Making Remote Changes to RightBooth Events

Updated: Feb 2021

RightBooth provides a 'Remote Changes' feature.  This will cause RightBooth to monitor a specified folder on the computer looking for a text file containing your ‘change instructions’ which will cause RightBooth to make content modifications to the currently playing event file.  The changes folder can also contain new or updated image and video files, which RightBooth can be instructed to display within the playing event file.

So the Remote changes feature provides you with a flexible system for updating your events with new content ‘on the fly’.  And if the designated ‘changes folder’ is a shared cloud storage folder such as a Google Drive folder, it then becomes possible for you to change your playing events from a remote location.
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We will explain how to do this by way of the following example...

You run a party room hire business and you have a number of rooms at various locations country wide that can be booked for events such as birthdays and anniversaries.  At each of your locations you have RightBooth running on a permanently installed video booth, allowing party guests to record video messages and photos for the host.
You like to make the RightBooth events more personalised so you always edit the event to include the name and a photo of the party host.  For example, for a particular booking at one of your locations you have an event file called ‘host’. In this event file, you edit the Start screen by adding a label item that states:

‘Welcome to John’s retirement party!!’

And you also include a photo of John on the Start screen contained within an image item.

The following week, the same location is booked for Jill’s 40th birthday.  You now have to physically visit your location, and edit the RightBooth event file, changing the label item message and replacing John’s image item with an image of Jill.

However, there is an easier way to make these changes without having to travel to your locations, by using the RightBooth Remote Changes feature.
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Continuing with our example, at your host location, perform the following:

Set up RightBooth for remote changes

• Visit the Folders/Files section of RightBooth Settings.
• Tick the option: ‘Allow remote changes’.
• Use the Browse button to locate a folder on your system that will be used for remote updating.  As mentioned, if you choose a folder that is a local cloud storage folder, you will then be able to change the content of this folder remotely using the same cloud storage account, and therefore you will be able to affect the RightBooth event remotely.

Set up your host event file for remote changes

• Open the host event file.
• In RightBooth, go into the Event Design section and look in Event type tab. In here, tick the option: Allow remote changes to allow your chosen event file to accept remote changes.

Name the screen items that are to be changed

• ​Continuing with our example, on the Start screen of the host event, select the label item containing the personal message.  Show the Property toolbox and add a name for the label item using the Name property.  In this example we will name the label item: ‘event-message’.
• Again on the Start screen, select the image item that contains the personal image item and also give it a name.  This time we’ll name it: ‘event-image’.​

Your system is now ready to accept remote changes.  Here’s how:

Performing a remote update

From your home location you now want to change the remote event from John to Jill.  Obtain a photo of Jill (in our example:  jill.png) and place this file in your local cloud storage folder.  The file will then be automatically uploaded to the cloud and downloaded into the cloud storage folder on the system at your remote location.

Run NotePad and type the following lines:

Event-message=Welcome to Jill’s 40th birthday party!
Event-image=jill.png
 
Now save this file into your local cloud storage folder using the reserved filename: rb6changes.txt.
This file will then make its way to your remote system, again courtesy of your chosen cloud service software.

On the remote system, RightBooth will automatically open the file rb6changes.txt and will then make the specified content substitutions for the named text and image items on the Start screen.  And this will happen each time RightBooth shows the event Start screen, allowing you to make further remote changes whenever you require.

If you have a number of remote locations and you want to alter different event content at each location, in order to avoid any mix ups you can simply configure RightBooth at each location to monitor a different sub folder on your shared cloud storage folder. That way, each folder can have its own rb6changes.txt file.

Specifying an Event Folder Name
You may want to alter the folder into which the remote RightBooth event will save all users photos and videos.  To do this you need to add another line into the rb6changes.txt file that defines the following key:

event-folder-name

followed by the required folder name.   So continuing with our example you could add something like this:

event-folder-name=jills40birthday

So now all Jill's photos and videos will be saved into the folder \jills40birthday on your remote system and therefore they will not be mixed up with Johns files.

Note: Don’t forget to use the ‘=’ character in all your content definitions within the rb6changes.txt file.