SmartFeed

Smartfeed

SmartFeed builds on Broadsign's existing monitor sync feature (see The Monitor Sync Section). You can enter scripts in Broadsign Control Administrator to dynamically activate content based on triggers you choose.

Example: Imagine that you have a large screen next to a major highway. You want certain content to appear if the external temperature is above 20°C, and other content to appear if the external temperature is below 20°C. Use Broadsign's SmartFeed feature to add a script that will draw live weather data. As the temperature rises or falls, your content will change as you want.

Prerequisites

SmartFeed is an advanced feature. We recommend that you be familiar with the following:

Workflow

The workflow follows that of normal content booking (see Content and Scheduling Tutorial), with the following differences:

  • Create Conditions: Create conditions for each scenario (in our example, "hot" for > 20°C and "cold" for < 20°C)
  • Configure SmartFeed: Create a configuration and enable SmartFeed.

We will create two conditions: one called "Hot" and the other called "Cold".

To create conditions:

  1. From among the resource tabs on the left, select Criteria & Conditions.

  2. In the Network Setup ribbon, click the Folder icon. Create a folder called "SmartFeed".

  3. Click the Criteria or Condition icon.

  4. In the Select a folder dialogue box, select "SmartFeed".
  5. Click OK. The Add Criteria Wizard opens.
  6. Name the condition "Hot". Click Next.
  7. On the Criteria Type page, select Condition and deselect All. Click Finish.
  8. Repeat steps 3-7, creating a condition called "Cold".

The majority of the work required to set up SmartFeed occurs in the player configuration profile.

Note: You must create a profile that is at v13.0 or higher.

To configure SmartFeed:

  1. Create a configuration.
  2. Create a configuration profile. We will call ours "v13.0".

  3. Open the configuration profile properties (double-click on the profile). Go to Monitor Sync > URLs.

  4. Click Add. The Synchronization URL dialogue box opens.

  5. For our example, we will configure the following settings:

    • Remote URL

      https://samples.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=London,uk&appid=b6907d289e10d714a6e88b30761fae22

      Note: This URL will provide us with live weather data for the London, UK area.

    • Destination Path – Mandatory. The local path to which you will sync the content. This path can be relative or absolute. If relative, the content will be synced into the player’s application data path, which is usually C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BroadSign\bsp\share\bsp\sync. If the path is absolute, make sure that the user under which BSP is running has read/write access to the destination path. If no specific path is required, put current directory (".").
    • Protocol – Select HTTP/HTTPs.
    • Enable SmartFeed – Select to enable the feature.

  6. In the Synchronization URL dialogue box, select Edit Script. The Script Editor opens.

    Note: If you have added a URL in Step 5, the data object represents the fields of your document and will appear in the document tree.

  7. Use the document tree to update your script. You can double-click a field to automatically insert it in your code. In our example, we will insert the following:

    Copy 
    if (data.main.temp > 20){
        remoteAction({"action": "condition", "enabled": 1, "name": "Hot"});
        remoteAction({"action": "condition", "enabled": 0, "name": "Cold"});    
    }else if(data.main.temp <= 20){
        remoteAction({"action": "condition", "enabled": 1, "name": "Cold"});
        remoteAction({"action": "condition", "enabled": 0, "name": "Hot"});
    }

It is possible to have persistent information so that a functionality only triggers once when something changes within the data obtained from the RSS feed. Use the following functions:

  • localStorage.setItem
  • localStorage.getItem

The following is a sample script:

Copy 
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
    var condition = data[i];
    var previouslySavedExpiry = localStorage.getItem(condition.name + "_expiry");

    var expiry = condition.expiry;
                    
    if (new Date(expiry).getTime() <= Date.now() && expiry != previouslySavedExpiry) {
        var action = {
            "action": "play_now",
            "name": condition.name,
            "max_duration": condition.max_duration
        };

        remoteAction(action);
        localStorage.setItem(condition.name + "_expiry", expiry);
    }
}

Tip: To avoid calling the remote action each time the file is being synchronized through Monitor Sync, use the expiry field as a safety variable that is kept on disk. When the condition is added to the file, an expiry timestamp is generated, for example: expiry = Now() + 5 minutes. The expiry should be longer than the monitor sync refresh period.