More videos synchronously controlled remotely over the network to start with VLC

A friendly design student wanted to build for the presentation of their thesis, a video installation. On television in the room arranged to be run in parallel with three of her films created and are started simultaneously. The three films are cut so that they share a work of art (and hopefully a good final grade) result. An event company wanted to build some 1,000 euros. This exceeded the budget of my friends, unfortunately, at some 1000 €, so we have to build yourself with Open Source software zusammengefrickelt. 3 (Windows) laptops are connected via HDMI to the TV and each connected via a switch. A fourth (Linux) laptop served as a central control computer. The VLC Media Player offers an excellent support almost all video formats and many other useful functions. In this setup, the Remote Control was remotely interface of VLC is used, which allows the player over a network or the Internet completely.

The Windows machine got the IP's 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.3. The Linux-control computer, the IP 192.168.0.100.
The remote script is based on the tutorial from Markus Berg (thank you).

 # / Bin / sh ip [0] = "192.168.0.1" ip [1] = "192.168.0.2" ip [2] = "192.168.0.3" port = 20000 {send_cmd function for address in $ {ip [@] } do echo "$ 1" | nc $ address $ port & done} while ([1]) do clear echo "video command" echo echo "s | HOME" echo "p | PAUSE / PLAY" echo "z | BACK COIL" echo "cp | BACK COIL + PAUSE" echo "f | FULL SCREEN ON / OFF" echo "b | Quit" echo echo echo echo-n "command?" read command case "$ command" in s) send_cmd play; p) send_cmd break ,, z) send_cmd prev;; zp) send_cmd prev perl-e 'select (undef, undef, undef, .3)' send_cmd break; f) fullscreen send_cmd; b) exit;; esac done; 

This script on the control computer is this Spartan menu:

 Video Command

  s | HOME
  p | PAUSE / PLAY
  z | BACK COIL
  zp | BACK COIL + PAUSE
  f | FULL SCREEN ON / OFF
  b | Exit

 Command? 

On the Windows machine had now only out of the Windows console VLC Remote Control mode can be started:

 vlc - extraintf oldrc - rc-host 192.168.0.1:20000

Now, even the video in the respective VLC playlist has been added. The remote control was done.

Unfortunately, there was (as almost always) some pitfalls. In our first tests zickte around the Windows Firewall. The presentation had to be disabled. Generally, Windows was not a particularly good choice for the presentation, because update messages, Avira pop-ups and other Nervereien course in the video seem pretty embarrassing. The Windows machine had to be pretty neutered. Firewalls, virus scanning and automatic updates are disabled. Many programs that had made themselves comfortable in the tray, were removed. In the end, I would realize the next time playing with Linux clients, but because of time constraints were not available.