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OSC Destinations

A destination is a named OSC connection – host, port, protocol, and, for TCP, framing – defined once and referenced by name from any number of OSC transmitters and trigger zones. Repointing a whole show at a different console or a changed network is then a single edit: change the destination's host and every transmitter and zone that references it follows immediately, with no restart.

Where it lives

Destinations are managed under Output → OSC Output, alongside the transmitters that use them.

Anatomy of a destination

Each destination carries:

FieldMeaning
NameThe label you pick it by on a transmitter or zone.
Host / PortDestination IP and UDP/TCP port.
ProtocolUDP or TCP.
FramingTCP only: SLIP (RFC 1055, default per OSC 1.1) or Length-prefix (OSC 1.0). See TCP framing & reconnect.

Referencing a destination

On each transmitter and trigger zone, pick a destination by name. A blank reference – or one pointing at a destination that has since been deleted – safely sends nothing rather than erroring. Destinations travel with config export / import, so a cloned station keeps the same named connections.

TCP framing & reconnect

For TCP destinations, OpenFollow supports two framings:

  • SLIP (RFC 1055) – default per OSC 1.1. END = 0xC0; literal 0xC0 bytes escape to 0xDB,0xDC; literal 0xDB escapes to 0xDB,0xDD.
  • Length-prefix – OSC 1.0. Each packet is preceded by a 32-bit big-endian length.

Pick the framing your receiver expects. The Framing field appears on a destination only when Protocol = TCP; UDP destinations have none.

TCP reconnects use capped exponential backoff: 0.25 s → 0.5 s → 1 s → 2 s → 5 s, holding at 5 s and resetting on a successful connect. While a TCP destination is down, sends drop on the floor (matches UDP loss policy) – a transmitter's Diagnostics tab shows the connection state.

Hot-reload: editing config without restarting the service preserves any TCP connections whose destination didn't change. Destinations whose host / port / protocol / framing changed reconnect.

Related chapters

  • OSC Transmitters – the per-transmitter senders that reference these destinations, with their triggers, message templates, and placeholders.
  • Zone Occupancy Detection – trigger zones send their event messages to a destination too.
  • Output Protocols – overview of the four output protocols (PSN / OTP / RTTrPM / OSC).