On 09/07/12 14:43, Richie Cyngler wrote:
Hi All,
I'm planning on using Pd for an installation in Melbourne in a couple of weeks. It's running fine, Pduino working, sensors working. I'm just wondering is there is a object (or series) of objects I can use to "power down" the patch, or even kill Pd, at a designated time. The installation will run into the night for a week, I'll be there to start it up each night but not to shut it down. I'm probably running on OSX, windows may be an option. A sleep or shutdown timer for the OS would be very useful too, seems odd these are not standard.
Any suggestions?
as others mentioned, system preferences let you tell the computer to shut down at a set time, and also to startup again when power is restored after switching off if you like,
a user can be set up to login automatically on startup in the accounts preferences,
what hasn't been mentioned is the easiest place to get a patch starting automatically on login of that user is in the dock ... put the patch in the dock, then check the appropriate box
if you need a set of things starting in a fixed order then you could start them from a little shell script and put that in the dock to be started at login
or use an applescript, or these days automator, if you prefer that to shell and again put it in the dock etc
most of these have been part of OSX forever, and something quite similar was part of OS9 before that if I remember correctly.
There are many other more arcane ways to achieve this as well, but for me this system, especially making sure that switching off then back on resets and restarts everything correctly has made life much easier with installations - gallery attendants are usually able to use a power switch, but often anything more complicated is too intimidating. Even several computers communicating over a LAN have worked well that way ... with a little thought and some appropriate delays after the [loadbang]s to make sure the network is up and running before pd tries to connect.
The power off - power on cycle is fine if you are not changing the files you start up from, and the journaling on HFS+ seems very robust and tolerant of just switching off.
Simon