Running the whole show: FrontierStack as the supervisor for clubs, stages and festivals

Published 2026-10-08

A show runs on a network nobody looks at until something on it goes quiet. A CDJ drops off the link, a lighting node stops answering, timecode stops, an NDI feed vanishes from the media server; and the first anyone hears of it is the DJ waving at the booth. FrontierStack won't run your show. It watches everything that does, and tells you the moment a piece of it disappears.

One sentence that tells you what's on the network

Open the Show Network pane and FrontierStack starts counting. Within seconds it writes one plain sentence per network the Mac is plugged into: "There are 14 Art-Net nodes, 73 universes in use, 2 sACN sources and 1 NDI video source on en5 · 2.0.0.0/8." If that number is wrong at soundcheck, you know before the doors open.

Below it, the Show Dashboard reads like a stage manager's checklist:

• Player 1, Player 2, the DJM; every Pro DJ Link device by number, online or not, plus Denon StageLinQ gear and rekordbox.
• Tempo; the BPM of the deck that's playing, or of the Ableton Link session.
• Resolume online, and how many NDI sources are feeding the screens.
• Art-Net and sACN universes, the nodes behind them and the desks sending them.
• Timecode; healthy or stopped, from MIDI Time Code or Art-Net timecode.
• LED systems; WLED controllers, Falcon Player, and the web interfaces of LED wall processors.
• UPS; on mains or on battery, for the UPSes behind your show gear.

Almost all of this is heard rather than asked for. CDJs, Link peers, TCNet nodes and sACN sources announce themselves, so FrontierStack just listens. The one thing it sends is an Art-Net poll; the same broadcast every lighting desk sends; and never on an open network that isn't one of your Places. If rekordbox, QLC+, Resolume or ShowKontrol is running on the same Mac, FrontierStack steps aside from their ports rather than risk getting in their way. The cleanest setup is a second Mac on the show network whose only job is supervising.

Arm the show, then stop staring at screens

Before doors, press Arm Show. Everything online at that moment is now watched: decks, mixer, lighting nodes, sACN sources, NDI feeds, LED controllers, the Link session, timecode. If any of it disappears, an alert goes out through the channels you already use; macOS notifications, the iPhone app, email, Telegram, Slack and the rest.

A phone in a pocket at a loud gig isn't much use, so Show Network can also drive a warning light: a WLED strip or beacon, Philips Hue bulbs, or an HTTP call that switches a PATLITE signal tower or a Shelly relay feeding a rotating beacon. It reacts within seconds, flashes red while something is down, and puts the light back exactly as it was when everything recovers or someone presses Acknowledge.

Turning it off and on again, automatically

Half the fixes in a show are a power cycle. Pin a player, an Art-Net node, a WLED controller or an LED processor and it gets its own device pane, where you link the smart plug, PDU outlet or SwitchBot plug that feeds it, and the UPS behind it. From then on Show Network offers Power-cycle… next to it; with a confirmation, because on a live rig you only do that to something that's already down.

For gear that should just come back on its own, turn on Auto-cycle: once it has been gone for the minutes you choose, FrontierStack power-cycles it once, tries once more after half an hour if it's still gone, and then stops until it comes back. It's off by default, per device, because a CDJ should never reboot itself mid-set unasked. The same idea already runs elsewhere in FrontierStack: Power Control can power-cycle any linked server or device that fails a ping, port or web check, and the Power over Ethernet pane can bounce the switch port of a camera or access point that has hung.

Watching the power itself

A UPS covers the gear plugged into it; the rest of the rig hangs off distros, generators and power supplies, and many of those report over Modbus; the energy meter in the distro, the generator or inverter controller, a metered PDU, a power supply with a Modbus interface. Bring them into Home Assistant's Modbus integration and FrontierStack watches the readings like any other sensor: alert when a phase sags below 210 V, when a feed runs above 28 A, or when the frequency drifts on generator power. Anker SOLIX smart plugs and meters talk Modbus TCP to FrontierStack directly, with no hub, so you can see what one rack is drawing and switch it from the Power Control pane. Modbus has no passwords and no encryption, so FrontierStack only talks it to devices on your own network.

Keeping the heat in check

Amp racks, dimmer rooms, LED processors and the media server under the stage all fail the same way when they cook. FrontierStack watches temperature from the places it already reaches:

• Rack and room sensors in Home Assistant; Zigbee, Z-Wave, ESPHome or whatever you use. Add a watch such as "amp rack above 35 °C" and it alerts when the line is crossed, and again when it cools down.
• Anything that reports temperature over SNMP; managed switches, PDUs, UPS network cards and environmental probes. Watch the OID with a threshold and it becomes an alert like any other.
• The UPS itself, the router (OPNsense, pfSense and OpenWrt report their temperature, graphed over the evening), the disks in the recording and playback machines, and Minut room sensors all show their temperature in their own panes.

Beyond the stage; even the smoke detectors

The show isn't only the stage. The same Mac can keep an eye on the rest of the venue:

• Smoke detectors. If your smoke detectors are in Home Assistant, add a watch for the smoke sensor reading "on" and it alerts like everything else; water-leak and door sensors work the same way. Smart Life (Tuya) smoke alarms show up in the Smart Life pane.
• Cameras; one board for every CCTV camera, offline ones first.
• Streams; the RTSP, HLS, SRT, WebRTC and NDI feeds going out to your livestream.
• The internet line that the card terminals and the ticket scanners depend on, and the Wi-Fi they ride on.

A word of caution: FrontierStack is not a fire alarm system. It reports what a sensor reports, over a network that can fail. Your building's certified fire detection, and the people trained to respond to it, stay in charge. Think of it as a second pair of eyes for the crew, not a replacement for the first.

Getting started

Pick the Clubs & Bars or Stage & Shows preset, or add the Show Supervisor add-on to the setup you already have. Plug the Mac into the show network, open Show Network, check the sentence against what you expect, and arm the show. Everything here is part of a Standard licence, within your plan's device limits. Monitoring and pinning LED wall processors (NovaStar/COEX, Brompton Tessera, Colorlight) and MADRIX installations is part of Full Fleet.