System Architecture
At high-level the mobileFX SignGate system consists of
four (4) components:
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a Campaign Designer software
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a Network
Monitoring Server
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the Player Stations
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and a FTP Cluster
The Digital Signage Network Topology is partitioned in three (3)
network areas:
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Server Side, that includes the SignGate, which is the Campaign
Designer and Network Monitor console, and the Stations Monitoring and
Registration Server, usually called the Registration Server.
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Stations Update FTP Cluster, that includes an array of FTP Servers
storing media files (content).
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Client Side, that includes the Digital Signage Player.
This distributed architecture allows the deployment and control of large numbers
of Digital Signage Players and offers centralized Content Scheduling and
Operations Monitoring.
Media Content
mobileFX SignGate supports and fully logs airtime
statistics for the following Media Content:
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mobileFX SignGate Player Touch-screen Plugin |
Included |
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mobileFX SignGate Player Barcode Scanner Plugin |
Included |
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mobileFX SignGate Player GSM Modem Plugin |
Included |
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mobileFX SignGate Player TCP/IP Extensibility ActiveX
Component (POS Plugin) |
Not Released |
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mobileFX SignGate Player RS232 Extensibility Plugin |
Not Released |
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mobileFX SignGate Player USB/HID Extensibility Plugin |
Not Released |
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mobileFX SignGate Player Scripting Extensibility Plugin |
Not Released |
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mobileFX SignGate Player LightGun Extensibility Plugin |
Not Released |
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mobileFX SignGate Player Bluetooth OBEX Extensibility
Plugin |
Not Released |
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mobileFX SignGate Player IP Camera Extensibility Plugin |
Not Released |
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In a
nutshell, the Administrator designs Campaigns using SignGate
and assigns each campaign to the Schedule of an individual Player or
to a Group of Players.
Each
Campaign consists of a Screen Layout, a number of Playlists,
a folder of related Resources (additional files to be downloaded to
the Player) and Interactivity Events.
The
Schedule controls the amount of time that a Campaign will run on a
Player and can be from a few seconds up to years. Once you set the schedule
on a Player Station you can easily Copy and Paste it to other
Stations or Groups of Stations, or even to the entire Digital Signage
Network.
Once a
Digital Signage design is ready, the Administrator must deploy the
Campaigns XML File to the Stations Update FTP Cluster. Each
Player Station, when it is checking for updates, it attempts to connect to
the FTP Cluster and download campaigns.xml file. Using the
information in this file, the Player builds a list of Media Files
(content) that will download. For achieving speed and bandwidth
optimizations this process is Incremental and the player downloads
only the content that is missing using CRC for identifying the required
files.
Player
Update is controlled by an Update Agent and it is taking place in the
background as a separate process which does not affect Player functionality.
Once the entire update is completed and all media files and content has been
successfully downloaded, the Update Agent restarts the Player.
The
Registration Server is a simple TCP/IP server that MUST be
operational and reachable from every Player on the Network; this piece of
software is pinged from the Stations at regular intervals and this way it is
possible to know whether a Station is operational or not. Each Station
contacts the Registration Server a) when it starts and this is called
Check-in, b) when it stops and this is called Check-out and c)
every a fixed time interval and this is called Ping.
Every
Player Station and their status are stored inside a Database that can
be either on the same server computer with Registration Server or on a
dedicated / shared Database server. By default a Microsoft Access 2003
database file is copied during the installation of SignGate but it is very
easy to use this database schema as a base for porting the system in
different database platforms such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite, etc.
For accessing the Database, SignGate and the Registration Server both use an
OLEDB Provider pre-installed on the server computer. If you want to
use a specific storage Database, please make sure that the proper OLEDB
Provider is installed. For Microsoft Access 2003, Jet 4.0 OLEDB Provider
should already be installed on the server computer (included in Windows 2003
Server / XP SP2 / VISTA).
The
inter-networking of the Digital Signage Network components is based
on TCP/IP Socket Servers and Clients for exchanging data and
notifications and FTP for downloading media content. Depending on
your Digital Signage Network Topology, you should configure both each Player
Station and the Registration Server to Wide Area Network Mode (WAN)
or Local Area Network Mode (LAN). In WAN Mode each station connects
to the Registration Server and transmits its status. In LAN Mode each
station broadcasts on the Network a TCP/IP packet with its status. The main
difference is that a broadcast is connectionless and can be received
by any other node on the network.
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