Ever want to repurpose that big display in the lobby to show super-awesome Pluralsight videos to make your customers agog at your firm's tech savviness?
Or perhaps you want to watch a bunch of Pluralsight videos at one time? You've got your HDMI cable out and hooked your laptop to your big-screen and you're ready to have a Pluralsight marathon!
But Pluralsight prompts you every 6-10 minutes to continue the module. Ug! Who has time for all that "continue module" modal dialog button pressing?!
Needlessly click no longer! Lorgnette is here to save the day! Display Pluralsight as a Kiosk in your lobby or binge watch Pluralsight videos from the comfort of your couch. Passively watch Pluralsight courses on that second monitor! The world is your oyster once again with Lorgnette!
#####What it does: Launched from the console, Lorgnette auto-logs into a Pluralsight account and plays course videos. When the end of a module is reached, Lorgnette auto-clicks "continue module" popups. It also minimizes the module listing when a course is played so you don't have to. It'll also play in "kiosk" mode and display automatically in full-screen presentation. It will also auto-turn closed captions on and increase playback speed if you want it to.
Lorgnette can also auto-play all videos in a playlist or all results from a term search. Lorgnette will auto-load and play the next course in the playlist for continuous Pluralsight goodness!
#####What is this black magic? Lorgnette is written in node and allows for cross-platform (Tested on OSx and Win 10) browser automation via electron through nightmare. Since this is browser automation, Pluralsight metrics are still captured and Pluralsight analytics/security is not bypassed. It's as if you're actually clicking the buttons!
Lorgnette also uses PouchDB to store the full Pluralsight course listing locally so that retrieving a random course is done locally. It pulls the course listing down on first run and every 7 days thereafter.
It's also a fun experiment in node, electron, nightmare, promises, ES6 function generators and coroutines. Yeah, man! Love me some coroutines!
##NOTE!! Do not use Lorgnette to continuously play course videos from Pluralsight for long periods of time!! Although Lorgnette doesn't bypass any controls on the Pluralsight site nor does it bypass their viewer software, Pluralsight apparently uses the number of requests rather than the duration of videos to determine a threshold of what they call 'abuse'.
This means if you watch 8 hours of content a day, for a few days in a row, if this happens to result in a number of requests that exceeds their arbitrary threshold, your account will be locked and you will get a naughty-gram in your inbox that you will need to resolve.
In a perfect world a, granted atypical, user should be able to watch 48 hours of content (e.g. 24 hours at 2x speed, which their viewer allows) a day and not be presented with any accusations, however, this is not the case, sadly.
My suggestion then is to have your kiosk display content not only from pluralsight, but from other sources as well, limiting Pluralsight based content to 1-2 hours a day.
#####Installation: Ensure Node and Git are installed.
You can easily do this on windows with Chocolatey.
OSx with HomeBrew.
I aptly assume you Linux guys know what you're doing.
# Clone the repository
$ git clone https://github.com/oceanswave/lorgnette
# Go into the repository
$ cd lorgnette
# Install dependencies
$ npm install
Once installed, Lorgnette can be started with:
$ node . --username [pluralsight_username] --password [pluralsight_password]
Which will login to Pluralsight with the specified credentials and play random courses until the end of time.
