One of mAirList's most prominent features is that the software can be remote controlled in various ways. At this time, remote control by hotkeys, joysticks, MIDI and a special network interface is supported. mAirList offers a set of commands by which all functions can be controlled. A complete reference is given in the appendix.
You can chain multiple commands by placing a semicolon
between them. For example, PLAYER 1-1 STOP;PLAYER 1-2 START
will stop the first player and start the second player at
the same time.
Hotkeys are the easiest way to remote control mAirList. You can assign arbitrary commands to arbitrary keys. The hotkeys are registered as system hotkeys, so they will also work when mAirList is not the foreground window.
To define a new hotkey, first enter the “Key” field and press the desired key combination. Then, select an action from the list, or type the desired command, and click “Add”.
You can also use the buttons of a joystick to control mAirList. This is a very flexible feature, many people have exploited this method to build an interface to the fader start connection of their broadcast mixer. For example, one can easily disassemble a budget USB gamepad and connect the fader start GPO outputs to the button connectors of the game pad. This way, you get an 8-port fader start interface for less than 10 Euro. It is also possible to connect the GPO directly with the game port of your computer (although you will need to add some additional resistors, in order for Windows to recognize this interface as a joystick).
The configuration dialog shows all available joysticks (use the Control Panel to install yours first), and all of their buttons. Select a button and choose the actions to take when the button is pressed or released, respectively.
MIDI means “Musical Instrument Digital Interface” and is a very common interface in the world of musical instruments and sound processing. Virtually every keyboard, synthesizer and sound processor has a MIDI interface. Additionally, there are many low-cost MIDI controllers available. mAirList can receive arbitrary MIDI commands and map them to internal actions.
A MIDI command consists of three values: Status, Data 1 and Data 2. For example, when you press a key on a MIDI keyboard, Status would indicate the type of event (e.g., “key was pressed”), Data 1 the key (note and octave), and Data 2 the velocity. You can assign an action for each combination of Status, Data 1 and Data 2. For Data 2, you can additionally specify whether the received value must be less or equal, greater or equal, or exactly the specified value. This way, you can easily events that may differ in their Data 2 value (for example, the above mentioned key press on a MIDI keyboard).
mAirList can also receive commands over a TCP/IP network. For that purpose, a special web server is opened on the specified port, offering a standard SOAP interface. To send commands to mAirList, use the mAirListCommand software provided on the home page.
The network interface bases on the RemObjects SDK (available from http://www.remobjects.com) and can also be accessed by RemObjects own protocol.
SAS is a propietary protocol used by mixers from the company Lawo. The mixer is attached to the serial interface of the computer. You can set up the parameters of serial port on this configuration page. If enabled, mAirList will intercept all GPIO events of the form “Sxxx” and “Rxxx”, where xxx is a number between 1 and 256. You can assign a command to each of these events.