[2008] How do I start this?

[crewsd]

Hi,
I'm currently on the crew for a show and I was thinking I could make a program where the stage manager could press a button and it would send some sort of notification to us, the crew, to let us know we have to do something.

We are all sharing a common internet connection.

Would this be possible and how hard do you think it would be for a beginner?

[Oyurcopsui]

It would be easy AFAIK.

[crewsd]

It would be easy AFAIK.

Ok...but can you point me in the right direction to get it done?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Are you running on a LAN or wireless network, or are all the computers on separate networks. I think you actually said that they were all on the same network when you stated that you share an internet connection, but I wanted to make sure you were all on the same side of any LAN firewall. If so, you have many options open to you (a few less if you aren't all on the same LAN).

It sounds like the manager would not be typing you messages, but would have a few standard buttons that would cause standard messages to pop up on your end. Is that right? If so, I would be tempted to use the UDP class I posted in the networking section, but only because I have it tested and working on a couple systems, so I would be able to drop it into a pair of new projects (one sender and one receiver project) knowing it worked. Coming at it as a beginner, that might be a bit daunting. The advantage of it is that it was designed to broadcast messages to all listeners with a minimum of effort. Other alternatives would be something like chat programs, or TCP client server kinds of things, but I wouldn't expect any to be simpler than the UDP broadcast solution.

Frankly, I don't think this is quite so easy as a beginning project, because any good solution that I can think of, other than sending e-mails (which is pretty easy, because you are using existing email systems to view the messages), would entail a bit of multithreading, and a bit of network communications. While these don't have to be difficult, you suggested that you are coming from a fairly fresh start.

[crewsd]

Are you running on a LAN or wireless network, or are all the computers on separate networks. I think you actually said that they were all on the same network when you stated that you share an internet connection, but I wanted to make sure you were all on the same side of any LAN firewall. If so, you have many options open to you (a few less if you aren't all on the same LAN).

It sounds like the manager would not be typing you messages, but would have a few standard buttons that would cause standard messages to pop up on your end. Is that right? If so, I would be tempted to use the UDP class I posted in the networking section, but only because I have it tested and working on a couple systems, so I would be able to drop it into a pair of new projects (one sender and one receiver project) knowing it worked. Coming at it as a beginner, that might be a bit daunting. The advantage of it is that it was designed to broadcast messages to all listeners with a minimum of effort. Other alternatives would be something like chat programs, or TCP client server kinds of things, but I wouldn't expect any to be simpler than the UDP broadcast solution.

Frankly, I don't think this is quite so easy as a beginning project, because any good solution that I can think of, other than sending e-mails (which is pretty easy, because you are using existing email systems to view the messages), would entail a bit of multithreading, and a bit of network communications. While these don't have to be difficult, you suggested that you are coming from a fairly fresh start.

Yes, we are all on a LAN.
I'll take a look at your post and fiddle around a bit.