Hiya all
I’m working on a system that normally uses one laptop connected to one projector.
I want to have a second laptop as backup in case the first one suffers a hardware crash, and am looking for a solution that would allow the second PC to
A) Copy what the first PC is doing in vvvv
B) Detect the first PC has crashed (or has not crashed)
C) Activate a KVM switch so that it now outputs to the projector
D) (optional) In an ideal world it could work both ways, so that if you had switched to the second one after a crash and rebooted the first, the first would automatically take on a backup role and could also trigger the KVM.
The computers will be networked and taking input from Artnet, which is already UDP so getting input data to both won’t be a problem.
In terms of A) and B) You get two computer to run the same patch. You then create a subpatch on the first that sends regular ‘heartbeats’ out via UDP. You create a subpatch on the second computer that detects the heartbeats. If they have gone it takes over. This is pretty straightforward but I was wondering if there was any clever boygrouping way to do this so the backup patch is updated automatically and so forth? I could boygroup everything but then would need to split sending/listening for heartbeats based on boygroup clientID. Anyone tried this?
for C) and D) I’m not too sure. Ideally there would be a KVM switch that can be controlled via a network connection. Anyone know of one? That would be the simplest way to allow both computers to control the switch.
There are other solutions for C) as well. Like using a USB relay hardwired to a button on a basic KVM, or somehow sending ps/2 ascii data to one that allows keyboard switching. Has anyone had any experience using a KVM like this?
And I’m keen to hear your ideas for backups as well. Has anyone here done a big (multi-pc) installation? How do you do backups for that?
Cheers