support@brightsign.biz
Last Updated: July 31, 2020
When the BrightSign player connects to your web server, it checks for a current-sync.xml file and downloads it. It then downloads all files listed in current-sync.xml file that are not already on local storage, including a schedule, playlists, and media files. It then plays presentations according to the downloaded schedule. If your display is blank or the unit hasn’t switched to the latest scheduled presentation, check the following:
Note: Before troubleshooting the setup or network, publish a test presentation directly to the player via an SD card and verify that it plays properly on the unit and your display.
1. SD Storage: The SD card must remain in the player for storage, unless you are using an alternate storage device, such as a uSD card, USB thumb drive, or MSATA drive.
2. Publishing with Simple File Networking: When publishing your first presentation or any updated presentations, you must select Simple File Networking after clicking on the Publish tab. Verify that Simple File Networking is selected and that your web folder URL matches the URL you used when setting up the player.
3. Web server settings (Mime Types): Add the following MIME Types and test them using the examples in Step 4:
- “.brs” – Add this extension to your server as a MIME type. It should be set to plain/text
- “.” – Add a MIME type for files with no extensions as application/octet-stream
- “.bsfw” – Add a MIME type for BrightSign firmware files as application/octet-stream
- ".json" – If it doesn't already exist, add a MIME type for JSON files as application/json
- ".xml" – If it doesn't already exist, add a MIME type for XML files as text/xml
4. Web server accessibility: Test the web folder URL from your web browser. If your computer is also the web server, test the link from another computer. Assuming your server is http://www.mysite.com/downloads/, test the following:
- http://www.mysite.com/downloads/current-sync.xml
- http://www.mysite.com/downloads/autorun.brs
- http://www.mysite.com/downloads//pool/sha1-6963EC2B20954C48716E9CEF96FC11F53DA3BBAA
The pool folder URL and the autorun.brs will confirm your mime types are setup correctly. You can get the pool folder URL from the current-sync.xml file.
5. BrightAuthor Setup and Settings: In BrightAuthor, go to Tools > Setup Unit, and confirm that Simple File Networking was enabled for the setup files you created. Also, make sure that the URL for the web folder is correct and that it includes the correct port number for the web server, if applicable. If you haven't already done so, publish the setup files to an SD card and insert the SD card into the player.
Including a trailing slash in your URL may cause downloads to fail because BrightAuthor automatically ads a slash to URLs. Some web servers don’t process URLs with a double slash. For example, if you originally entered http://www.myfiles.com/downloads/ as the URL for web folder, try http://www.myfiles.com/downloads instead.
6. FTP upload / client settings: Verify that your FTP software is set to transfer using binary mode, and not auto or ASCII mode. Files may fail to download from your server if they are transferred using ASCII mode.
7. Download Errors / Blank Screen: If the player encounters errors when downloading files, the errors prevent it from restarting and playing the new content, but the errors will not be displayed on the screen. You may encounter errors if you moved or renamed files in the web folder after you published the presentation, or if the files you uploaded were changed by the transfer process (see Step 6 for more details). To view an error log, you can connect the player to your computer using a serial cable or, if you checked Enable diagnostic logging during player setup, retrieve the log file from the SD card.
8. Scheduling, Connectivity and Time: If your project is scheduled to play all day every day, your project will play even if the player has no valid time set or if the time or time zone is incorrect. But, if you are using day parting (i.e. playing different presentations depending on the time or day), then nothing will play if the time isn’t valid.
- Verify that the player has the correct time and that it can connect to the network. You can do this by creating a simple project that displays the time (via a Clock zone) and an RSS feed. If the player can connect to both the network and the Internet, you will see the RSS feed, and if you can reach the time server, you will see the time.
- If UDP port 123 is blocked on the network, the player won't be able to set the time over the Internet.
- View this FAQ for further details on troubleshooting player clock issues.
9. DNS / Server Name Resolution: If the player fails to resolve the name of the web server, then it will fail to download the current-sync.xml file. If your server URL is something like http://myserver/brightsign/downloads, then you may need to add the domain to the server name for updates to function properly: http://myserver.universityshop.net/brightsign/downloads
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