Sending Traffic Announcement (TA) Flags To Transmission Via TCP/IP In Myriad Playout 5

Introduction

If you need to send a TCP/IP message to your transmitter to indicate that you are doing a Traffic Announcement (TA flag) the there are two methods you can use.

Option 1 - Use Myriad OCP Pro

If you have Myriad OCP Pro or Myriad OCP Pro SE then there is a built on option to do this.

Follow these steps:

1. In Myriad OCP Pro, click on the Settings 'cog' for the service you want enable.
    
   
   
2. Tick the 'Turn On Travel Flag' option on the General tab.
3. Type a keyword into the option box. OCP will trigger the TA Flag whenever a Media Item is played in the Log that starts with the trigger word. So if you have a Link called Traffic Bed then playing this in the log will trigger the TA flag.
4. Now you just need to add in the Output info. Click on the '+' button on the selected Service (step 1 in picture below) and then select the 'IP or RS232' option from the available Outputs (step 2 in picture below).
   
   
   
   
5. Change the "Com Port" to TCP and type in the IP address into the Address field. You can also add a port if needed e.g. 127.1.1.0:5050:
   
   
   
   
6. In the lower section, select Other Settings and add in the 'string' you need to send to turn on and off the TA flag on your transmitter.

Of course you can use the same method to send an IP packet to any device from any trigger word. 

If you need a more complex interaction or if you only have OCP Standard SE then you will need to use method 2.

Option 2 - Using Command Media Items In Myriad 5 Playout

Please note that the following steps refer to Myriad 5 Playout but a similar method can be used in Myriad 4 Playout.

In this method we will create two Command Media Items, on to turn on the TA and the other to turn it off. These can then be scheduled in the Log, manually triggered by double clicking on them on the Media Wall or triggered within other Media Items using the Trigger Item feature. 

To setup follow these steps:

1. Open an empty media item, give it a title.
   
   
2. Convert it to a Command Media Item using the Command Item button.
3. Expand the Remote section and double click on the SENDTCPMessage option.
4. Edit the Command to connect and output the correct 'string' The format for the command is:
   

   Remote.SendTCPMessage(ipAddress,ipPort,"encodedMessage")

    Fill in the ip address, port and message sections to turn TA on.
   
   
5. Repeat steps 1 - 4 for the matching 'off' Command Item

If this Media Item is in the Scheduled Log, the TCP message will be sent when it 'plays'. You can also trigger it by double clicking on it in the Media Wall.

Finally, if you want this to be triggered with a travel bed, you can use the Trigger Items option to trigger a Media Item at a point in another Media Item.

In the example above, we have a travel bed and we have also set the ‘Intro’ to be over the first section. At the Intro End point, we have the system triggering Media Item 2983 which is the Command Media item in the previous screen shot.

Whilst this article is focused on Traffic Announcements, you can use the same technique to communicate with any IP based device.