Building a Digital Signage System using Open Source Tools. Recipe for Digital Signage. Hardware Apple Mac Mini. Sony 5. 2 LCD 1. Display. Intelligent Auto switching Surge Protector. Power and Network. Software Drupal 6. Custom Flash Drupal Interface to output XMLFlash Action. Scripting, Tweenlite, Fuse KitShell Scripting and Cron Jobs. Capabilities Time each segment is on screen determined by CCK Field. Re order playlist determined by CCK Field. Still Image Display using file attachCanned Animated text cck field with image file attach template. Video flv, mov, mp. News TickerHeads Up Display HUD overlay can be turned off or on, on a per playlist item basis. Current weather conditions downloaded from Yahoos Weather API, or for that matter any xmlapi data from an external data source. Current playlist status last reload, currently playing, etc. How does this workThe only 100 open source, enterprise class, digital signage framework. Using the recipe I have outlined above is a good start, but that sure as heck doesnt guarantee a working system. If you left Drupal out of the picture, at the root this system is nothing more than a flash slideshow, with an xml file as a playlist, and imagesvideoaudio as assets loaded into the flash application. Its as simple as that. Drupal however offers an easy, and simple way to manage, sort, organize and also present a dashboard back end to users that maintain and cultivate the digital signage. Drupal. Drupal is really the meat of the operations here, I am using a vanilla install, with very few modules. CCK being one of them. Drupal is Open Source, and is an almost perfectly extensible wheel. I know PHP well, but not perfectly, and Drupal is rock solid, and I know how to pull the information out of it that I need. The front end is user friendly enough for a copy writer to make changes on. XMLWhy XML, over something like AMFPHP, well its what I know and its fairly simple, the future may give me more ideas on how to make this more dynamic. For me some of the interactions that a framework like AMFPHP offer, they are even MORE complex than just getting down to business. Using something like XML, also makes other functions using a parser I already have in place to parse my playlist, a hop skip and a jump away from parsing data for other methods. So KISS is the mentality here. AMFPHP seems to really be powerful in live interaction, with a web only engine. Flash. Flash is a very capable and ubiquitous platform, it will run on anything windows, mac os, linux, and aside from the hardware its the proprietary part of this system, that is unavoidable. As a non programmer, I needed a platform that could handle video, and prescribed animation, and allow dynamic production of content. Title%20Slide_DS.jpg' alt='Digital Signage Software Linux Open Source' title='Digital Signage Software Linux Open Source' />Currently because of flash this system, can handle still images, full HD 1. Within a matter of minutes, someone who is only a writer, can produce an advertisement, and minutes later its running on the digital signage. Data. In order to make the digital signage web enabled, but still maintain autonomy if in a worst case scenario, network is cut for some odd reason, the system runs from local files, which are downloaded and synced via cron job and shell scripting. Computer Vision System Toolbox Crack. The reason for this is if network gets cut, and the display needs to access Asset A, it wont be able to, and therefore would have nothing to show. So this is a very forced caching method, and it runs from the local file system 1. In fact the flash app, aside from pinging the backend system to alert it of the currently playing segment, doesnt talk to the internet at all, and even more so the user that the display is running on, cant even access the web, it can only run the one single flash application. So securitynetwork access of the actual flash app dwindles to almost nothing. This isnt out of inability, its for security, and as I mentioned autonomy of the system. For all intents and purposes, the system could easily load a youtube video, or any data directly from the internet. However what does occur, is that the back end system, acts as a gatekeeper in order to mirror assetscontent, even for data like weather, downloaded images, etc. This also gives me the capability to show a preliminary version of what the display would look like on the back end. Digital Signage Software Linux Open Source' title='Digital Signage Software Linux Open Source' />Hardware. Truth be told I could have easily just done this with a linux box, but maintaining a linux box in the wild is not my forte. Being able to upgrade the system, and lock it down, easily, with easy manageable interfaces was a benefit. Also the small form factor of the mac mini, in this situation is really beneficial. One detraction of using a mac mini, is the WANT factor of a device like this flying behind, or up on a display. Unfortunately the digital signage I deployed is hanging, with its front and its rear completely open, and visible, so the mac mini attached is highly visible. Ive had colleagues who suggested using displayscomputers that are specifically designed for this type of a system, and my problem with these displays is that they are WAY too overpriced. We are talking about an off the shelf linux PC, connected to a single PSU and smacked onto the back of a sub par LCD display. If you want a bigger display the cost goes up quite a bit. Best Free Mass Email Software to Send Bulk Emails to unlimited customers. Paper is in the past. Its time to embrace the future with free digital signage software. Here are seven free and opensource digital signage software options for. Linux l n k s listen LINks, less frequently l a n k s LYNEks is a name which broadly denotes a family of free and opensource. Having an extra power cable to me really wasntisnt that big if a deal. If someone wanted to be super, super anal about this, they could easily come up with a breathable cover for the back of the display, that tidys up the look of it. In my opinion, that is the ONLY benefit. If the display is attached to a wall, having a PC mounted behind, with an extra cable, big whoopThe mac mini I deployed is secured to a pretty hefty LCD mount, and is locked. My opinion regarding security, its to keep the good people away. If someone wants something, really wants it, they will get it. Where theres a will theres a way. The display system I have deployed is located in a public place, and is often un attended with nobody around, for quite some time. The building is locked up, and only those with codes to enter the building can get in, but that still doesnt prevent me from still being a little paranoid. Why use an Intelligent Auto switching Surge ProtectorUnfortunately unbeknownst to me, the LCD display I speced out did not have any auto shut off functionality. So when it stops receiving signal over HDMI, it just remains on, displaying a no signal message that bounces around on the screen. Kind of lame, since even the Costco Special LCD I have have at home, has this functionality. There is an extra functionalgreen reason for using this. Even an LCD display that has this auto shut off built in still uses phantom power. The awesome thing about the mac mini, is that it can completely shutoff, and uses 0 power, I repeat 0 power, and at a scheduled time prior to its scheduled shut off time, it can turn on, with only using its on board CUDA battery, which is similar to a CMOS battery. As an example, I scheduled my computer to shutoff at 1pm, and then set the computer to turn back on at 2pm. At 1pm the computer shuts off, as well as shuts the display off. I go to the wall after this is done, and completely unplug everything, even the surge protecter. At 1 5. 9PM, I plug the computer back in, and at 2 0. So between 1 0. 1pm and 1 5. Now this kind of anecdotal, I am sure the surge protector during its auto switching is using some power at the least. But the point is that using the surge protector, allows me to completely cut off power to the LCD display, and whatever else I wish to have plugged in, in the same vicinity. If for instance I wanted to run another display, or some sort of powered video repeater, I could. Drawbacks. HD 1. 08. OS X isnt exactly smooth as butter, but I am working on making it look and work better, but its except able and its looks fantastic. Other than that, Drupal doesnt prevent me from doing anything I cant dream up.