One of the really useful features in CampaignManager is the publishable Commands.  In earlier versions, this allowed administrators to change basic settings such as call interval, logging options and RS232 interfaces.  However, there were still a lot of options one could not change without being front and center on the machine itself, thereby incuring time and money in making changes.  Since version 2009, CampaignManager has included the option of attaching an executable to run utility tasks on remote players.  This is an awesome feature provided that you were in a position to write your own code to do whatever it was you needed to do on the player. 

Despite the fact that you can now run any executable code (Windows PowerShell, Batch files, EXEs etc.) remotely according to schedule, we realise that a lot of users don't have the time or access to the skills to create such scripts.  So, we've created a little app that you can use in conjuntion with CampaignManager Commands to help make changes on remote Digital Signage players that much easier.  The tool, (imaginatively) named the "Player Settings Console Utility" is a windows executable that takes a number of switches, allowing you to make complex changes to the player remotely.  When you run the app without any switches, you see the following help window which describes the functionality and syntax in detail:

So, for example If you were swapping over to a new server and needed to change the remote IPs, you could run the command

RyarcSettingsUtil /SA:192.168.100.100

The application will change the setting in the registry and restart the player which will from that moment, point to your New Server.  Needless to say, it makes sense to test your syntax out locally first!  You can also run several changes simultaneously like this:

The app will also helpfuly hightlight what it was able to do and not do.  (In this case the NodeServer URL was provided without the http:// at the front and the .asmx file at the end).  Once you're ready to publish, create the command with the appropriate switches like this:

This utility is still not 'officially' released but a version with possible bugs is attached here RyarcSettingsUtil.zip (15.84 KB) if you want to check it out.  Feedback most welcome!

Setting up a video streaming session through CampaignManager is a pretty straight forward. However if it is something you have not tried before, I hope that this article will save you some time:

There are 3 main steps to getting video streaming to display in Campaign.

1. Set up the streaming session in Windows Media Encoder.

•    Click file and New session
•    Select Broadcast a live event
•    Select the video device to be used
•    Select Pull from the encoder

• select a free port on which to broadcast e.g 8080 above.
• Click Next and then Finish to start Encoding. (for more detailed information on this setup, see the Windows Media Encoder help files).

2. Create an asx file in notepad with the IP and port details as configured above. For example: 

3. Add the file to CampaignManager

• In CampaignManager ScreenDesigner, click on Add, then file
• Change the files of type to all files and select the asx file you have just created

Hardware Review – Aopen DE 965-HG

We have recently tested an Aopen mini PC  ( DE965-HG ) with the CampaignManager software.

Using our standardized testing we gave the Aopen unit a score of 9.6 / 10

Unit specifications:         Processor – Core Duo CPU T5800 2GHZ

                                         Memory – 1 Gb

                                         Graphics Card – On-board - Intel 965 Express chipset

The player scored the maximum possible for playback performance.

It is a compact player which will easily fit behind a Digital signage screen. 

The full testing details have been included in the following document:    Aopen DE965hg- Playback Performance.pdf (42.39 KB)

The scoring is defined in this document:    Scoring Definitions.docx (11.46 KB)

Remote Command - Get Device Metrics

With a large digital signage network, it can be difficult to monitor all the remote players. The Remote command 'Get Device Metrics' in CampaignManager makes this an easy task, sending back valuable information to the CM Service allowing you to prevent problems before they occur.  For example if a player is running low on disk space it may prevent a new camapign being published to it.  The 'Get Device Metrics' command will let you know the 'Available Hard Drive' and you can decide if action is required before this causes an issue.

Here is a full list of the information sent from the player to the CM Service on recieving the 'Get Device Metrics' command:   

Step 1: Create a new command in CampaignManager. Select the 'Get Device Metrics' command, schedule to run at intervals, perhaps once a month or to run 'as soon as possible'. Target to all or some of the players.

Step 2: Open CM Service, once you can see that the command has reached the players and is at 100% the metrics will start to return from the players. The length of time taken for all the information to return will depend on the call interval setting. Go to the  'Remote Display Devices' tab to view the information.

Hope you have found this a useful article.

Post your technical enquiries on our forum http://www.ryarc.com/forum

Pooling Scenario – Simple

The Ryarc Support Team is regularly asked for its help with scheduling, how to fit a business’ rules into CampaignManager. For the more complicated of the scheduling requests ‘Pooling’ almost always is the solution and for this reason I thought it would be worth discussing a few such scenarios.

The first scenario is quite straightforward.  We have 1000 entertainment videos in our play list. We mix these in with News articles, Trivia and a selection of Advertisements.  Using normal scheduling we need to add all the entertainment videos and then slot in the other media files at intervals. When an advertisement is out of date, we need to manually remove all instances of this and add the newer advertisement to the slots.

The use of pooling is certainly the better solution in this case.

Step 1 in setting up pooling is to create the pools. Pools are defined as groups of related media.  In this case the groups are quite obvious; we will set up these 4 pools:

Add the appropriate media to each pool.

Step 2 is to decide on the pattern in which the files will play. In this scenario we would like to play, 2 Advertisements followed by an Entertainment Video, a news item, another Advertisement, another Entertainment Video and 1 Trivia item to finish.  We would like this pattern to repeat every 5 minutes all day.

The Pool pattern will look like this:

Step 3 is to add the pool pattern to your campaign.  In this case we will add the ‘Daily Pattern’ created above and schedule the campaign to run all day.

When an out of date advertisement needs to be removed and a new one added, simply remove the old item from the media pool and add the new on, go to Tools menu and choose ‘Update campaigns’ .

Post your technical enquiries on our forum http://www.ryarc.com/forum

Ryarc have recently tested the DT research unit - WebDT170 with the CampaignManager software.

Using our standarised testing we gave the unit an overall score of 9.3 / 10

                                  Memory - 896Mb RAM,

                                  Graphics card - ATI Radeon X1270. 

The player scored high for Playback Performance, Compactness & Video Ouputs.

The noise of the unit was loud relative to similarly sized PC's. The heat of the unit was a concern, becoming too hot to touch after only a few hours.

The full testing details have been included in the following document: DT Research _WebDT170_ Playback Performance.pdf (52.17 KB)

The scoring is defined in this document: Hardware Review Scoring Definitions.pdf (35.81 KB)

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Post your technical enquiries on our forum http://www.ryarc.com/forum