Triggering External Actions Using the RightBooth Windows Title

RightBooth alters its Windows Title each time a screen is displayed when playing an event.

Consider a typical RightBooth event flow when taking a photo.  The following event screens are displayed to the user:

• Start
• Get ready
• Countdown
• Take photo
• Thank you

And during this process RightBooth will automatically alter its Window title for the following text:

• RightBooth Start
• RightBooth Get ready
• RightBooth Countdown
• RightBooth Take photo
• RightBooth Thank you

Armed with this information it is possible to use third party software designed to monitor Windows Title captions in order to trigger some form of external action to coincide with RightBooth event screen changes.

One such package is AutoHotKey:  https://www.autohotkey.com , a free, open source scripting language which among its many features offers the ability to monitor Window titles and then take some kind of action via scripting.

Here we have attached a very simple AutoHotKey script that does nothing more than show a message box every time the Start and Thank you screens appear when an event is playing.

rbmonitor.ahk
File Size:	1 kb
File Type:	ahk

Download File

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To run this script, make sure you have installed AutoHotKey, then download this file and double click it to run it.  ​Then play an event and you should see a message box appear each time the Start and Thank you screens are shown by RightBooth.

Note: Rather than install AutoHotKey, if you just want to examine the contents of this file, it can be opened in Windows Notepad.

Obviously this is a very basic example, but with this technique it is possible to synchronise running other programs and DLLs, sending keystrokes into the system, perform file system operations, control the mouse and play sounds etc.

We know of one user who is using AutoHotKey scripting to turn his lighting rig on and off based upon the screen that RightBooth is currently displaying,  e.g. turn the lighting rig on when the Countdown screen is shown and turn the rig off again when the Thank you screen is shown.
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Note: It is also possible to control external equipment directly from within RightBooth using a compatible USB relay switcher.  For more details see this article.