Skip to content

Home

Jump to bottom
Jon McGuire edited this page Feb 2, 2024 · 21 revisions

Introduction

The wiki explains how to use monkey-hi-hat, but also how to set up your system correctly.

As of version 4.0.0, the install program should handle all major setup requirements. All you need to do is provide the music!

After installation, you may want to glance at the Post-Installation wiki notes. Even though the installer should get you running, Monkey Hi Hat is designed for interactive control from a remote device. The repository's readme has links and details.

If you're interested in the technical underpinnings, there is some information in the eyecandy wiki, which is the library that powers Monkey Hi Hat, and various articles on my blog. But at this point, most of the information is here (and in fact, developers interested in eyecandy are directed to this documentation for various aspects of setup and usage).

Running for the First Time

The Commands and Keys documentation shows you all of the command-line options, but that can be overwhelming at first. Here's a quick step-by-step for Windows users (Linux is not officially supported yet). This assumes you are also using the visualizer and FX content from Volt's Laboratory, which the installer will automatically download and configure.

  • Launch the program with the Monkey Hi Hat icon from your Start Menu or Desktop
  • You should see a spinning swirly-ball thing -- this is the "idle" shader built into the program:

image

If your program is running full-screen, press the Spacebar to switch to windowed mode. The program hides the mouse pointer by default, but the graphical output (not the terminal) must have focus for this to work. Now let's verify you can load the visualizers that were installed with the program.

With the idle shader still running:

  • Launch a console window with the Monkey Hi Hat Console icon from your Start Menu or Desktop
  • The console window automatically shows the command-line help; view this any time by running mhh --help
  • Execute the command mhh --load warp_speed ... you should see a "flying through space" visualizer start
  • Try applying an effect, execute the command mhh --load warp_speed rainbow_borders for a more colorful version
  • Finally, start some music and try the playlist command: mhh --playlist variety

If any of these fail to load, check the console window for error messages.

If you have problems, please open an issue and ask for help.

Hardware Notes

I won't pay much attention to problems with Intel GPUs, particularly laptop-level integrated GPUs. Simply put, Intel's drivers are so buggy they're nearly worthless. This may be a non-issue, because many of them can't handle the required OpenGL API level 4.5. Sad but true. My own laptop, a relatively-new and otherwise excellent Dell XPS13, can barely chug through some of the more basic shaders at just 1920 x 1080.

On the other hand, my "living room" mini-PC, which is mainly where we use this program, has no problem running most of these at full 2K (which my amplifier then upscales to 4K). That machine is a Minisforum UM790 Pro, which has an excellent AMD Radeon 780M laptop-class GPU.

In short, NVIDIA and AMD GPUs are strongly recommended. If you're having problems, please update your GPU driver before submitting a bug report, especially if the problem is specific to one or a few of the visualizers.

Clone this wiki locally