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Switching systems with BrightSign?

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Beyond The Box
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Hello, we're a new team looking for help regarding one of our projects.

We're basically dealing with a situation where we'd like to switch from a BrightSign setup of 1 master (one of the XT series) and 3 slaves (LS 4) to possibly a small laptop/PC/raspberry pi, and vice versa. The BS setup is currently connected to 4 beamers/projectors.

 

It should work as follows:
Within BA:c, a button triggers the switch -> BS setup turns on the second hardware -> beamers switch to the second hardware setup -> second hardware setup does what it needs to -> button triggers to switch back to the original BS setup

 

I tried explaining it the best I can, we're only getting started with this project. I'd appreciate it if you have any links, any input/opinion you have about this kind of thing that might help us get a better grasp of the possibilities that we could get from this idea!

Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing your opinions.

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11 comments

  • 1
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    Ken Campbell

    You didn’t mention what video switcher / crosspoint matrix / video router / distribution system you’re planning on using.

    Pretty much anything commercial-grade (Crestron, QSC, Extron, Kramer, Ross, to name a few) will have network and/or serial and/or GPIO based methods for triggering video and audio routing/switching presets for any combination of inputs and outputs. Any of those control methods may work with Brightsign, but you’d have to pick something and then dive into the documentation for the control protocol. Or see what BS plugins have already been written.

    You didn’t specify your working signal resolution and framerate. If you’re running 1080p60 or below, you can get an inexpensive second-hand Extron DXP 84 HDMI crosspoint matrix on Ebay for under $100 USD. Have a look at the datasheet and control protocol on Extron’s website to ensure it’s compatible with the rest of your system.

    Cheers,
    Ken

    EDIT: I left another post with some links for you to check out, but it's pending approval by the moderator.

  • 0
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    Beyond The Box

    We're also currently looking into that, we're trying to get a cheap alternative that supports UDP commands so that we can try switching with them, since that's how most of the system works currently.

    We'll look into the ones you recommended, and also check what BS plugins have available to us.

    They are 4k beamers, running 25 frames, I'll nonetheless look into the datasheets and cps of what's available.

    Thank you for your response, it'll be a great help to us!

     

    Kind regards,

    Beyond The Box

  • 0
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    Beyond The Box

    Another possibility we've just come across. Running an application on a server, and having it stream over to BrightSign? So the necessity of hardware might not even be there? However, it does have the implications of the speed which we send button commands, would that create lag or might not even happen due to UDP?

  • 0
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    Ken Campbell

    It all depends on your requirements and constraints. Switching and streaming are different animals. If you're concerned about latency, and responsiveness is a requirement, and you’ll be switching back and forth frequently, I would avoid streaming based solutions. Connection setup and buffering delays will not permit a seamless change over. 

    But by all means, try it out on your system, it's the best way to know for certain.

    Cheers,

    Ken 

  • 0
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    Beyond The Box

    PC/RPI - Mini PC / Raspberry PI 5

    LAN - There for the UDP commands

    This is the setup we came up with, we were looking towards using a HDMI matrix but found it too expensive unfortunately. Do you have any opinion/advice about this? We're still looking at the streaming as well, as latency shouldn't be an issue.

  • 0
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    Ken Campbell

    Too many boxes and interconnects for my liking :) Take care of all that with a single 4K crosspoint matrix, and it will give you flexibility for future expansion and changes. Especially last minute / unplanned reconfigurations for special events. But this may not be an issue for you.

    If you can’t afford new, a second hand 4K capable Extron DTP 84 can be found second hand in the $200-$300 range.

    Nearly all commercial AV equipment I’ve used in the past 20 years used TCP-based remote control in some form (telnet, raw, REST via HTTP, etc.). Beamers (Panasonic, Christie, Barco, Epson, NEC, Sony, etc.) video switchers, scalers, room/show controllers, touchscreens, quads, media players, frame stores, transcoders, decoders, rasterizers, processing amps & DSP (in addition to the proprietary protocols some use with their config software)… I’m sure there are some that use UDP, but I’ve never encountered one. So you may need to drop the UDP requirement, or be limited to choosing gear based on it’s use of UDP.

    If you can deal with the latencies, and you don’t need the flexibility of a matrix, then yes, streaming makes all that other stuff go away. It can introduce other problems though, so do lots of testing.

    Good luck!

    Ken

  • 0
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    Ken Campbell

    If your beamers had multiple HDMI inputs, and switching between the Brightsigns and the Rpi did not have to be seamless, and your beamer supported TCP commands, you could do everything you need with just the 1x4 splitter. Simply send input switch commands to the beamers. There would be the usual signal setup time, blanking and OSD popup (unless you have it disabled), but if you can tolerate that, it would be the cheapest and simplest way to implement what you’re after.

    If you absolutely positively have to have UDP control, you could run netcat on your Rpi and use it to translate UDP commands to TCP commands. Or implement your own protocol translator in Python, for example.

    Ken

  • 0
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    Ken Campbell

    For anyone interested, the Brightsign-controlled Crosspoint switch works beautifully. I just had a project that had similar requirements to the OP, so I bought a second hand DTP 84 4K off eBa and it took maybe 20 minutes to get the Brightsign controlling the switch using the Extron SIS command set. The great thing is you can send the commands over TCP, a hardware serial connection (1/8" jack on the Brightsign) or USB (which is actually just a virtual serial port).

    Ken

     

  • 0
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    Beyond The Box

    Perfect, thank you for the input. We're also just about starting with testing out hardware but we made a crucial mistake regarding our HDMI Matrix. We were looking for a matrix that is capable of displaying 4 different outputs but we accidentally bought a non-MST matrix. So please keep in mind when buying matrixes, or splitters, always find out whether you need different outputs, otherwise it is going to only mirror one, so any amount of displays you connect, it will only perceive as one!

  • 0
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    Beyond The Box

    We just found out about the XC5 series which is WebGL compatible. We sent a request to BrightSign via contact form and we're hoping to get some good answers. They state: "Extraordinary PC-class power", "blazing-fast 3D Web GL applications" Definitely a promising device for using WebGL applications, in our case a Unity 3D game. Will update after a response.

  • 0
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    Beyond The Box

    In the end, it was not the right device for us. It's not capable of running the Unity 3D experience we had in mind.

    However, we're now heading towards our finals steps of the project. We're currently trying to figure out how to send out commands from the master BrightSign player to a PC and back. After that, implementation wise it should be finished.

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