: is every pack ready to be worn? It says so in a sentence — All 12 packs ready — or lists the ones that are not, the ones that would fail first at the top, each with its performer and why.

• Not ready — not reporting, stopped reporting, a battery at the urgent line, or a critical complaint from the receiver such as a key that does not match.
• Worth a look — a battery at the low line, a weak signal, clipping, a pack muted at the receiver, or a pack with no channel patched.
• A charge that will not last — a pack that is fine now but started lower than a show costs it: battery 40% — a show used 24% last time.

That last one comes from what each pack used in the shows before, which Cuerunner keeps on this computer. A stretch of continuous reporting is one session; a pack that goes quiet for twenty minutes was switched off, and a jump of ten points is fresh batteries, so either starts a new one. It reads the worst of the last three, asks for a quarter more than that, and keeps the urgent line spare. The gauge on AA cells is noisy, so a session shorter than twenty minutes, or one that used only a point or two, says nothing. The report shows it beside each pack's lowest battery.

It is live, so it turns green as you switch a pack on or change a battery, and Copy puts it in a form you can paste to whoever is on the deck. It never stops a GO — Cuerunner does not hold playback for anything — it is the question you ask at the half, and the person who can see the stage decides.

5. Muting from the cue list

A Mic cue (the + menu) mutes or unmutes one Sennheiser EW-DX mic at its receiver, so the pack that is offstage for the scene is closed by the cue list and not by a hand on a fader. Choose the mic from the packs the show knows — by the plot and who is wearing the pack, or by what the receiver calls the channel — and whether the cue should Mute or Unmute.

• There is no toggle. A toggle run twice leaves the mic as the first run found it, and a cue list you can jump around in cannot know which that was.
• It asks afterwards. The receiver is read back, and a mute that did not happen is an error on the cue — in the log and on its row — never a mic left open in silence.
• It is a channel, not a person. A pack that changes hands keeps its channel, so the cue keeps muting the same mic.
• With no mic chosen the cue does nothing and says so. Scrubbing into the middle of a timeline does not replay a mute that is already behind you.

6. The report

Report switches the panel to what the session recorded: the lowest battery each pack reached, its worst signal, and the swaps that were made. It is the thing to look at after a show that had a dropout, and the thing to hand over when somebody else takes the rig.

Under a pack that had trouble, each incident has its time and what was playing: 20:14 went quiet during cue 47 Walk-in, or between cues when nothing was. A pack going quiet, its signal turning weak and a new complaint from the receiver are each noted, against the cue that was live at that moment. The report covers a channel that is in no plot as well, so a show that never entered one can still ask what the night did to its packs. Like the rest of the session it starts over when Cuerunner does, so copy it before you quit.