Typical Show Setups
However simple or elaborate your show, it's built from the same handful of parts, in clock order. Here are three common layouts — from one nightly setlist to layered templates with triggers and PSAs — and how the SET:IQ pieces fit together.
Every show day plays as a timeline: an optional trigger or two, a pre-show loop while the neighborhood arrives, the show itself (an opener, the setlist, a closer), a transition to reset, and an after-hours loop so the display never goes dark. Start with the basic layout and add pieces as your show grows — the parts never change, only how many you stack.
Basic — one show, every night
The starting point: a single nightly setlist that opens strong, plays the body of your catalog, closes on a big finish, drops a transition, and rolls into an after-hours loop. No templates, no triggers — just the show. In SET:IQ this is the nightly auto-mix, sized to your runtime and rebuilt fresh each night.
- Opener & closer are structural — you assign a pool in Show settings and SET:IQ rotates one of each to the ends of the night, outside the “songs used” count.
- Transition is a countdown or idle loop appended after the closer, so the show has a clean seam before it repeats.
- After-hours is a single looping sequence that keeps the display lit after the show window closes.
Intermediate — a pre-show and two templates
As the show grows you add a pre-show to warm the crowd up, and split the night into templates — reusable show blocks you can schedule by day. A weekend loop and a weeknight loop, a family hour and a late show — each template carries its own opener, setlist, closer, and transition, and they run back to back inside the same evening.
- A template owns a whole show block: which days it runs (its recurrence), its clock window, and its own opener → setlist → closer → transition.
- Two templates in one evening run back to back — give them different windows (6–8 and 8–10) and they simply hand off.
- The pre-show and after-hours bookend the whole evening — set once and shared across both templates, or overridden per template.
Advanced — triggers and PSAs layered in
The full layout adds triggers at the seams (raise the volume at showtime, flip outputs, fire a station bumper) and PSAs woven into each setlist (a “tune to 88.1” spot after the third song, a thank-you later on). Everything from the intermediate layout still holds — you’re just decorating the timeline with commands and announcements at exact moments.
- Triggers fire at seams — before the pre-show, at showtime, mid-show at a clock time, or after the show ends. Each is an FPP command (volume, outputs, a saved preset) or a short cue sequence from your catalog.
- PSAs slot into the setlist by position — “play this announcement after song 3” — so they land at the same beat every run without counting as songs.
- Triggers and PSAs are set per template (every night it runs) or per night (just tonight), so the elaborate nights and the quiet ones can differ.
Build any of these in SET:IQ
All three layouts are the same tool. The setup wizard’s starting layout step seeds the basic (one nightly mix) or intermediate (weekend & weeknight templates) shape for you, and the Inspector’s clock-ordered night view is where you add the pre-show, triggers, and PSAs that make it advanced. For the full walkthrough of each part, see the SET:IQ guide; to push whatever you build to your player, see Connect FPP.