Content Comparison

The Groups tab of BSN and the Manage tab in BrightAuthor show the following status colors:

• Green: The player has a presentation scheduled and has successfully communicated with BSN within a certain time period. You can customize how frequently the player connects to BSN:

  1. In BrightAuthor, go to the Manage > Status tab

  2. Right-click a player, and select Edit. 

  3. Under the Networked with BrightSign Network option, use the Content Check Frequency drop down menu to indicate how often you want the player to connect to the server.

• Yellow: The player has missed its last scheduled update. For example, if you set the player to update every 5 minutes, and it has been 6 minutes since the player last checked in for an update, then the color will have changed to yellow.

• Red can indicate a number of errors:

  • Connectivity: The unit has missed multiple update cycles. For example, the player is set to update every 5 minutes and it has not connected with BSN for 11 minutes.

  • Scheduling (Applies only to BrightAuthor versions 3.4 and earlier): No presentations are scheduled for the player. For example, if you have set up a unit, but have not assigned a presentation to it yet, then the color will be set to red.

  • Downloads errors: Either the player cannot download the current sync file, which is downloaded each time it checks in with BSN (you can see this by viewing the Error log in the Info window), or the player failed to download one or more files in a recently published presentation. You can see the download status of each file listed in the Download Progress window. Go to Manage > Status and right-click on a player name to access either the Info or Download window.

  • Errors: The system has crashed due to a script error, or attempts to write to the SD card have failed because the card is malfunctioning or is locked. You can see these errors by viewing the Error log in the Info window.

  • Subscription: The subscription for the player’s serial number has expired, and the unit has been suspended.  You can see the subscription status by clicking on the properties of a player.

The Networked Variable feature in BrightAuthor requires an .xml file to update. The .xml file uses a simple RSS <item> tag. The <title> tag contains the variable name, and the <description> tag contains the variable value:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
	<channel>
		<item>
			<title>test</title>
			<description>50</description>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

In the example below, under File > Presentation Properties > Variables, the variable is pointing to an .xml file in a Dropbox account. When you select Validate, BrightAuthor attempts to read the value in the description field of the .xml tag.  

BSN Live Data Feeds

If you have a BrightSign Network subscription, you can use the Live Data Feed feature to update Networked Variables. With Live Data Feeds, each Title field specifies a variable name, and the corresponding Value field specifies the value of the variable.