TheStory of cjCues

At first glance, cjCues seems like a pointless app. "Great, another app to look at the Cue stack!" #sarcasm. Except, I've discovered there really are not many apps out there that do this basic functionality and do it well. The origin for cjCues goes like this:

I was designing at a small theater, using an ETC Element and the ETC aRFR app. The show was Driving Miss Daisy. It was pretty simple except there were a number of really long fades. Additionally, we were using Altman 360Qs, ETC Source Fours, LED fixtures as well as two different types of dimmers. That turned into lots of auto-follows and part cues in order to make the long fades fade properly. Tech was a day and a half, so I got the rough draft of the fades in and planned to keep adjusting through our 3 days of previews.

First preview started and the show was sold out! So I am sitting in the tech-hold seat between a patron and usher. Took my tablet out, but even at the lowest brightness setting, as soon as house went to half the patron, rather annoyed, looked over at the light pouring off the screen. I quickly turned that off and grabbed my phone and while it was better(read: dimmer), it wasn't great. I had to keep it off until I needed to see times. When the moment came that I needed information, the screen-lock, wrong password attempt, and the app closing, all prevented me from seeing the moment the cue I was trying to pay attention to was executed. Was the Stage Manager late? Did I need to lower the front of the cue curve? 

In this moment, I looked down at my Android Wear LG G Watch and said (to myself):

"Why can't I see the cues on my watch?"

After all, the watch connected to the phone, and the phone connected to the console. My watch's always-on display would be perfect for displaying cues. A small vibration when a cue was executed would be all I really needed to figure out if I needed to make adjustments, and the most frustrating things was the technology was right there in front of me.

I looked and tried to find something on the Google Play store, but nothing really existed. I could send one-way control via OSC to the console, but getting all that rich cue data back is/was either too new, or not of interest to many people. A couple apps replicate the console face and become good keypads.... but really in that frustrated moment, I wanted an app on my watch to show me what cue was active, what cue was next, and times. Anything else at that point was superfluous.

Just like that, cjCues was born. (The idea at least.)

As I have been building the app, learning Java, and how Android works from the inside out... the goal remains the same. Wether on a tablet, phone or Wear device, knowing the cue basics is the goal. I have added a couple of really useful features (labeling from the app, note taking, e-mailing notes, going to cues from the app) but the foundation is about getting active and pending cue information to you the user as quickly and painlessly as possible. I sincerely hope you enjoy.