Venue Mode

PRISMATIK’s second runtime personality — turns the app into a permanent installation manager. Astronomical scheduling, Art-Net output, process watchdog, multi-machine session mesh.

Overview

Venue Mode is the same PRISMATIK installer and binary — but when the venueMode flag is on, the app boots into a different shell. Instead of the show-planning dashboard, you get an operator-grade control surface designed for fixed installs: architectural lighting, hospitality, retail, corporate AV, theme parks, museums.

It solves the gap most production tools leave open: there’s no native lightweight scheduler for time-of-day control. Operators wire DMX → Ai/Hippo/Resolume → console, then have nothing to trigger day/night transitions except manual intervention or third-party BMS hacks.

Venue Mode handles:

• Astronomical scheduling (sunrise/sunset/twilight) with offsets — no time updates required
• Real-time health monitoring (CPU, RAM, disk, S.M.A.R.T., temps)
• Manual override controls for facility managers who must never touch the underlying console
• Native Art-Net / sACN / OSC / MIDI / UDP output
• Process watchdog with auto-restart escalation (restart → reboot)
• OS startup integration — PRISMATIK starts with the machine, launches the companion process
• Multi-machine session mesh (mDNS-discovered, hub/spoke roles)
• Cloud sync to my.prismatik.run/dashboard/venues for remote monitoring

When to Use

Enable Venue Mode when:

• You’re commissioning a permanent installation (architectural facade, retail interior, museum exhibit, etc.)
• The site needs to come on/off at sunrise/sunset/scheduled times without anyone present
• A facility manager will operate it day-to-day but should never need to learn the media server
• You need a watchdog to keep a media server alive without IT intervention
• You’re managing multiple sites and want one cloud pane of glass

Keep using Desktop Mode (the default) for show authoring, tour design, planning, and any rehearsal/event work. Venue Mode is for deployment, not authoring — you author a show in Desktop Mode, then ship the show file to a Venue Mode machine.

Step-by-Step

Enabling Venue Mode for the first time

1. From a Desktop Mode install, open Venue Mode Setup from the home screen.
2. Click Enable Venue Mode. PRISMATIK writes venueMode: true to {userData}/venue-config.json.
3. Restart the app. On next launch, PRISMATIK boots into the Venue Mode shell.
4. The shell opens to the Status tab — empty until you configure a schedule.

Configuring a venue

The Venue Mode shell has 5 tabs:

Setting up a schedule

1. Config → Location → enter the venue’s GPS coordinates (or a city name — PRISMATIK geocodes it). Time zone auto-detected.
2. Config → Schedule → add triggers. Each trigger is either:
   • Astral — sunrise / sunset / civil twilight / nautical twilight / astronomical twilight, with optional offset (e.g. “sunset − 30 min”)
   • Fixed time — wall-clock time (e.g. “23:00” for closing)
3. Each trigger sets a target DMX level (a single channel, faded over a configurable duration with a configurable curve).
4. Save. The Schedule Runner recalculates today’s triggers and applies the correct state for the current time-of-day immediately.

Wiring up the output

1. Config → Output Protocol → choose Art-Net (most common for Ai/Hippo/Resolume), sACN, OSC, MIDI, or raw UDP.
2. Configure: universe, channel, target IP/port, NIC if multi-homed.
3. Continuous output Hz — typically 40Hz for Art-Net. Higher Hz uses more CPU but smoother fades on receivers that don’t interpolate.
4. The FadeEngine ramps the channel between schedule states using the curve you pick (linear / ease-in / ease-out / S-curve).

Hold Screen (optional)

1. Config → Hold Screen → enable.
2. Set venue branding, optional logo, optional 4-digit PIN.
3. PRISMATIK boots into a full-screen lockout view by default; only the venue name, current time, and a small unlock button are visible.
4. Operators tap to unlock, enter PIN, and see the standard Venue Mode UI.

If you don’t need it (small unattended booth, no public-facing screen), disable it and PRISMATIK boots directly to the Venue Mode shell.

