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Best Practices for the Rental Staging Market

Brian Alexander

May 08, 2012 16:31

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I love the BrightSigns, they're great at what they do.  However, I'm in a different market than the average BrightSign user and I'm not sure that these units are best suited for our type of work.

Here's a typical 1 month look at how these are used:

• Week 1 - Live event for customer abc
• Week 2 - Rolling across country in a packed semi
• Week 3 - Live event for customer xyz then shipped overnight to the next customer
• Week 4 - Live event for next customer

Each of these customers require a different workflow.  Some are networked, some are synced, and some are a stand alone looping video.  I can expect that 98% of professional technicians in our market do not know the first thing to do with these units when they pull them out of their roadcase.  Of course, I need to make these as simple to use as possible, preferably without a computer.  So far, it has not been an easy road fraught with frustration, confusion, and anger.

Is there a way I can do a factory reset that turns the unit back into an auto-mode (so a user can just drop clips onto the SDHC card and it starts looping videos)?

Is this the best product line for my usage?

Does anyone have any tips to make these a really easy to use product?

Does the registry reset script need to change with every version of brightauthor?

I need to be at a point where I can tell a user how to do something, like reset the unit, and expect predictable results.  I'm not finding that simplistic predictability now and I'm wondering if it is operator error or if I'm expecting too much from the BrightSigns. 

I appreciate any input.

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6 comments

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  Brian2 June 13, 2012 11:00

  For what you are doing, best not to use Brightauthor and use a custom script that will play any and or all media files in a particular folder. or respond to serial strings or the GPIO

  Custom scripts are fairly easy to write and once written are even more easily modified.

  Typically in a rental market as just a player, 8 files stored in a folder called Media will respond to 8 buttons on the GPIO.  Buttons 1 through 8 will play the first 8 files in alphabetical order.

  I can write that or other easily modified scripts for you.  Easily changed in notepad as text.

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  JRB Technical June 28, 2012 19:39

  I sympathize with Brian Alexander, every time BrightSign units come out for a Rental and Staging event, they have different Firmware, different configurations, etc.  You load the content provided on the SD card and power up the unit, and it doesn't output.  Often technicians have to spend time downloading latest firmware, updating firmware, running a registry reset script (which one, I have seen at least 3 versions listed in the forums), etc, just to get simple content that was often created with the current version of BrightAuthor to play and sync correctly.  If you get a new unit from the Factory, and drop in the SD card, it boots and plays fine.

  Yes in part it should be the Rental house's responsibility to make sure that units have the most current Firmware version, and are "factory reset".  But this often does not happen, and there seems to be no clear path to performing the factory reset for any and all BrightSign units.

  It would be nice if there was some more direction from the BrightSign team as how to best return units to the default configuration.  This will only help everyone in the long run.

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  Lyndon July 04, 2012 07:46

  For any units running firmware 3.5 or better, there's a single rest script you can run on a unit to set it back to factory defaults.  You can also include a firmware file on your sd cards that already have a published project. You don't have to run the latest firmware or latest brightauthor. But, whatever setup works for you, you can use the same firmware release on all of your cards so units are set to the same version. 

   

  IF there's a possbility someone might be using different brightauthor releases, then I'd upate units to the latest firmware each time. 

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  Brian Alexander July 04, 2012 11:09

  We need to be able to drop clips on the card with - period - with no scripting.  How do we find our way back to that point?  Does there need to be a script?

   

  1. Run Reset Script

  2. Load xx firmware

  3. Drop clips on card

  4. Loop forever

   

  Updating the firmware got me into trouble recently costing my time on a weekend - I get very little time away from work and I was definitely cussing at the BS.

  I don't know how the heck it happened but I was able to drop h.264 clips onto the root of a card and the BS played them with no problem.  This was huge!  I sent 20 units out with someone that doesn't know the units at all and instructed them to do exactly as I have done. 

  Did it work?  NO!!!  Why?  Because in the 3 days in between me dropping clips onto a card and the units being shipped to showsite the units had a new firmware loaded 3.8.34.  Turns out, 3.8.34 has a bug that won't allow h.264 files to be played directly from the card!  FAIL.

   

  I need to know, with the utmost confidence, that what I'm doing is going to work every time.  Right now, I can't find that comfort level with the BrightSigns. I'm reluctant to even look at upgrades to BrightAuthor or the Firmware because once I find my magic formula I'm afraid I'll lose it on an upgrade.

   

  What would you suggest?

  Thanks.

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  Brian Alexander July 04, 2012 11:11

  Hi Brian2,

  Thanks for the comment.

  Are you suggesting that we can run the reset script, drop a single script along with media files on a card and they'll play (in alphabetical order)?

  Sounds easy, do you have a simple script like this you can share?

  Thanks.

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  Lyndon July 05, 2012 18:01

  You can use this script to loop images and videos alphabetically. This script also looks for USB thumb drives plugged into the unit. So, if you plug in a thumb drive with content, it will copy everything from the thumb drive to the sd card, replacing the contents of the sd card, and tell you when to pull the thumb drive.It doesn't have a video mode set in it so it uses automode. But, if you know what video mode you want to use all the time, I have a version of the script that has a video mode setting.