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Image switching inside presentation, based on day of the week

We require some help solving a dynamic scheduling problem.

We are using a BrightSign 4K unit to play educational movies in one of our gallery's exhibition spaces.

There are two movies, one in English, one in French. Each is stored in it's own presentation, and we use the Scheduler to alternate playback between the two presentations throughout the day, starting once an hour.

The movies are only 52 minutes long, so we have an intermission card in it's own presentation that plays between each movie. We accomplish this by having the movie presentations automatically switch to the Intermission presentation on media end. The Intermission presentation shows a static JPEG of the day's schedule in one zone, and a real time clock in a second zone. 

So far, all of this works perfectly.

The issue we're facing is that Thursdays the gallery is open late, which means 3 additional play throughs of the movie. It's not a problem to use the Scheduler to add the 3 additional presentations of the movies on that day... but now our Intermission presentation needs to be able to tell if it's Thursday or not, and if so, display an alternative JPEG schedule.

I tried making a separate Intermission presentation, just for Thursdays, but quickly realized that I'd have to make copies of the English and French presentations, just so they'd call the Thursday Intermission. While this would work, it seems like an inelegant solution, as any changes going forward would require updating four movie presentations and two Intermission presentations.

All this to ask, is there a simple way I can figure out whether it's Thursday inside a single Intermission presentation, and if it is, play back a different image than for the rest of the week?

I tried to accomplish this, without success, to using the Time/Clock event, but I may not have set it up correctly (I found the documentation lacking in it's explanation of how to use it for this purpose). If the Time/Clock event is not designed for this, is there some way to use User Variables and a BrightScript, then use Conditional Targets?

Any pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ken Campbell

 

 

 

4 comments

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    Romeo

    Hi Ken,

    It's feasible but it's not straight forward to achieve what you're describing. I think you would need to use an Event handler as an initial state in a zone (let's call this EventHandler_Zone). Within the EventHandler_Zone you would set daily triggers to set a user variable based on the day of the week and then use that user variable as the variable to check conditional targets against. Each conditional target would be set to transition to a specific state (  a Super state) that should be played back on specific day of the week. If what I've described makes sense to you then great :-) ... but if it does not please open a support ticket and make sure to export your current presentation and provide a link so it can be downloaded.

    Regards,

    Romeo 

     

  • 0
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    Ken C

    I set up a test presentation as you described, however it doesn't appear to work in the BAPreview window. Does the Time/Clock Event need to be running on the BrightSign Hardware?

    I tried the Time/Clock Even in both "Once per day" and "Periodic throughout the day", but the event never seems to trigger. As another test, I tried configuring the Time/Clock Event just to display a static image as well (so I could see if it was working) but nothing happens.

     

     

  • 0
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    Romeo

    Please provide a link so I can download this presentation and see what you've done.

  • 0
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    elliswells

    I'd be happy to help you with your dynamic scheduling problem for the BrightSign 4K unit. To better assist you, please provide more details about the specific challenges or requirements you're facing. Here are a few questions to get started:

    1. What are the specific goals or objectives you have for scheduling educational movies in the exhibition space?

    2. Are there any constraints or limitations you need to consider when scheduling the movies? For example, are there specific time slots available, equipment constraints, or other factors that affect scheduling?

    3. Do you have a set of educational movies that you want to schedule, and if so, do they have varying durations or specific order requirements?

    4. How often do you need to update or change the schedule? Is it a daily, weekly, or monthly task?

    Also read How Long is a Research Paper

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