The admin panel

The cog in the sidebar's identity row opens the admin panel. Everyone can see the cog — a hidden control is how a box loses its admin — but it opens with the admin password, which is not the event PIN and not anyone's personal PIN (the three codes).

The unlock lives in memory only: closing the app re-locks it, and the Lock button does it on the spot — use it before handing your phone to someone.

Lost the password? On the box itself, Open the admin panel in the Crewbox menu (beside the clock on a Mac, in the tray on Windows) opens the panel unlocked, and crewbox --admin prints a link that does the same. Each works once. Set a new password under This box while you're in (more).

Crew

Every account on the box, with presence and role. The one action you'll actually use mid-event is Reset PIN — for the crew member who invented a PIN at 9am and lost it by noon. Type a new one, tell them, done.

Channels

Rename a channel, fix its topic, or Retire it (two-step confirm) when a stage wraps. #general can't be retired — there's always somewhere everyone is.

This box

The health of the machine you're running on, as a readiness list — crew network, voice, modules, install/offline support, the Android app download, disk space — each row with a plain verdict and, when it isn't fine, the fix.

Two rows exist to warn you before something takes the box down rather than after:

• Power — whether this machine is on mains, and if not, how long it has left. A laptop nobody plugged in is the commonest crewbox, and it fails with no warning at all: fine, then gone, discovered by crew phones sitting on "Connecting" mid-set. It goes amber on battery and red under half an hour. Machines with no battery don't show the row.
• Backup — how long since the last backup finished, the box's own or deploy/backup.sh's, and where it went. It goes amber after a day with none, and when the last one is on the same disk as the box's data, which does not survive the box.

Below the list, the settings:

• Event name, Event PIN, Wi-Fi network — the setup-page answers, editable live. Changing the PIN notes that the poster and /connect need re-checking.
• Networks — the crew-side adapter, lighting-network listening (off / sACN / Art-Net / both) and its adapter, and the sACN universes. Join links update immediately; socket changes apply when the box restarts, and a banner reminds you while saved settings differ from what the box started with. There's no restart button — stop and start the box (how).
• Let the apps find this box on the crew network — the box announces itself on the crew network the way printers and sound desks do (Bonjour), so a phone app there can find it without being given the address. Automatic announces on the crew network only, and stays quiet when a lighting or media listener is on that network too, because the box does not transmit on a show network unless told to. Always announces there anyway, for a rig whose crew and show share one network on purpose, and Never stops it. It takes effect at once, and the line underneath says what the box is doing, or why it is quiet. On a Mac that has not allowed Crewbox on the local network, it says so and where to allow it. A box run from source starts with it off.
• Carries on another event — for a spare with no backup, or a bigger box, taking over from an event's box. A box started without a backup is a new event to every phone, and they send it nothing of the one they had. Pick that event here and save, and each phone that has it offers, once its crew member has joined this box, to bring its documents, running order and unsent messages across (what crew see). The chat history comes back only from a backup. The list is the events the device you are using has been on, so use one that was on the old event: a phone app, or a browser that joined the old box at the address this box has now. It stays open on an unlicensed box, since it is how a spare takes over mid-show.
• Admin password — changeable here; doing so locks every other device that had the panel open.

Settings pinned by environment variables show a note instead of a field — the environment always outranks the panel, which is also the recovery path.

This network

What the venue's network is actually providing, probed on demand (Check again): the box's address, internet (a captive portal is flagged; plain "no internet" is just information — the box doesn't need it), whether crew can reach the box by its name, certificate expiry, and clock sanity.

Download DNS config gives a ready-made crewbox-dns.conf for the venue router — hand it to whoever runs the router instead of explaining DNS at the production desk. On a box with a certificate it points the name at the box; on one without, it carries only the optional block below. The whole file is a dnsmasq config, so on an OpenWRT, GL.iNet or Pi-hole router it can be saved as it is into /etc/dnsmasq.d/. The lines for other systems (a laptop's hosts file, a venue's zone file) are in it as comments. Download for MikroTik gives the same entries as crewbox-dns.rsc, a RouterOS script to paste into the router's terminal or run with /import. It is a file of its own because a RouterOS line in a dnsmasq config stops dnsmasq starting.

That file carries a second, clearly-marked optional block: the addresses phones fetch to decide whether a network has internet. Adding it stops iPhones abandoning the crew Wi-Fi for mobile data — see the "no internet" problem for what that failure looks like and why it's worth doing. Saving the whole file includes it; to leave it out, cut the file off at the OPTIONAL banner.

Keep the router pointed at this box

When the router is your own and runs OpenWrt (a GL.iNet travel router, for instance), the box can keep that DNS entry right by itself. Tick Keep the router pointed at this box, give it the router's address and admin password, and save. The box logs in to the router over SSH straight away, and again whenever its own address changes, and moves the address=/name/ip entry for its name to its current address. It fixes the entry wherever it already is (the router's DNS settings, /etc/dnsmasq.conf or a file in /etc/dnsmasq.d), adds one if there is none, and restarts dnsmasq only when something changed. The phone-check names from the optional block are moved along with it if you added them, and never added if you didn't.

