OT: Play Sound on Server from Anywhere on Network

Yahoo Archive
1
The simplest thing to do would be to create a client/server style application in visual basic (less than 20 lines of code). Set the servers Winsock control to listening. When a user starts up the client app, it's Winsock control will communicate with the servers and you can tell it to do what ever you want. TCP mode allows a direct 2-way communication or you could us UDP mode if you just sending commands. I actually have my shop workstations broadcasting vantage status every 15 minutes. Then on my workstation I monitor all the shop workstations and if a workstation fails to check in for over and hour, a popup message lets me know and I can walk out and check to see why the computer isn't running. Got tired of people coming to me and saying the computer hasn't been working for over a week, but this is the first time I'm hearing about it. I also do this at home where I'll pull phone CID off a modem on on computer and push it to my MCE box and popup who's calling on the TV.

-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 2:04 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] OT: Play Sound on Server from Anywhere on Network



Thanks to listmember Todd Caughey, we have for some time been running
our shop buzzers via a tie-in from our Vantage server to our PA
system. Scheduled tasks on the Vantage server play various tones to
signify breaks, cleanup times and shift starts and ends. It all works
very well thanks again to Todd's nice little installation package.
Our Safety Manager came to me recently with a request for anyone in
the facility to be able to initiate an emergency warning tone that
will run continuously until intentionally terminated. I initially
thought the easiest way to accomplish this would be play the
appropriate warning tone on a continuous loop on the Vantage server.
I tested it out using Windows Media Player on my workstation. I could
run WMP from the command line with the file specified and, if the
repeat flag was checked in WMP, with a single mouse click on a
shortcut the sound would play continuously. Using a shortcut built
with taskkill I could neatly terminate WMP with, once again, a single
mouse click. Great, I've now got two icons (shortcuts) that will
start and stop the warning tone throughout the plant. I recreated the
shortcuts on the Vantage server and as expected, they function as
desired from the Vantage server console. I cannot, however, figure
out how to execute these shortcuts from a workstation on the network.
I've tried mapping, UNC paths, shortcuts to shortcuts, everything I
could think of with no luck. In every case, the local copy of WMP
attempts to play the sound and not the copy on the server. Anyone
have any ideas on how I can get WMP to run remotely on the Vantage
server from another machine?







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2
Thanks to listmember Todd Caughey, we have for some time been running
our shop buzzers via a tie-in from our Vantage server to our PA
system. Scheduled tasks on the Vantage server play various tones to
signify breaks, cleanup times and shift starts and ends. It all works
very well thanks again to Todd's nice little installation package.
Our Safety Manager came to me recently with a request for anyone in
the facility to be able to initiate an emergency warning tone that
will run continuously until intentionally terminated. I initially
thought the easiest way to accomplish this would be play the
appropriate warning tone on a continuous loop on the Vantage server.
I tested it out using Windows Media Player on my workstation. I could
run WMP from the command line with the file specified and, if the
repeat flag was checked in WMP, with a single mouse click on a
shortcut the sound would play continuously. Using a shortcut built
with taskkill I could neatly terminate WMP with, once again, a single
mouse click. Great, I've now got two icons (shortcuts) that will
start and stop the warning tone throughout the plant. I recreated the
shortcuts on the Vantage server and as expected, they function as
desired from the Vantage server console. I cannot, however, figure
out how to execute these shortcuts from a workstation on the network.
I've tried mapping, UNC paths, shortcuts to shortcuts, everything I
could think of with no luck. In every case, the local copy of WMP
attempts to play the sound and not the copy on the server. Anyone
have any ideas on how I can get WMP to run remotely on the Vantage
server from another machine?
3
Thanks for the kind words. I might have a partial approach to a solution based on other messages here related to other issues. I thought there was a way to have a sort of "watcher" program on a server look for the presence of a file and take some action...usually printing it. Perhaps you could have the icons for start & stop run a command file to "create" a file in a special shared folder on the server where the watcher program would see it and kick off a batch file to start the sound...also deleting the watched for file. Then another watcher looks for another file to stop the sound and kills the sound generation. It might be a kludge but I think it would work without too much delay if the watcher checks frequently enough. The part I am missing is the watcher program on the server.

