Wall Controller

The WallController allows you to control the video wall as follows:

1. toggle which computer is displayed on the wall,
2. turn the wall monitors to ’On’ or ’Idle’, and
3. change the wall LCDs brightness.

GUI Tool

One way to do this is to run the GUI version of the WallController.

On the PC, it can be started via the WallControl shortcut on the desktop or in the taskbar, and selecting the Start-Wall-Controller () shortcut. If for some reason neither is present, use Windows File Explorer and go to C:/Program Files/VideoWall/Tools/WallControl.

On the Linux server, it can be started with the wall-controller-gtk command after module load wall-controller. Usage for wall-controller-gtk is

  -verb                set verbose mode (can be repeated)
  -nocomm              disable communication with BCM (debug mode)
  -host <hostname>     specify BCM hostname
  -port <#>            specify port number
  -h -help --help      show this help
______________
SGK ver. 1.0/5

This will start the following window, with an intuitive GUI:

The help file, available under “Menu”, explains it all:

Menu:
  Refresh: read the wall status,
  Help: show this help,
  Quit: exit this app.

Buttons:
  Source: select which computer is shown on the wall.
  Wall: show/toggle if the video wall is ’On’ or ’Idle’.
  Brightness: show the wall brightness, adjust it with the [--], [-], [+] or [++] buttons, then use the [set] button to change its value.

Non-GUI Tools

Alternatively, on the PC, you can use one of the four Set-Wall-XX shortcuts, where XX stands for PC, Linux, On or Idle, to select which computer is shown on the wall or toggle the video wall to ’On’ or ’Idle’.

These will open a window that looks something like this:

that you then need to dismiss by selecting the window and pressing the [Enter] key.

On the Linux server, you can use the wall-controller command after module load wall-controller. Usage for wall-controller is

  -s|--source value      set source to given value: pcw10|linux, value can be abbreviated
  -w|--wall state        set wall to given state: on|idle, value can be abbreviated
  -b|--brightness value  set brightness to given value: 0-100
  -v|--verbose           set verbose mode (can be repeated to increase verbosity)
  -r|--raw               set raw (unformatted) output
  -n|--nocomm            disable communication with BCM (debug mode)
  -host <hostname>       specify BCM hostname
  -port <#>              specify port number
  -h -help --help        show this help
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SGK ver. 1.0/5

Note

The WallController can be installed on any laptop running Windows 10 (or Windows 8) that can VPN into CfA, or can be run on a CF-managed Linux machine, or on an Android device that can VPN into CfA (sorry no Apple products). Contact Sylvain if you’d like to know how to do either.