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Unpausing Full Screen Video Player Via Script

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I’m using an EZ-B v3 over Bluetooth in a small animatronic kiosk. A momentary push button is wired to D0 on the v3, and when it’s pressed I trigger a face animation video on a second monitor using the Full Screen Video Player skill. The basic flow works great: button press script runs video plays full screen.

The snag is when I hit ESC to abort playback during testing. As designed, the skill checks the "Pause New Playback" box, but then subsequent button presses won’t start any videos until I manually uncheck that box in the skill UI. I’m trying to clear that latch via script so the operator doesn’t need to touch the mouse.

Here’s the basic call I’m using to start playback:

ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Play Video", "C:\\Media\\face01.mp4");

And here are a few things I’ve tried (none seem to re-arm playback after ESC):

ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Pause New Playback", "False");
ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Unpause New Playback");
ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Stop");

For completeness: ARC is stable over Bluetooth to the EZ-B v3, digital read on D0 is debounced in my script, and the videos (MP4/H.264) all play fine when the checkbox is not set. It’s only the ESC latch’ that blocks subsequent plays unless I manually clear it.

What is the exact ControlCommand I should send to programmatically clear the Full Screen Video Player’s "Pause New Playback" flag so playback can resume after pressing ESC from within a script?


Related Hardware (view all EZB hardware)
EZ-B V3
EZ-B V3 by EZ-Robot
EZ-B v3 Bluetooth robot controller supported by Synthiam ARC - features, specs and legacy connection tutorial
Bluetooth
Servos 24
Camera
Audio
UART ✕
I2C
ADC 8
Digital 24

Related Robot Skill (view all robot skills)
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Full Screen Video Player by Synthiam
Fullscreen overlay video player controlled by ControlCommand: play/pause/resume/stop; ESC cancels playback and locks new playback until unpaused.
Requires ARC v9
Display
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#1  

The Full Screen Video Player skill doesn’t currently expose a documented ControlCommand() to directly clear the Pause New Playback checkbox after ESC has been pressed.

What’s happening

When ESC is used, the skill intentionally sets that flag so it won’t keep replaying videos in a loop. That behavior is built into the skill to prevent repeated playback until the user manually clears the checkbox.

What you can do instead

You have a couple of practical options:

  1. Avoid relying on ESC for abort

    • Use a script button or another control that sends:
    ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Stop Video And Close");
    • That stops playback without engaging the ESC safety latch.

  2. Use a wrapper/reset workflow

    • If you need an operator abort that can be reset from script, create a small workflow in ARC that:
      • stops the video,
      • closes the player,
      • then reopens or reissues playback when needed.
    • If the skill doesn’t provide a command for the checkbox state, the clean solution is to create a custom robot skill that adds that reset behavior: https://synthiam.com/Support/Create-Robot-Skill/Overview

  3. Check the skill’s command list

    • In the skill window, use the kebab menu / three-line menu to inspect the available commands and settings.
    • Also check the Cheat Sheet for that skill inside ARC so you can confirm whether a reset/unpause command exists in your installed version.

Important note

The commands you tried:

ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Pause New Playback", "False");
ControlCommand("Full Screen Video Player", "Unpause New Playback");

aren’t part of the documented command set for that skill, which is why they don’t work.

Best next step

If you want, I can help you build a small ARC JavaScript workaround that:

  • watches your D0 push button,
  • starts the video,
  • and uses a separate reset button or timeout to recover cleanly after an abort.

If you’d like, I can draft that script for your EZ-B v3 + D0 + Full Screen Video Player setup.


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