#####Options:
| CLI Argument | Optional/Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| username | Required | The username of the subscriber to run the kiosk as. |
| password | Required | The password of the subscriber to run the kiosk as. |
| headless | Optional | Don't display a window. Pluralsight videos will continue to play, however, a UI will not be displayed. (default: false) |
| muted | Optional | Specify that Lorgnette should mute audio. (default: false) |
| fullscreen | Optional | Run the kiosk in fullscreen mode. (default: false) |
| showClosedCaptioning | Optional | Specify that Lorgnette should show closed captioning. (default: false) |
| speed | Optional | Specify a playback speed. Value from 0.5 to 2.0. (default: 1.0) |
| startAt | Optional | Specify a specific course by id to start playback at. (default: none) |
| continue | Optional | Specify that Lorgnette should continue at the last course watched. (default: false) |
| playlist | Optional | Specify that Lorgnette should display courses in the specified Pluralsight playlist, looping to the first when completed (Playlist can be mutated while displaying). (default: none) |
| thenStop | Optional | Applies only if playlist or fresh has been supplied. Watches the indicated playlist (or fresh content) then stops. (default: false) |
| search | Optional | Specify that Lorgnette should play courses with the specified search terms. Courses are selected and played randomly from the results. (default: none) |
| fresh | Optional | Specify that Lorgnette should favor playing unwatched courses. If all courses are watched, Courses are then played randomly. (default: false) |
| delayStart | Optional | Delay starting for n number of seconds. This easily delays the playback on system restart or when invoking from a script. (default: no delay) |
| watchFor | Optional | Only watch videos for exactly n number of minutes and then logout of Pluralsight and exit. Good for chaining Lorgnette in a script as part of other information sources when displaying on a Kiosk. (default: none) |
| watchAbout | Optional | Only watch videos about n number of minutes and then logout of Pluralsight and exit. (default: none) |
| forceCourseListingUpdate | Optional | Force a course listing update. If not specified, the course listing is only retrieved once every 7 days. (default: false) |
Note: username/password can be specified via environment variables rather than CLI arguments. Use lorgnette_ps_username/lorgnette_ps_password.
#####Examples:
Watch random Pluralsight videos in fullscreen mode until the sun expands, evaporating the earth's oceans, eventually enveloping the earth and imploding into its core.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --fullscreen
Watch, in a window, the course on Visual Studio Code, then, random Pluralsight videos until the sun implodes.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --startAt visual-studio-code
Watch random Pluralsight courses in the search results for "SharePoint" at 2.0x speed until the sun burns out.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --search "SharePoint" --speed 2.0
Watch random Pluralsight courses in the search results for "SharePoint 2013" muted with closed captioning until black holes give up their goods
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --search "SharePoint 2013" --muted --showClosedCaptioning
Resume watching the previous course watched on Pluralsight, then, random Pluralsight videos until entropy wins.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --continue
Watch all courses in the user's Pluralsight playlist named "My playlist" until the universe cools to 0 kelvin.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --playlist "My playlist"
Watch all courses in the playlist "My playlist" once, then stop.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --playlist "My playlist" --thenStop
Watch all courses in the playlist "My playlist" headlessly (e.g. without a window, but audio will still be heard) until the universe turns dark.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --playlist "My playlist" --headless
Watch all courses in the playlist "My playlist" headlessly and muted until all atoms in the universe are far apart from one another. (What exactly are you doing here? 🙈 🙉 🙊)
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --playlist "My playlist" --headless --muted
Continue watching the previously watched course, then watch all videos in the playlist "My playlist" headlessly (e.g. without a window).
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --playlist "My playlist" --headless
On Windows, set an environment variable of the username/password and continue the last course watched.
set lorgnette_ps_username=myUser
set lorgnette_ps_password=mySecretPass
node . --continue
On OSx, using terminal (Bash), set an environment variable of the username/password and continue the last course watched.
export lorgnette_ps_username=myUser
export lorgnette_ps_password=mySecretPass
node . --continue
Force the full course listing to be retrieved, then watch random courses forever...rever...ever..ever.ver.r.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --forceCourseListingUpdate
Delay start for 2 minutes, then watch courses for about 2 hours, give or take a random value between +36min and -36min.
node . --username "myUser" --password "mySecretPass" --delayStart 120 --watchAbout 120
What? You DON'T want to watch courses until the end of time?!
Well then, simply close the browser window, or ctrl-c the process.
If you're using --playlist, you can stop after a single go-through using --thenStop.
Cosmological crisis adverted! (Just think of the power bill you just saved!)
To display additional information set the following environment variable:
SET DEBUG=lorgnette*
#####Updating
You should know this, but here for posterity!
$ git pull
$ npm up
That's all!
So you truly want to run lorgnette until the end of time and want to ensure that courses are played immediately upon startup?
I like your way of thinking! Fortunately, lorgnette works well with pm2!!
Install pm2
$ npm install pm2 -g
and let pm2 start and monitor the process
pm2 start app.js --continue
then have pm2 start lorgnette at system startup with
pm2 startup
pm2 save
######Why "lorgnette"? Because Pluralsight is cool, but Lorgnettes are fashionable