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GPIO send LED off/on in brightauthor

Firstly- I'm a total newbie. Which will become clear i'm sure.

I'm setting up three new XD234's to play a synch film. Fine, i'll use a brightwall i think?

However the client wants to have an LED briefly triggered before each film shows to indicate to the audience where they should be paying attention. 

I gather i can power the LEDs and trigger them via the GPIO. Can i simply automate this in Bright author? and if so how?

I'll sack this off if it's really complicated but would like to expand my knowledge and the possibilities. 

Thanks

3 comments

  • 0
    Avatar
    JRB Technical

    BrightWall is great for quick and easy syncing, but you can not add any interactivity as of yet, like the GPIO LEDs.

    So you will have to do the other sync method, Enhanced Synchronization with 1 player as a Master, and the others as Slaves.

    Here is a video tutorial that will get you started.

    http://brightsignbiz.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/Sync%20Presentation.mp4

     

    Instead of Looping at the end, on the Master you would set up with some timers and the GPIO to turn the LED's on/off, and then a timer to play the video (and send the "Go" sync word to the Slave players.

    You said, LED but then said LED's.  So if you are looking at powering more than 1 or 2 LED's, you will need to add a relay. You trigger the relay off the GPIO and then the LED's off the relay. The BrightSign players GPIO can not handle much more than a single LED per GPIO.

    https://brightsign.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/218066877-How-do-I-connect-buttons-LEDs-to-the-GPIO-port-

     

    Have a Event Handler to add the GPIO commands to turn on and off the LED to the EventHandler for starting (assuming you are scheduling playback).

    https://brightsign.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/218066777-How-do-I-set-the-GPIO-output-s-to-turn-on-and-off-quickly-pulse-

     

    You will actually need to do a double start of sorts.

    The Timer on the first Event Handler, you want to keep at at least 10 seconds (giving the other players time to switch to the scheduled presentation). The second Event Handler you will add the GPIO commands to flash the LED. The second Event Handler Timer you set to the time from the LED flashing until the movie start, and also add the "Go" sync command to this timer.

    The Slave setups can stay the same as in the video tutorial, except you can remove the Media End Event at the end of those to loop back, again assuming this is a play once scheduled playback situation.

    Hope that helps point you in the right direction.

     

     

     

     

  • 0
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    craig humpston

    This is great advice John thank you.

    The order of things goes-

    LED flash above monitor one, film plays

    LED flash above monitor two, (separate LED strip, film plays)

    LED flash above monitor three, (separate LED strip, film plays)

    Would i need to do anything different in this eventuality?

     

  • 0
    Avatar
    JRB Technical

    I misunderstood that they were all 3 playing at the same time.

    The basic principals are the same, but there would be changes, depending on how you are scheduling/triggering the movies to play, how long the moves are, etc.

    So instead of Master sending 'Go' to the 2 Slave players, on the Master player you would move the 'Go' from the beginning to the end (Media End link from movie to a new Event Handler) and have the Event Handler instead send "Go2" and have player 2 listen for "Go2" to start.

    Then do the same for player 2, where it sends "Go3" and have player 3 listen for "Go3" to start.

    You could also add the GPIO commands to each player for it's own LED strip as apposed to them all coming from the master player.

    All the concepts are the same, you just need to move parts around accordingly, many different possibilities.

     

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