You can change your service plan anytime, both up and down. Please give us a call or send us an email to support@smartsign2go.com

Service contracts are month-to-month, whether you purchase a year in advance for the discounted rate or are on monthly payments.

No. You only pay the monthly/annual amount of the plan you subscribed to, with the addition of sales tax for residents of Washington state.

We reserve the right to annually adjust our prices. We'll be sure to announce these adjustments a month beforehand, so that you have plenty of time to change or cancel your subscription if you are not comfortable with the new prices.

Depending on the shape of the content that you want to display to your audience, it can be useful to have your sign in one orientation or the other. Landscape is horizontal whereas portrait is with the display tipped on its end.

There are two sections that need to be adjusted if you want to change orientations:

1. The page itself.

Within the page editor, you will see a little gear icon at the bottom left of the window. 

If you click on that then you will see a selection for the orientation. 16:9 ratio is standard landscape horizontal orientation. 9:16 ratio is used for portrait.

If you select 9:16 you will see that the page editor changes into a long, skinnier page to reflect the new orientation.

2. Channel settings.

Now that you've created your pages in portrait orientation you need to drag them into a playlist as usual (don't mix landscape pages with portrait pages... it won't work. 

Next you need to click on the channel that the playlist is assigned to and select the gear icon to change its settings. 

Next you can choose either "Clockwise" or "Counterclockwise" depending on which way you have your TV tilted.

Once you've chosen clockwise or counterclockwise if you find that the image on the TV is upside down, simply choose the opposite and wait for it to update or just reboot your player.

* In order to go back to standard landscape setting for a channel, click the "X" icon next to the "Clockwise" or "Counterclockwise" selection to remove it.

There are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Use a background page.

Once you have created a page that has the basic structure for what you want (logo in place where you want it, background, etc) then you can create a new blank page and when you go in to edit it, click on the settings icon at the lower left of the screen and choose the page you want to appear in the background. 

Next you can add what you want as unique to the current page. 

Keep in mind that with this scenario that you can't modify the background page directly here and that any changes you make to the background page will be reflected across all pages that are using it.

2. Copy an existing page.

This is best for when you want nearly the same fundamental design, but need to be able to re-size or move something a bit.

Create a page with all the common design elements that you want (i.e. logo, background, title placement, etc) and then when you are finished save it and go back to the dashboard. Next click on the page that you just created and choose "copy." Now you can edit the copied page as desired for your next page. Repeat this process for additional pages that should have the same format as the original.

You can use the regular copy/paste keyboard shortcuts for your environment:

• In Windows and Linux: CTRL-C for copy and CTRL-V for paste

• On a Mac: CMD-C for copy and CMD-V for paste

The first tool you have at your disposal is the X and Y position of each element you add. If you hover your mouse over a picture or text for example, then look down at the bottom of the page you will see the X and Y position. As you move the element you can see where it is at within the horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) planes.

Next, if you hold down the ALT key while dragging an element, the element moves in (approximately) 20 pixel steps. This way, it is much easier to align elements.

The ALT key can also be used when rotating an element: it will tilt in increments of 15 degrees.

Finally, you can also position elements pixel by pixel by moving the selected element with the cursor (arrow) keys while you hold down the ALT key.

You can't do EVERYTHING from within our design software, so here are some recommendations to help you out with different tasks:

COLORS

You can specify within the designer what color you want text, lines and boxes (backgrounds) to be. You can either select a stock color OR you can be specific with a hexadecimal code for your chosen color.

If the color is anywhere that you can view it on the web, then you can install the free extension for the Chrome web browser called ColorZilla. 

Once it is installed, just click on the icon and choose "Page color picker active." Now anywhere you place your mouse you will see the hex code for the color that you're pointing at, for example #D5DBE2, which in the photo below represents a light blue/grey. 

Now, if you left click, it will save the hex code to your clipboard and you can paste it in as a color for your text, box or line inside the designer!

