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Instead of using one huge tablet, could MS be made to display 2-up on two smaller tablets positioned side-by-side in portrait mode?
The link could be done with BT or Wifi.
This could be done in two ways:
1. a master MS and a 'remote display' companion app which gets the page(s) to be displayed (with some buffering, sending them early etc) from the master.
2. twp MS copies working together (each would need its own copy of the
same PDF, so only the page to bedisplayed/ location, scroll speed etc would need to be transferred.
This would allow two 'music stand buddies' to each have a less huge tablet, but share them to make one large 2-up display.
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04-09-2014, 03:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-09-2014, 03:45 PM by Joche.)
Hi,
Great idea. But why only 2 tablets ? All connected tablets should be better no ?
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I think for starters 2 would be sufficient, as controlling more may put too much strain on the controlling tablet.
I agree that things like setlist selection/upates, next/prev piece, metronome settings, start/stop indication (maybe even which links/repeats to use/nt use) should be controlled by one for many tablets, but displaying the pages would be overkill (and likely each musicion would have their own sheet which may not align the same on the pages anyway)
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I would not like to struggle with more than one tablet.
I think this is different from the desktop PC world where I also like to work on 2 monitors.
Charging, updating, second music stand etc. seems too much effort for me for the small advantage that you get.
Plus it makes Mobilesheets much more complicated to maintain - I think Mike should put his energy on other tasks first.
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There are iDisplay (and I think a few similar apps) which turn an Android or iPad into a second display for a MAc or PC. Maybe something like that could be used? not sure there are ways to allow the use of another android (running MS) as the controller, but if there are libs, then half teh work might already be done...
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The secondary display API would only work if you can output the display of one Android tablet to another. I do not believe this is supported, as android tablets don't typically have input ports for video sources. Correct me if I'm wrong.
This problem could be solved using Wifi. Other apps on the iPad have managed to implement features where one tablet controls other tablets, so that one person can turn pages for everyone. This is a feature I planned on implementing myself at some point, but there are just a lot of other things that need to be finished first. In order to support what you are describing, it's basically the same idea (one tablet controlling another), but instead of displaying the same page, it just has a page offset of 1. If I add this "page offset" concept, you could use any number of tablets, each with a different offset to display a different page in the song. The file that is used by the first tablet would need to be sent to all the tablets first, so that the only wifi data that needs to be sent is commands (turn page, etc). I do not think it would work well if image data had to be streamed.
Mike
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I think the app mentioned above does something like that, ie show an Android screen on another Android/valid receiver.
But I do agree that it is likely better to only have to send page commands and load the relevant pages from local storage etc.
In fact, it might be best to abstract the whole thing so that the local documents/scores don't need the same layout (what is on what page), but that the master sends instructions what section of what piece of music to display (next) and then the local copy of the app can translate that to what it can display. That would allow different musicians/readers to have different score layouts (some may prefer to see only their staff or voice, others need to see the whole score or other parts) and those may not always be on the same page. This would require everyone to define the same links (repeats, D.C, D.S etc) but will also allow the master/maetro to centrally select which of those to play, and the master app then simply sends that info (possibly queuing the upcoming parts early, so that it can then execute the next change with a single short command)..?