Another thought....don't delete the "start" file on the server and when it is written to have it include the name of the PC it was created from. So afterwards you can tell where it was initiated from. Like dye squirted from a fire alarm station.

-Todd C.


-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 2:04 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] OT: Play Sound on Server from Anywhere on Network



Thanks to listmember Todd Caughey, we have for some time been running
our shop buzzers via a tie-in from our Vantage server to our PA
system. Scheduled tasks on the Vantage server play various tones to
signify breaks, cleanup times and shift starts and ends. It all works
very well thanks again to Todd's nice little installation package.
Our Safety Manager came to me recently with a request for anyone in
the facility to be able to initiate an emergency warning tone that
will run continuously until intentionally terminated. I initially
thought the easiest way to accomplish this would be play the
appropriate warning tone on a continuous loop on the Vantage server.
I tested it out using Windows Media Player on my workstation. I could
run WMP from the command line with the file specified and, if the
repeat flag was checked in WMP, with a single mouse click on a
shortcut the sound would play continuously. Using a shortcut built
with taskkill I could neatly terminate WMP with, once again, a single
mouse click. Great, I've now got two icons (shortcuts) that will
start and stop the warning tone throughout the plant. I recreated the
shortcuts on the Vantage server and as expected, they function as
desired from the Vantage server console. I cannot, however, figure
out how to execute these shortcuts from a workstation on the network.
I've tried mapping, UNC paths, shortcuts to shortcuts, everything I
could think of with no luck. In every case, the local copy of WMP
attempts to play the sound and not the copy on the server. Anyone
have any ideas on how I can get WMP to run remotely on the Vantage
server from another machine?







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
4
Steve,
You can try some MWI scripting to launch media player on the server hosting
the audio file.
Microsft writeup here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa389769.aspx

Also, you can try the PsExec tool written by Mark Russinovich who made the
winternals and sysinternals tools, and has since been brought into
Microsoft. These are great tools I have used for years.

Take note here of having to consider security. I know with PsKill, if I
killed a process on a server, I would have to enter a username and password
with rights...... Should be easy enough to work through...but one of these
two should do the trick fairly easily...and at that point, there is no need
to run a deamon on the server....

Carey


>From: "Steve" <spolatas@...>
>Reply-To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
>To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [Vantage] OT: Play Sound on Server from Anywhere on Network
>Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:04:10 -0000
>
>Thanks to listmember Todd Caughey, we have for some time been running
>our shop buzzers via a tie-in from our Vantage server to our PA
>system. Scheduled tasks on the Vantage server play various tones to
>signify breaks, cleanup times and shift starts and ends. It all works
>very well thanks again to Todd's nice little installation package.
>Our Safety Manager came to me recently with a request for anyone in
>the facility to be able to initiate an emergency warning tone that
>will run continuously until intentionally terminated. I initially
>thought the easiest way to accomplish this would be play the
>appropriate warning tone on a continuous loop on the Vantage server.
>I tested it out using Windows Media Player on my workstation. I could
>run WMP from the command line with the file specified and, if the
>repeat flag was checked in WMP, with a single mouse click on a
>shortcut the sound would play continuously. Using a shortcut built
>with taskkill I could neatly terminate WMP with, once again, a single
>mouse click. Great, I've now got two icons (shortcuts) that will
>start and stop the warning tone throughout the plant. I recreated the
>shortcuts on the Vantage server and as expected, they function as
>desired from the Vantage server console. I cannot, however, figure
>out how to execute these shortcuts from a workstation on the network.
>I've tried mapping, UNC paths, shortcuts to shortcuts, everything I
>could think of with no luck. In every case, the local copy of WMP
>attempts to play the sound and not the copy on the server. Anyone
>have any ideas on how I can get WMP to run remotely on the Vantage
>server from another machine?
>

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