WEB

1. Converting anything you see on your screen into a photo.

Most computers come with software that allows you to capture what's on your screen. In windows, the "Snipping Tool" allows you to select any area of the screen and save it as a .PNG photo. Then you can upload it into the designer for use in your digital signage! The easiest way to find it is to search for snipping tool.

For Mac, you can press Command+Shift+4 and then select the area of your screen that you're interested in. Once you finish selecting, the photo will automatically be saved to your desktop.

PHOTOS

Photoshop is expensive and not everyone has it or knows how to use it. To fairly easily resize and crop photos, we recommend using software from Paint dot net. Visit www.getpaint.net to download this free software.

Otherwise something more light-duty such as the cloud-based Pixler.com is good for the most basic tasks.

VIDEO

1. Trimming.

If you want to easily trim videos or convert them into formats that are compatible with our platform (MP4, WMV, MPEG, M4V, AVI, MKV, MTS) then we highly suggest you try iSkysoft's Video Converter. At the time of this writing it is $39.95, but is far faster, more intuitive and more reliable than the software that is included with most computers.

2. Screen recording.

Sometimes there are odd cases where you need to record something that is happening on your screen. You can capture the action and save it as a video with ZD Soft Screen Recorder.

3. Downloading

The free software from Clipgrab.org allows you to download videos that you find on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and more. This allows you to have more control over the content in your signage and access videos that are otherwise locked within their home platform. 

Remember that videos that you upload using the Video widget in designer need to be in .MP4 format. Use the Video Converter from iSkysoft mentioned above to convert from .WMV, .MOV, etc to .MP4.

Here are some ideas for what you might incorporate into your signage material for internal communications:

• Employee recognition (anniversaries, birthdays, outstanding performance)
• Safety reminders and best practices
• Company and branch location stats
• Helpful or inspirational quotes and images
• Customer spotlights
• Company-specific data 
• Internal messaging (via the  Yammer app  or other)
• Jokes or inspirational quotes delivered via RSS feed (just search google and then use the RSS app to display the URL for the RSS feed of your choice)
  
• News, either specific to the company or general using our apps, either with text or YouTube Live Stream broadcasts.
  
• and for locations where the customer sees the signage then of course there would be a variety of marketing material on the screens, welcome messages, company history, trivia, etc.

You can add one of the audio/video apps to your page to provide sound (audio app, YouTube, Vimeoor uploaded video), but what if you would like that sound or video to play seamlessly across multiple pages?

Option 1: Use a "Foreground page"

Add the audio app to an otherwise blank page and drag that page into the "Foreground page" position in your playlist.

If using an audio/video app such as YouTube, Vimeo or uploaded video then you can resize it to where it is very small on the page so that it doesn't intrude on what is playing in the primary section of the playlist. You will need to set the properties of the app to "continue playing" in order to get the video to loop and continue playback.

Option 2: Use a "Background page"

For this option, build a page with your chosen audio app and assign that page as a background page for all pages which you want the audio to play on. 

You can do this one page at a time by assigning the background manually in the page designer by clicking on the settings gear at the bottom-left of the canvas OR you can assign visit the settings area of your account where you can assign a default background page which will automatically add your chosen page when adding new pages to your account. Note: this does not retroactively assign a background page to existing pages.

Keep in mind that for background pages, same as with foreground pages, when using a video app to play your audio you'll need to set the properties of the app to "continue playing" in order for it to loop and continue playing.

Shortcut Keys

In the designer you can use a number of shortcut keys to make editing even easier. Here's an overview:

If you click on any of your playlists and choose edit, you will see a section on the film strip for a "foreground page." Any page that you place in this area will  display on top of all the other pages while the signage plays.

The two most popular use-cases for this are:

1. Emergency Alerts

If you create a basic blank page with a text message on it for example, then what you can do is anytime that you want to display this message on your screens you simply drag the page onto the foreground page in your playlist and within 60 seconds it will be live on any screens that are playing that playlist. When the message is no longer necessary, then just drag the page off the playlist to remove it. 

