Present: a Stream Deck and other control surfaces

A control surface presses the keys you'd press while running the slides, from across the room: Next, Back, Screen off, the chorus, a Moment, a message. A Stream Deck does it through Bitfocus Companion and its PraisePad module, and anything that sends a web request can too (the control API). A surface never starts a service: someone opens the slides, and the surface presses their keys. A phone needs no key: your phone as a remote presses Next with your own sign-in.

Add a surface

1. Open Present, then Settings, then Control surfaces.
2. Press Add a surface, name it for where it is ("Stream Deck in the booth"), and press Add.
3. Your new key, shown once appears: press Copy. PraisePad keeps only a fingerprint of it, so it can't be shown again.
4. In Companion, add the PraisePad module. Until it's in Companion's own list, download the .tgz file from the module's latest release, then in Companion 4.3 or later open Modules, choose Import module package, and pick the file.
5. Add a PraisePad connection, paste the key into its Key, leave its Presentation id blank, and drag its ready-made buttons onto your Stream Deck.

A church can have 20 surfaces. Lost a key, or a laptop left the booth? Press Revoke: the key stops working at once. Add the surface again for a new one.

Try it before Sunday

Try it, under Live, for the buttons, opens your next service's slides in Practice, in a new tab: press Next on the Stream Deck and watch the slide move, with nothing reaching the room. Anyone at the booth can do the same from Practice, under More. While a service runs live, the presses go to it.

Each surface's line says what it last did ("drives Sunday Morning · last command: next, 2 s ago", or "never used"), so you know a key works without walking to the slides. While you run the slides, the Ready strip under the top bar shows each surface too.

What a press does

Just what its key does: Next is Space (with Preview first, a staged slide goes up), Back is ←, Screen off is the full stop, Logo is L, Clear words is Esc, a section is V, C, B, T or P and its number, a Moment is Shift and its number, Instrumental is I, and a marker is M while the sermon records. A message is one of your church's messages, by its name, or up to 120 letters of your own. At most 10 presses a second.

When nobody has the slides open, a press is refused and Companion's buttons go grey. Two services running at once? Put each one's code, the long code after /present/ in the address where you run its slides, in a connection's Presentation id.

The activity log notes a surface added or revoked, the first time each day it drives a service, and any message it puts up; never each Next.