Process Watchdog

1. Config → Process Watch → Add Process.
2. Pick the executable (Ai.exe, Resolume Arena.exe, Hippotizer.exe, etc.).
3. Set detection method (process name match / window title match / TCP port heartbeat).
4. Set recovery escalation:
   • On crash → restart process (after N seconds)
   • If restart fails M times in T minutes → reboot the OS
5. Watchdog runs continuously and surfaces status in the Status tab + System Health.

Multi-machine session (mesh)

1. On the hub machine (the authoritative one — usually the FOH operator’s laptop or the primary server):
   • Config → Network → Create Session → name the session, set a 4-digit PIN, set role to Hub.
2. On each spoke machine (the others in the same venue):
   • Open Venue Mode → Config → Network → Available Sessions lists nearby instances discovered via mDNS.
   • Pick the session → enter the PIN → role = Spoke.
3. Hub can now push schedule changes to all spokes in one action.
4. Live Topology in the Flow Tool shows the live mesh.

Common Workflows

Authoring a show in Desktop Mode, deploying to a Venue Mode site

1. On your studio laptop (Desktop Mode), build the schedule + output config + process watch settings.
2. Save the show. PRISMATIK writes a venueConfig snapshot into show.json.
3. Copy the project folder to the venue machine.
4. On the venue machine (Venue Mode enabled), open the show. PRISMATIK applies the venueConfig immediately — schedule runner recalculates today’s triggers, output snaps to the correct state.
5. Restart the venue machine. PRISMATIK boots into Venue Shell on its own.

Remote command via cloud dashboard

1. Sign in to my.prismatik.run/dashboard/venues.
2. Every Venue Mode instance with cloud sync enabled appears in the list with online/offline status.
3. Click an instance → send a command: Reload, Restart, Override → Force On, Override → Force Off, Override → Auto, Scrub to time.
4. Command queues in the cloud; the venue machine picks it up on its next heartbeat (typically within 30 seconds).

Force-on for a non-scheduled event

1. Venue Mode → Overrides tab → Force ON → set fade duration → confirm.
2. Override persists across reboots.
3. Back to Auto when you want the schedule to resume.

Tips & Shortcuts

• venueMode is per-machine — it lives in {userData}/venue-config.json, never in show.json. Copying a show between machines doesn’t accidentally turn Venue Mode on.
• Schedule snapshots travel with the show — but instance-specific things (session ID, override state, machine UUID) do not.
• System Health is your first stop on any “site is acting weird” — CPU/GPU spikes, RAM exhaustion, disk full, temps high. Most “Ai stopped responding” reports are really hardware health issues.
• Test the schedule by using Scrub To Time before going live — fast-forward to sunset to verify the fade looks right without waiting.
• Cloud sync is opt-in per instance. Disable it for fully-offline sites; enable it for sites where remote ops makes sense.

Troubleshooting

“Schedule isn’t firing at sunset.”

• Check Location — wrong GPS coords = wrong sunset time. The Status tab shows the calculated time for tonight’s triggers.
• Check the Schedule tab — confirm the trigger is enabled.
• Check Overrides — Force On / Force Off blocks the schedule by design.

“Process Watchdog can’t see my media server.”

• Process name match is case-sensitive on some platforms. Try the exact name from Task Manager / Activity Monitor.
• For media servers that fork (some spawn a child renderer process), pick the main process, not the child.

“Spoke machine doesn’t see the hub session.”

• mDNS doesn’t cross subnets without IGMP snooping. Confirm both machines are on the same LAN.
• Some corporate networks block mDNS — check with the venue IT team.
• See Live Topology for the same diagnosis flow.

“Override won’t clear after reboot.”

• Overrides are persisted by design. To clear, set to Auto explicitly (don’t expect a reboot to clear them).

“Cloud heartbeat says offline but the machine is running.”

• Cloud sync uses HTTPS to dashboard.prismatik.run. Check the machine has outbound 443. Corporate firewalls sometimes block AWS API Gateway hosts.

Related Tools

• Venue Network — the session/peer panel for setting up the mesh.
• Schedule Manager — author schedules in Desktop Mode for export to a venue.
• Flow Tool — Live Topology — live network map across the venue mesh.

Source

Component: VenueModeSetup Main process: src/main/venue/ Spec: docs/VENUE-MODE.md and docs/VENUE-MODE-IMPLEMENTATION-PLAN.md