Configure a Brightsign

** Note ** You may want to verify player that your loads and can run basic content from the SD card by using bright author to push just a static image to the display, before trying to do UDP inputs. In my case, the HDMI was not working with my monitor, so it was good to realize that I needed to use VGA before I spent all this time wondering why it did not work. VGA or HDMI is part of the bright author project settings, so ensure you select the correct one.

1.) Download and install the brightsign software “BrightAuthor”. This is how we push content and change settings on the brightsign.

2.) Create a new presentation.

3.) Under File -> Presentation Properties, you want to change the port to 1010 for the UDP receiver port. The default script for nodel assumes that the brightsign is running on this port.

4.) Change to the edit tab. You can control many different things using UDP events (under events tab). You can allow keywords to change media, or trigger anything that the brightsign can do.

5.) For this exercise, we will be adding a monitor power save command, to blank the display at night and wake it up in the morning by a nodel schedule.

6.) Click the word “layout” at the top, under the edit tab.

7.) Click “add zone” and add an additional “audio only” zone. Name it EventHandler and resize it to the upper right.

8.) Return to the playlist tab. Under zone, select your new event handler zone.

9.) Click on the other tab, and then click and drag to add the “event handler” component.

10.) Click over to the events tab. Find the UDP event and click and drag it onto the event handler. A menu will be displayed. Create a UDP event called “Stop” with the label “Stop”.

11.) Click the advanced tab.

12.) Add a command to run when this stop UDP packet is sent. In this case, we want to turn Power Save Mode ON, when stop is pressed, thus blanking the monitor. Add the command “video” and for the parameter, pick “enable monitor power save mode”. Hit OK to confirm that.

13.) Repeat the process from step 11, creating a new UDP input event for the ‘Start’ command, This one will Disable the power save mode, thus turning the monitor on.

14.) Go back to Zone 1, which has your actual media and add something in like a video to play or an image. You can use UDP inputs here to trigger transitions as well.

15.) When done, find the Publish tab. Make sure the schedule is how you want and then change the “publish location” to your SD card. Insert the SD card in the PC if you haven’t already.

16.) Publish the file to the SD card and load it into the player.

17.) Go to your nodel server and make a new node using the brightsign template which is built in.

18.) Put in the IP address of your player and test. The start and stop commands should be working now to trigger a blanking of the display and resuming.

19.) Save your project in BrightAuthor somewhere that you can find it again when you invariably have to make changes to the script.