I’ve gotten the chance to play with my friend’s laser using their computer. They also have a full commercial Touchdesigner license so I figured that I’d test out sending out some content.
After setting everything up, I could not get the Pangolin chop to connect to Beyond. The chop is recognizing when Beyond is open, but outside of that there seems to be no communication.
I’ve been trying to monitor the output from Touchdesigner, mostly the TCP/UDP connections, and I can see that TD isn’t sending anything out with the Pangolin chop active. I can see it then does send data out with the Laser Device chop set to Etherdream.
He’s using a 2023 version of TD, and I’m wondering if upgrading to the current one could potentially solve my issue? I’m just wondering how I could even go about troubleshooting this.
What version of BEYOND are you using? I recall there being some issues with older versions of BEYOND, and in my testing a while back found that it’s best to use at least version 5.1.
I tested again today with BEYOND 5.5 build 1919 and it worked as expected in both 2023 and 2025 series of builds.
Also, unlike EtherDream, TouchDesigner doesn’t communicate with BEYOND using network protocols, but rather uses the BEYOND API, which I believe uses Windows Messages, so you won’t see anything from TouchDesigner by inspecting TCP/UDP traffic. What values does the Info CHOP of the Pangolin CHOP report for the status of BEYOND?
Sorry for the delay, I got busy. I’m reading the documentation and it doesn’t seem very detailed. The viewing window connected the projector says “P1 Z1: P01 OH” so I believe this is zone 1? In TD I’m just outputting a circle POP (the outline) to zone 1. The Pangolin chop recognizes that Beyond is open but nothing else, such as Zones or version number.
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been busy. Thank you for checking, I’m using 5.5 build 2024. That makes sense about lack of TCP monitoring. So I suppose there’s not really a way to monitor the connection?
As for the values in the info CHOP;
1 beyond_dll_loaded
300 beyond_dll_version
1 beyond_started
1 beyond_ready
0 beyond_version
0 beyond_projector_count
0 beyond_zone_count
0 start
10 length
and the rest don’t look too important. The first thing I noticed when looking at the info CHOP was that there is no start and no recognition of the zone count. Someone elsewhere recommended attempting this on a different PC. I need to get hold of another one but that makes sense to me right now.
Everything below beyond_* in the Info CHOP output (eg. start and length) is general CHOP info and not relevant to the BEYOND connection.
Anyway, from your Info CHOP output it looks like it recognizes that the BEYOND window is open and ready for communication, but BEYOND is reporting that there are no zones or projectors available for output. For reference, in my testing beyond_zone_count=16 and beyond_projector_count=8. Also, your beyond_version=0 but I would expect it to be 2024.
I would recommend reaching out to Pangolin support if you haven’t done so already.
Following up. I’ve spoken to someone from Beyond. He was surprised and also unable to help me. He said that there’s nothing to monitor or really configure on Beyond’s side and it really should just work right out of the box. We agreed that I should start by testing this on another machine before I pay to upgrade the license.
So I’ll try borrowing a friend’s laptop and write back if I have success or not.
Hey, I am having a similar issue as well. Funny thing is it was working perfectly 2 days ago, then I was played around with it today and encountered the same behavior. Will do more test tonight and update with details of the versions and build.
Hey, I am having a similar issue as well. Funny thing is it was working perfectly 2 days ago, then I was played around with it today and encountered the same behavior. Will do more test tonight and update with details of the versions and build.
Did you update TouchDesigner or BEYOND during that time?
It’s odd that it broke so suddenly, but because the BEYOND SDK uses Windows Messages to communicate, perhaps it was a Windows update that broke things.
Checking back in here. I’ve managed to borrow another computer and transfer the licenses. It works right out of the box. Problem solved I guess.
New issue though, and I assume I’ll have to make a new post for it. Sending particles through SOPs to the Pangolin CHOP results in each point being connected once it’s projected. Is this behavior inherent to SOPs? It appears as points in TD
Beyond doesn’t do single points I found. Even if you draw a point in beyond you’ll see it’s 2 points connected by a line. Sending individual points will connect them together. You want to send a tiny line that’s like 0.001 long as a dot or a tiny low poly circle.
Interesting, I’m getting no change in the projection as I make the lines thinner and alter the color. I also can’t adjust the brightness in any settings in Beyond. Beyond also shows no changes. I’m starting to think I may need to get a newer version of TD to get access to POPs. I’m not sure but it appears to work better for others right off the bat
New issue though, and I assume I’ll have to make a new post for it. Sending particles through SOPs to the Pangolin CHOP results in each point being connected once it’s projected. Is this behavior inherent to SOPs? It appears as points in TD
Points are considered as part of the same shape in BEYOND if they’re a part of the same primitive in TouchDesigner, in either SOPs or POPs, or if they have the same id channel value in the CHOP case; all points within a shape will be connected.
The Particle SOP groups all points in the particle system under the same primitive so it won’t work well with the Pangolin CHOP (or the Laser CHOP). The Particle POP (and POPs in general) will work much better with the Pangolin CHOP because of the use of Point Primitives, meaning each particle is its own primitive, and therefore its own shape and not connected by a line.