Here is a preview release of a playback package for image and video content that has been in development for a bit. It relies on new features available on info-beamer hosted. You can try it out right now by clicking the button and importing it into your account:
Be sure to click on the “Documentation” tab after importing the package into your account to learn more on how everything works. Note that the package is still under heavy development and features might change or not work fully reliable yet. If you use this package, please provide feedback, either here or through email.
Features:
Synchronized playback across multiple devices. Unlike other packages, this one does not rely on local system time but instead uses communication across multiple devices to achieve synchronization. This means that it will also work for devices that no not have reliable outside network connection and can work on devices that are completely offline (prerequisite is an offline license).
Individual device configuration (using device_data) for properties like display rotation and content placement. This means that you can assign the same setup to multiple devices and (for example) rotate the output on only one of those devices. Similarly you can place the same output differently on multiple displays to create a video wall.
Scheduling for individual content. The scheduling uses the same mechanism introduced by setup scheduling. This means you can have individual items scheduled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and specify repeat patterns and more. You can also configure the package to turn off your displays if nothing is scheduled.
Alternative content within the same setup group: This allows you (for example) to build a 4x1 row of displays and have playback slots with individual content mixed with slots that show the same content across all displays.
Remote control: You can interrupt content across all devices running the same setup and enqueue selected playlist slots manually.
Planned features:
It should be possible to play back synchronized content other than images and videos. An example might be a synchronized crawling text row for example.
Hi, I’ve used this package for a while as a test and it’s perfect, no bugs, and it has almost everything needed for player images and videos. What I feel is missing is a “Switch time” such as the HD Image/Video Player package has for transitioning between media files… Would it be possible to include it?
And how much longer can it take for this package to be ready for production?
This looks like a fantastic package and will provide some interesting new abilities to info-beamer
Can we use triggers from a device running the Touchscreen Package on the same network to trigger playback in this new package? if so I’m guessing that you would advise that Pi models with built-in ethernet should be used rather than wifi to make it more reliable?
I’m currently reworking the package to make it both more flexible (if needed) as well as simpler to use, so it can just replace the HD image/video player package for simple use cases. It’s been quite a fight, but I think I have now found a good solution for that.
Should be possible to add back. Thanks for the feedback.
The triggering isn’t really good at the moment. There’s some ideas to make that better. Stay tuned. But in general an Ethernet connection is recommended if you intend to use the trigger feature as it relies on the UDP protocol for the trigger messages and messages can be lost if the connections is briefly interrupted.
Although 6 months ago I wrote that this package worked very well, after a while longer of use I have had these two errors:
Synchronized playback works well until one of the devices, due to network problems or network intermittency local or other related issue, it desyncs and shows the backup content, which is the expected behavior, however it never shows the scheduled content again, despite the network functioning normally or the device being rebooted or change configuration based on another package and then return to this one. The only thing that makes it re-display scheduled content based on this package is disabling the peer to peer option, losing the ability to sync and efficiently transfer content between devices. The only device (with p2p enabled) that does not have this problem is the one that is assigned as the leader (which is automatic), but without any other device available to synchronize.
Another detail that I have noticed is that the schedule in the setup or from a playlist shows that the content by scheduled date has already ended, ignoring the device’s timezone, however in practice the device does display content correctly respecting the timezone and schedule, even though the timeline shows that the content has already expired.
This package has become very important since it is the only one with which I can program chronologically by asset and use the capabilities and flexibility of the native playlist.
Just out of personal anxiety I want to know if there is a roughly date for when there will be an update to this package and it can be used in production? (although I am using it at my own risk).
When that happens, I guess on the dashboard the it is also only showing one peer (so itself) in the peer-to-peer info on the device’s detail page?
Righty. The issue here is that it’s not really possible in general to relate a playlist to only a single timezone. The playlist could be used in setups assigned to devices using various timezones. So the UI reverts to using UTC when calculating whether or not time specification is in the past. I’ll have to check if it is somehow viable to calculate all the playlists usage , get all devices, their timezones and see which one is the latest. If you have any other idea on how to make that more transparent, please let me know.
that is the leader with p2p enabled, additionally to test there is another one with p2p enabled, all the others on the same local network are with p2p disabled to prevent it from generating the error on those devices.
This is exactly what happens, they can be synchronized for a couple of days until some error in the network (I don’t know exactly what type of error in the network) desynchronizes them (some devices) and generates the error described.
If that happens again, can you send me (via email) the debug log from both the leader and follower device? You can do that using “Manage > Toolbox… > Download debug log” on each device’s detail page. I think that would be helpful in figuring out why that happens.