The line under the buttons says what happened last. Update the router now tries again on the spot; otherwise a failure is retried on its own, less often each time.

• It's off unless you turn it on. It needs the router's root password, which is then kept in the box's database (and so in its backups). Use it on a router you own, never on a venue's.
• The router's key is remembered after the first login that works, and the box refuses to send the password to anything else at that address. If you reset or replace the router, tick Forget the router's key and save.
• It can only fix a router it can reach. If the box's machine has moved to a different network altogether, there's nothing to update until it's back on the crew network.
• It doesn't need the name to work. The box reaches the router by the router's address, so it can repair the entry exactly when the name is broken.
• Getting into the admin panel while the name points elsewhere: on a Mac, choose Open the admin panel by IP address in the Crewbox menu. It opens the same one-time link at the box's address instead of its name. Elsewhere, open https://<box address>:8787/?admin. Either way the browser warns about the certificate; step past it (Safari: Show Details → visit this website; Chrome: Advanced → Proceed). The warning is only because the certificate is for the name, not the address.

Box settings

The settings a box reads when it starts, which used to need environment variables. Save, then restart the box (from the Mac menu bar or the Windows tray) to apply them; the section says when saved values are waiting for a restart.

• Modules crew see — which departments are on. Chat is always on.
• Festival timezone — where the show is, like Europe/Dublin. The running order and the show log read times on this clock. Leave it blank when the box's own clock is already local time.
• Art-Net universe 0 is — plot universe 1 (the usual) or 0.
• Watch the media network, and its adapter — the PTP clock, Dante, NDI and NMOS devices, and AES67 and ST 2110 streams, listened to and never sent to. ST 2110 streams' SDP files and the video clock are checked against the standards.
• NMOS registry — only if the ST 2110 kit's registry doesn't announce itself: its address, like http://10.20.0.5:8080. The deep probe reads it.
• Video network adapter and SNMP community — what the LED processor sweep uses. Processors added by address work without an adapter.
• Use the internet when there is some — update checks, crash reports you allow and licence check-ins. Off, the box makes no outbound connections at all.
• Answer phones' internet checks, and the port for them — the responder that keeps phones on a crew Wi-Fi with no internet.
• Keep crew signed in for — days before an unused phone has to join again (60 unless set).
• Back up every — hours between the box's own backups; 0 for none on a timer.

Each one still has an environment variable, for a Linux box run as a service. One set there outranks the panel, which then names it and shows no field.

Licence

A licence belongs to the box, never to a crew phone: one seat, and the box can go 90 days without checking in with letissier.ie. Nothing about the licence ever touches crew comms — chat, voice, files and every module work the same on an unlicensed box. What an unlicensed box won't do is set up or configure an event until a key or a 30-day trial is entered.

In Licence: type a key and Activate (the box needs the internet for a moment), or Start a 30-day trial, or — the usual case on site — Activate offline: read this box's request code off the panel, get a token for it at letissier.ie/account on any phone with signal, and paste the token back in.

Crash reports

If the box ever closes without being stopped — a crash, a power cut, a lid closed on a laptop with a dead battery — the next time you open the panel it asks once: Crewbox closed unexpectedly last time. Send a crash report to LeTissier Creative Studios? Send queues it; Don't send deletes it. Tick Always send crash reports to stop being asked.

Send crash reports automatically starts off. A report holds the Crewbox version, the operating system, a random id for this install, and the error with its stack trace; home folders, user names, network addresses and anything after ? in a web address are removed on the box before it is saved. It never holds messages, names, files, the event or the licence.

Reports wait on the box and go when it next has internet — that may be after the show, and that's fine. A box with Use the internet when there is some turned off (Box settings, below) makes no outbound connections, so its reports stay on the box. They are plain files in the reports folder of the box's data directory, if you want to read or delete one.

Backups

The box backs itself up every 6 hours, into a folder of its own: the database, the uploads, the certificate and the Android app.

• Backup folder — where they go. Left empty, the data folder's own backups, which is on the same disk as everything it backs up; plug in a USB stick and put its folder here. It keeps the newest 14.
• Back up now — takes one there and then. Do it before teardown, and before anything risky.

If a backup fails (the stick was pulled, or is full), the section says why, and the box tries again at the next one. Restoring is in Run the box.

Deleted this week

Anyone can delete a patch sheet, lighting plot or screen map, and it goes for everyone. The box keeps each one for 7 days first. This section lists them, with when each was deleted and when the box will wipe it.

• Restore puts it back on every phone, under its old name. Phones that deleted their copy fetch it from the box.
• Delete now wipes it from the box before the week is up. It asks first, because that can't be undone.

Export

Download chat logs — every user, channel and message as one JSON file for the post-event archive. Patch sheets and plots export from their own modules as CSV.