Getting Started

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the TheatreChat app, you’ll be greeted with a very blank screen, waiting for you to configure it.

Channels

The sidebar on the left-hand side houses your channels. Channels are discreet communication streams used to connect computers and/or people who require similar information. For example, your show may have a channel for the audio department and a channel for the lighting department. Adding a channel in your TheatreChat instance does not add it for anybody else, so you’re free to add only the channels you need.

To add a channel, click the Add Channel button towards the bottom of the left-hand sidebar. This will bring up a dialog which will ask you for four pieces of information:

• ID: Your channel ID is how your channel is addressed over OSC. This must be the same between all TheatreChat instances that wish to receive a channel. If you configure two computers with a channel that has the same name but different IDs they won’t be able to talk to each other.
• Colour: Channels can be assigned colours so you can differentiate channels quickly. If you’re not bothered by this, just leave it as-is.
• Name: How the channel will appear within the TheatreChat app. This has absolutely no bearing on the underlying way that devices communicate over the network, so you can call your channel whatever makes sense for you personally.
• Flash on new message: Setting this to Yes will mean that the screen will flash red and green every time a new message arrives in this channel. Great to attract the attention of mixers who may not necessarily be looking at their computer screen.

Once you’ve filled out all the information, click Save and you’ll have yourself a freshly minted channel! Once a channel is created, its ID cannot be changed. If you wish to change the name or colour of a channel, though, hover over the channel in the sidebar then click the edit icon that appears. To delete a channel, follow the steps to edit it, then click delete within the edit dialog. Deleting a channel will remove it from only the device that deleted it, and will not affect any other devices. If a channel is later re-added, it will populate with all of the messages that were sent to it if the app has not since been restarted.

Caution

TheatreChat does not persist messages if you close and re-open the app. For recording purposes, it is possible to export a channel’s chat history as a .md or .txt file, however these cannot be re-imported into the app.

Viewing Multiple Channels

You can click on any channel in the sidebar to switch to that channel, or hold down Cmd or Ctrl and click on multiple channels to open them in one view.

When you have multiple channels open at once, messages you send are by default sent to all open channels. To send a message to a specific channel, click on the channel’s name above a message. This will highlight it to indicate that you are now sending to that channel only. This will clear after you send a message.

Messages

Messages are sent to channels, and each channel can have an infinite number of messages. Messages are sent by typing into the text box at the bottom of the screen, then pressing enter or clicking the send button. Messages cannot be edited or deleted after they are sent. To send a message quickly, add it to the Quick Selects menu via the Settings page for easy access.

You can pre-set up to 5 quick select messages, which are assigned they keybinds of F1-F5 on your keyboard. If you wish to have less quick select messages, just leave the text box empty on the Settings page and the message will not be visible. To send a quick select message, press the keybind for the message you want to send or click the relevant quick select button. If you wish to alter the text of a quick select message before you send it, hold Shift while pressing the keybind or clicking the button and the message will be loaded into the text box for you to edit before sending. The Quick Selects sidebar can optionally be hidden by setting Show Quick Selects on Channel Page to No in Settings. This will not disable the keyboard shortcuts, however.

If you wish to draw attention to a message you’re sending, click the flash button to the right of the send button instead of clicking send. This will send your message as normal, but will also flash the screen of all clients that are currently viewing the channel. This is useful for drawing attention to important messages or getting an operator to look up from what they’re doing to see your message.

Configuring TheatreChat

Configuring TheatreChat is done through the Settings page, found in the left sidebar. There are few main things you can configure. Quick Select messages are also configurable on this screen, as described above.

Username

All clients can set and change their username at any time from the Settings page. This does allow impersonation, but it is assumed that you are on a trusted network with your team.

Appearance

The text size for the app can also be customised to make TheatreChat more comfortable on particularly small or large screens, and the colour theme can also be changed to your liking. The channels sidebar can also be collapsed at any time by clicking the Collapse Sidebar button (not from the settings menu). This will hide most of the information in the sidebar, simplifying channels to just squares of their colour, and hiding all options except an arrow to expand the sidebar again.

Broadcast IP Address

For clients connected to multiple networks, the Broadcast IP Address can also be set. By default, TheatreChat will broadcast messages to all network interfaces, but if you wish to restrict this to a specific network, you can set the Broadcast IP Address to the IP address of the network you wish to broadcast to in Settings. For example, if you have a network with IPs in the range of 192.168.x.x range and another with IPs in the 10.x.x.x range, you can set the Broadcast IP Address to 192.168.255.255 to only send messages to the former. This setting should be used very carefully, as setting it incorrectly can cause messages to not be sent to the correct clients. If you are unsure, set it to 255.255.255.255 to broadcast to all networks.

Now What?

You’ve got yourself a channel, now what? One-person communication is just thinking, and though we all know someone who could do a bit more of that, it’s not helpful in this case.

TheatreChat has two primary use cases: human to human communication, and machine to human communication.

Human to Human Communication

The most common use case for TheatreChat is simply to facilitate communication between two or more people. To get other users set up, repeat the above steps to set up a channel on another device, and ensure the channel IDs match between devices. Devices can have an infinite number of channels, but the channel IDs matching is what links one device’s configuration to another’s.

Once that’s done, provided both devices are on the same local network, you’re good to go! There’s no need to link devices in any other way. TheatreChat sends chat messages using broadcast, meaning any device on the network is able to listen and receive them. This allows us to have minimal configuration, but keep in mind that you can’t necessarily talk smack about your coworker and know that they won’t see 😉

Machine to Human Communication

That’s all well and good, but who in this industry actually wants to talk to people? TheatreChat’s true power is that all messages are simply sent over OSC. There’s no weirdness going on under the hood to make it happen, just standard networking that any OSC-capable device should be able to manage. Check out our guide on how to set that up here.