I've been looking at ways to reliably get graphical content to specific screens on multi-display systems. I have run into a few hurdles when using "Make Screen from Name" either a) 2 screens have the same name because they are the same model of display and therefore can't be uniquely identified. or b) screen names are blank like I get when using Duet Display (a piece of software that allows me to use an iPad as a touch screen).

I have also attempted a second way of identifying a display by using "List Screens" and "Get Item from List" however there is no way for me to know what number a specific display is going to be each time before a composition is loaded and run. Is there a reliable way of identifying a display so it will consistently use that display each time a composition is run?

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We may be able to modify Vuo

jstrecker's picture
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We may be able to modify Vuo to display additional information about each screen that would make it possible to distinguish them (if the screens actually provide such information).

@Chris, could you run the attached app and post the output? The app prints a whole bunch of info about your screens and should tell us which additional fields would be useful to display.

For a 2-screen setup, a workaround would be to use the input editor and select "Primary Screen" and "Secondary Screen". But from your other post I guess you have more than 2, so that wouldn't help.

Another workaround would be to add a button in your composition to swap screens if they're reversed on composition startup.

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Package icon IODisplayInfo.app_.zip818.21 KB

Here is the output for the

cwilms-loyalist's picture
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Here is the output for the IODisplayInfo App. I separately connected the Epson projector (there will normally be 2 connected but I can only connect 1 on this MacBook Pro) and I also ran it when I was using Duet with my iPad. I hope this helps.

Also a question about the "User interface (UI) node set" that is coming, will that include nodes for creating drop down menus within a Composition? I was wondering if that might be a way to quickly switch between which content is showing on which display if on a Composition setup as a GUI Window I could identify which other screens the Fullscreen Content Windows are being sent to. Just a thought.

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Plain text icon IODisplayInfo - Epson PowerLite Pro G6650WU Projector.txt11.61 KB
Plain text icon IODisplayInfo - iPad3 via Duet Display.txt10.03 KB

Thanks, that helps!

jstrecker's picture
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Thanks, that helps!

Since there are two issues going on here that have separate fixes, I split them off to Add support for Duet Display screen names and Distinguish screens that lack unique identifiers by showing the port the display is connected to.

If you think it's worthwhile, you could try reporting the first issue to the Duet Display developers. If they fixed the missing display name, it would be unnecessary to add a workaround in Vuo.

I'm checking with the makers

cwilms-loyalist's picture
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I'm checking with the makers of Duet as well but has anything changed within Vuo that could affect performance of the Duet display? I'm just getting back into using Duet for this project and for some reason my compositions slow to a crawl unless I’m running Duet in mirror mode of another display then it runs at full speed again. After the extra display information was added I only tested my compositions out a little but didn't notice this at the time, I don't think it would have affected this at all. Thoughts?

Thanks for the quick response

cwilms-loyalist's picture
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Thanks for the quick response Jamie, I will do that. I think it was working well with 1.2.5 (but I'm working with 1.2.6 Beta right now for the XML features), I'll test it to be sure though. I'm not sure I can get older version of Duet to test with, I'll ask though. I definitely can't get older versions of the iOS component.