GrandMA2

What it's for — CueSync drives a grandMA2 console over its Telnet command line: cue GOs, executor control, macros, faders, fixture levels, blackout and freeze, plus continuous timecode into one of the desk's eight timecode slots. There is also a file lane that hands a whole Theatre cue list to the desk on a USB stick as a macro.

Connect the console

grandMA2 implements Telnet on port 30000. That is the interface to use.

1. On the desk, enable remote login: Setup → Network → MA Network Configuration.
2. In CueSync: Network → Outputs → Add Output, choose GrandMA2 (Telnet), and enter the console's IP. The port fills in as 30000.
3. Under Console login, enter the MA2 user and password CueSync should log in as. Leave both blank to use the factory administrator / admin.
4. Save, then connect.

Discovery can find the desk for you: Network → Inputs → Network Discovery probes port 30000 and identifies a console from the banner it answers with, then offers it as an output. (The Outputs tab shows a Scan for Devices shortcut to the same place, but only while you have no outputs yet.)

About the login

grandMA2 auto-connects every Telnet client as guest, and guest prints a command prompt while refusing every command with "Please login !". So a session that looks connected can still be unable to execute anything. CueSync sends a Login command after the banner and only reports the output as connected once the console confirms it, and its health check reads what the desk sends back rather than merely that something came back — if the console drops your session to guest mid-show (a second operator taking the user account at the desk, a console-side timeout), the output goes red and reconnects rather than staying green over a session that can do nothing.

Your credentials are stored encrypted, keyed to that output. They are never written into a show file, a network preset, a venue profile or a diagnostic bundle. When you edit an existing output the boxes start blank — leave them that way to keep the stored login, or type a new one to replace it.

If the login is wrong, the output fails with "Login failed — incorrect username or password" rather than a generic connection error, so you can tell a bad password from an unreachable desk. Correct it in the same Console login boxes.

GrandMA2 (OSC) — read this before choosing it

grandMA2 has no native OSC input. OSC arrived with grandMA3. A stock MA2 console or onPC ignores everything sent to the OSC transport, and because UDP sends always succeed at the socket, every cue would report green while the desk did nothing.

This transport is only usable against a console running a third-party OSC bridge plugin (OSC_Mate, SendOSC or similar), and the address space is that plugin's, not the console's. It is not a fallback for a Telnet login that will not take — there is nothing to fall back to. Use GrandMA2 (Telnet).

If you do run both transports to the same console, CueSync fires every action down both of them — a Go+ advances the cue list twice. The Add Output dialog warns you when you are about to create that situation, but it does not stop you: keep one of the two, or disable the other.

What a GrandMA2 action can do

Add a GrandMA2 action to a cue or a Cue Pad and pick one verb from the selector. The Sends: strip above the selector summarises what the action will do — and warns you when a second field you filled in is being ignored, or when a box you left empty means the cue will fail instead of firing.

One verb per action. The action carries one instruction; a second field filled in is discarded. That is what the selector and the command strip exist to make visible.

Blackout and Freeze are explicit states, not toggles. A pad that turns blackout on should use Blackout off for its release — the built-in Blackout pad does. Sending Blackout twice re-asserts it.

Value ranges are the console's: pages 1–999, executors 1–90, macros 1–9999, cues 0–99999, levels 0–100. The editor clamps as you type, and a cue carrying an out-of-range value from an imported show is refused before it reaches the desk rather than failing at the console.

Fixture selections are the ones you would type on the desk — 5, 1 Thru 10, Group 5, 1.1, 1+3+5. Characters outside that set are stripped, so a selection made only of punctuation is refused.

Lua

Switch an action to Lua Script mode to build a Lua "gma.cmd(…)" line from a template — grouped fades, chases, variable reads, BPM writes. This is grandMA2's own plugin API and does not exist on MA3.

Timecode

An MA2 output can receive continuous timecode. In Timecode → Output Routing, enable the MA2 row and pick one of the desk's eight slots. CueSync then drives Goto Timecode <slot> Time "hh:mm:ss:ff" as the clock runs, and a cue can also fire Go Timecode <slot> / Off Timecode <slot> as an action. See Timecode.

Export a cue list as a macro

File → Sync, Import & Export → Export GrandMA2 Macro… writes an MA2 macro XML that builds a Theatre cue list on the desk, plus a README. Nothing touches the console — it is a file you carry over.

1. Pick the Theatre track to export (CueSync asks when the show has more than one).
2. Choose a folder. You get CueSync Export MA2.xml and CueSync Export MA2 README.txt.
3. Copy the XML to a USB stick under gma2/macros/.
4. On the console: Setup → Show → Import/Export → Import → Macros, and pick it into an empty macro slot.
5. Run the imported macro once. It labels the target sequence and Stores + labels every cue into it, with fade times.

What the macro does not carry:

• Cue trigger / follow times. MA2 trigger syntax varies by console software version and has not been verified here. Set timing on the desk, or let CueSync fire the cues live over Telnet.
• An executor assignment. The sequence arrives unassigned; assign it on the desk.
• Look content. The macro builds the cue structure — numbers, labels, fades. The LD programs the looks against those cue numbers.

The macro targets Seq 900 as a scratch sequence. If that number is in use on your show, edit the XML — it is plain text. Store uses /o, so re-running the macro re-stores every cue and overwrites what is programmed in them. CueSync warns you in the export message when the cue numbering could not be kept stable, which is when that overwrite matters most.

Not desk-verified. The macro schema mirrors MA2's own exports and the command set is the documented Store / Label / Assign core, but no physical MA2 or onPC has graded this lane. Do one dry import on your own desk before relying on it at a show. (The MA3 lanes earned their verified badge the same way — see GrandMA3 Session Sync.)

If something is not reaching the desk

• Output is green but the desk does nothing — check you are on GrandMA2 (Telnet) and not the OSC transport. Then read the console's Command Line History: it shows what actually arrived.
• "Login failed — incorrect username or password" — exactly that: the credentials are wrong, or remote login is not enabled on the desk. Fixable from the output's Console login section and the desk's MA Network Configuration.
• "No grandMA2 command prompt" — something answered on that port but did not greet like an MA2 console. Check you are pointed at the desk and at its Telnet port (30000).
• "Could not establish the connection." — nothing answered at all. That is a host, port or network problem, not a login one.
• Cues stopped firing part-way through a show — the console may have dropped your session to guest. The output goes red when that happens; reconnect it.
• A cue reports a send failure and the output goes quiet — repeated failures open that output's circuit breaker to stop a dead desk from stalling the show. Fix the cause and reconnect.

See also Network outputs and Diagnostics.