CurtisWhitby Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Hi everyone, I'm looking for a way to trigger a PowerPoint presentation remotely. Normally this would be easy using clicker which I have.The trouble is, I need to trigger the next slide across 3 computers at the same time. All 3 computers need to advance at the exact same moment.Also, the computers would be quite far away (so no usb extensions!). It could be done with 3 clickers next to each other but that wouldn't exactly be easy or reliable.In a perfect world I would like a keyboard in the control room where when I press space all 3 computers advance at once. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?If not, can anyone think of another way of doing it? Thanks,Curtis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 The bigger problem here is not the keypress going to 3 machines but rather ensuring that all 3 machines are running at exactly the same speed so that they all process the keypress at the same time and make the changes at the same time. If one of the machines has an auto-update program running in the background or has a piece of software suddenly hog system resources it's going to be noticeably out of sync with the other 2 machines. The better solution is to set up one machine that's outputting 3 screens that way the presentations will always be perfectly synchronized as they're actually one presentation. It's a relatively common IT teccy type job to add multiple (different) screens to one PC - certainly at one point windows had the software to do it with a few clicks built in! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdherring Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Have a look at http://officeone.mvps.org/powershow/powershow.html Should do everything you need as long as you can have all the laptops connected via ethernet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CurtisWhitby Posted May 28, 2013 Author Share Posted May 28, 2013 Thanks for the replies. Having a look at PowerShow, I think I can set it up to have one computer connected to 3 monitors (in this case projectors) and use the synchronous shows feature.This should run 3 individual shows with one on each monitor. Will give it a try later when I can get hold a another monitor to test it on. Thanks guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright2104 Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 I'v done it by building a wee box with a next and back arrow. I originally made it up with the usb controller part taken from an old usb keyboard, and wired the buttons up to the correct pins required on the controller. I then realised that the usb was hard to extend usually done via cat5, so I took the controller out of the box with the buttons, and put it in another box and then wired the switches directly to a cat5 socket, and then had a cat5 socket on my receiver box wired to the usb controller, and then just wired it to a second controller, which gave me the two separate usb devices controlled by a remote button. I am now considering adding switches to my receiver box to allow me to select between the computers. I dont see why this wont work with 3 of the keyboard controllers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IRW Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 (Ahem, shameless plug time) Would TriggerPoint be of any use to you? I'm currently developing TP 2.0 which will support control via Artnet. I'm trying to make the new version fairly flexible so am open to 'useful' suggestions! Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CurtisWhitby Posted June 2, 2013 Author Share Posted June 2, 2013 Having a look at PowerShow it is really what I am looking for. Unfortunately, I am on a bit of a tight budget and can't afford the licence.I was really looking for something free. Responce time is not a problem as any PCs that I will use will be completely striped down with no background processes.Electronics isn't really my thing so building a box isn't going to happen.TriggerPoint 2 looks like it might be good. So if I had 3 PCs each with ppt and tp2, I could trigger the next slide over the network from a laptop with an artnet controller? Is that right? As a 'useful' suggestion, would you consider a client-server style system? Ie, set up server on the 3 PCs and have another with a client to trigger them all at once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IRW Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 Having a look at PowerShow it is really what I am looking for. Unfortunately, I am on a bit of a tight budget and can't afford the licence.I was really looking for something free. Responce time is not a problem as any PCs that I will use will be completely striped down with no background processes.Electronics isn't really my thing so building a box isn't going to happen.TriggerPoint 2 looks like it might be good. So if I had 3 PCs each with ppt and tp2, I could trigger the next slide over the network from a laptop with an artnet controller? Is that right? As a 'useful' suggestion, would you consider a client-server style system? Ie, set up server on the 3 PCs and have another with a client to trigger them all at once. Hi Curtis, That's the idea behind it- in the new version you could potentially set all three 'servers' to the same address if you wanted and they would do exactly the same thing. The client/server system that you mentioned is kind of already there with the 'TriggerNode' program that can run on a separate system and give you supported commands from the remote system (First, Previous, Next, Last, Jump). At the moment it's only set up to talk to a single system, but wouldn't be too much work to adapt it to send out the same command to multiple servers. Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 I've got a system that is free and works, but only in the context of PCStage. But one can use PCStage without licence to do this, and if all that is needed is to sync a pile of powerpoints together on a single advance button, then its just a free download, and an hours experimenting. There are two components, one is a "slave" program that runs on the powerpoint computers, and the other is a plugin for PCStage that commands the slaves. The mnaster and slaves all have to be on the same network. Well, actually the same subnet, or indeed broadcast domain, in increasing levels of terminological accuracy. Read all about it here. The instructions do assume a certainly familiarity with Windows and PCStage... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CurtisWhitby Posted June 3, 2013 Author Share Posted June 3, 2013 I've just given PCStage a try with the plugin and pptslave picks up the commands but doesn't appear to be sending them to PowerPoint.Does this only work on particular versions of PowerPoint as I am trying to get it to work with the 2013 preview version. I also tried it on a different computer with PowerPoint 2007 but still no luck. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnymurray Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Another option is MasterCue: http://www.hiveindustries.com/cueing-systems/mastercue-v6-usb/master-cue-v6-system-detail I know you are on a tight budget this time but for future reference the above does exactly what you require plus more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Hi Curtis, sorry, no ideas, it should work with pretty much any version of PowerPoint, unless Microsoft have made the newer version(s) deliberately incompatible with the older, which would be "unusual". Unfortunately, I'm not near a compatible setup so cant test today, but will test tomorrow (my time!) and report back. I haven't used it in a very long time. Two thoughts - you are loading and opening powerpoint through slave commands and not directly, otherwise the slave can't link to powerpoint, and VBA is installed? I dont even know if VBA is optional any more. Are there any error messages in the log window, or any popup messages? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smalljoshua Posted June 4, 2013 Share Posted June 4, 2013 Sometimes 64Bit versions of Office don't like being told what to do by 32Bit apps. I had to install 32Bit office to get it working correctly with 3rd party software. Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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