Advertising display controller software

Customer

Objective

Solution

Hardware

Both standard LCD monitor and LED display, connected to a standard PC video output, can be used as output device.

Software

Software allows working with different resolutions of advertising displays and it supports various image color modes (bpp parameter - bits per pixel).

Operator’s interface is implemented by applying modern Web-technologies. There is a Web-server working under SUSE Linux10.2 control. It provides user’s interaction with internal functions of visualizer via graphical Web-interface.

The main functions of software are:

• Display control via Web-interface and information output;
• Controller configuration and setting display parameters: resolution of LED cells, number of cells horizontally and vertically, bpp parameter (bits per pixel);
• Division of access rights to user groups (operator, administrator, engineer);
• Scheduling advertising and information announcements;
• Performing more than 20 information output effects (creeping line, changing movement speed, various appearance effects, setting pauses, brightness control);
• Standard TrueType (TTF) fonts support;
• Graphical information output in BMP format;
• High-quality video image output;
• Information output to different layers (user can add, set sizes and activate layers “on the fly”);
• Graphical information output to layer surface;
• Testing that information is displayed correctly via built-in display emulator;
• Availability of a special installation file that configures operating system and installs application software.

Output layers can differ in size and overlap, their number is limited only by PC’s computing power; transparency of layers is supported. Layer manager was developed to arrange layers into a resulting frame.

SDL library is used to arrange images.

Mplayer is used for video ouput, and output plug-in was developed for it. It converts frames into SDL surface format.

Emulator represents ActiveX-component that allows playing visualization in MS Internet Explorer browser window. It displays the contents of all layers and visualizes text objects and images placed on these layers. Emulator’s interface includes scrolling bar that allows scrolling preview forward and backward, i.e. start visualization from a certain frame. Also, there is a possibility to pause playback and renew it using the “pause/start” button.

Benefits

• Application of Linux operating system and ANSI C for programming provides portability of program code to other hardware platforms, absence of charges for licensed solutions.
• Universal support of LCD and LED displays.
• Web-interface allows working with display via Internet browser from any PC (mobile device). No additional software installation is required.

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