As you can see in the above page, they have a static "Emergency Alert" message and right below it is a ticker that scrolls the information. All of this is placed on top of a red box to make it easier to read when it overlaps the other pages in your playlist.

While the foreground page is in place, all of the rest of your pages will still be visible and playing as normal, except for the area of the screen where you've placed the message. Any part of the foreground page that is white will effectively be transparent to the normal pages in your playlist.

2. Long-term video playback

Sometimes there are situations where you want to have a long video playing while other aspects of your sign change around it. 

As you can see in the above set of pages, all the product pages have a space that has been left free on purpose so that when the foreground page is placed on top of them you get the effect of the video playing constantly without interruption while the other pages change around it.

There are a couple final things to keep in mind for this application to work.

1. Be sure that you set your video on the foreground page to "continue playing."

2. Disable page transitions in the playlist, as you can see above.

As of version 66 of Chrome, videos with sound will not be played automatically anymore. The solution is to configure Chrome in such a way that this is allowed. 

1. Open the relevant Chrome browser and type chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy in the address bar.
2. Change the Default setting of the Autoplay policy to "No user gesture is required."
3. Click the Relaunch now button in the bottom right corner.

If you'd like to share a small section of your playlist with others over social media, e-mail, text or your website then Animated GIF is a good format. The following video describes the steps for how to convert the playlist to GIF using screentogif software.

https://youtu.be/K0kHeRQAQoQ

Each of your sign player boxes is assigned to one and only one channel. When we ship your player(s) to you they are pre-assigned to a channel. 

If you delete your channel, then all you need to do is to add a new one and then assign it to your desired player. 

To assign a channel to a player do the following:

1. Click on "Settings" at the top of the dashboard. 

2. Next click on "Players"

3. Click "Edit" next to your player and then choose the channel that you want it to play. The category function is typically not used, so pay no attention to that.

* Remember to follow the same procedure for any other players that may be missing a channel.

Since a SmartSign2go channel is essentially just a regular web page, you can send its playback address to anyone for them to open in any web browser or embed it into another web page. However, this will count against the number of screen licenses you have purchased in your subscription. For these purposes, the better option is to use the shareable playback address. This will show the same channel, but will not use up any screen licenses. Playback is limited to 30 minutes, though, after which a user can choose to play the channel again.

You'll find the shareable playback address in the channel settings, which you can open by selecting the gear icon from the channel menu.

Embed Code for websites:

To embed a channel, add the following HTML code to your website at the spot where the channel should be shown:

<iframe src="[YOUR SHAREABLE PLAYBACK ADDRESS]" width="[WIDTH]" height="[HEIGHT]" 
        scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Replace [YOUR SHAREABLE PLAYBACK ADDRESS] with the shareable playback address of your channel, which you can find by clicking on the channel and opening the settings window. Replace [WIDTH] and [HEIGHT] with the size you like the channel to have on your website. Keep in mind that it is best to have these dimensions be of the same aspect ratio as your channel. So, in case of the default 16:9 aspect ratio, you could choose a width and height of 960 and 540, for example.

Caveats

There are a couple things to be aware of when embedding a SmartSign2go channel in your website:

1. It is important to use the shareable playback address instead of the regular playback address, otherwise playback will count towards the available screen licenses.
2. A channel that is played via the shareable playback address will automatically stop playing after half an hour.
3. On most mobile devices (and specifically iPhones) video will not play automatically. This is a restriction imposed by the phone manufacturers to protect mobile users from unexpectedly consuming large amounts of mobile data.

• Google Chrome 40 or later
• Safari 9 or later
• Firefox 38 or later
• Microsoft Edge
• Internet Explorer 11
• Opera 27 or later

Color Coding

Both playlists in a channel, and the clock icons on a scheduled page in a playlist have a color coding that indicates their current schedule status.

This can have three causes:

1. Twitter only supplies tweets from the last 7 to 10 days. So be sure to check if the tweets that you are looking for are not older than that.
2. When the app is first shown, the tweets still have to be loaded in the background. In the designer that means that clicking the reload button  the first time will still leave the app empty and that you will have to click it a second or third time to see the tweets coming through. In a playlist or channel that means you will oftentimes start seeing tweets from the second time the app is displayed. 
3. If too many requests are made to Twitter within a 15min block then your account with them will stop responding to requests and you'll need to wait an hour and try again. This can happen if you hit the refresh arrow too many times, as an example. Info from Twitter regarding this mechanism...

* Please note that signing into your Twitter account from within the Twitter app inside the page design section will allow you to access your tweets far more reliably.

"Tweets from" shows tweets that have been sent from a specific Twitter account, e.g. @smartsign2go. Filling out the account name, you can leave out the @-symbol if you like. So both "smartsign2go" and "@smartsign2go" are correct (without the quotes).

"Tweets to" shows tweets that mention a specific Twitter account. For this you can also fill out the account name without the @-symbol if you like. So both "smartsign2go" and "@smartsign2go" are correct (without the quotes).

"With hashtag" shows tweets that contain a certain hashtag, e.g. #digitalsignage. For hashtags, you can also leave out the #-symbol. So both "digitalsignage" and "#digitalsignage" are correct (without the quotes).

In most cases you want the Twitter app to just show all recent tweets that meet your search criteria. The default behavior of the app is that it will loop through these tweets and show the next available tweet upon every (re)show or refresh. 

In some cases it can be handy to only show the very last tweet. You can use the option "latest" for that. You can do the same for the second to last tweet by using the option "latest - 1", etc.

Most major websites have one or more RSS feeds available so that you can stay up to date on what's happening on the site without having to visit the site periodically. For signage this means that you can have fresh content from your favorite website automatically display on the sign without any action on your part once it is setup.

You can check out vail ski resort's page for an example of feeds that they offer and other sites will be similar. 

https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-rss-feeds

Once you click on one of the feeds, like the one below, you will be taken to a page that looks like code. This XML-based page is what you want for the RSS app. Simply copy the web address (URL) into the app. Once you've done that you can click refresh in the app a couple times to view what the latest posts 

are.https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss

Remember that there has to be information available from your chosen feed, which isn't always the case. So if you add a feed and nothing shows up then most likely you just need to wait until the owner of the website publishes a new article.

RSS feeds are primarily intended to easily deliver a feed of messages that change over time. The RSS app expects to receive just that: a collection of messages. We have seen some instances where an RSS feed only has one message at a time. This is a non-standard implementation that won't work with our reader. With just one root node (channel) that contains just one "root description" there is no collection of messages. Hence, the RSS app does not find anything to display.

For this type of configuration you would need to create a custom app, which is available for our Enterprise customers.

If your RSS feed has multiple messages like the following example, then provided it is formatted correctly it should work great:

Since YouTube is a 3rd party service, we do not have control over its availability, features or stability. Sometimes when you are running a YouTube video you may see advertising pop-up. This happens if the publisher of the video chose to allow advertising on his/her video.

Other issues can happen, such as when the owner of the video changes its privacy from public to private.

Lastly, sometimes great videos that you've chosen are deleted by the author.

To avoid all of these issues, the thing to do is to download the YouTube video and upload it to our system. You can do this using free software from Clipgrab.org. Officially, you should own the rights to the video or obtain permission for its use if you are using it outside of the YouTube app.

Once you have downloaded it, then you can upload it using the Video tool inside the designer.

When you add a YouTube video to your page you may or may not see the option to "Enable Captions." This option will only appear if there are captions available on the native YouTube video itself. You can tell if a YouTube video has captions available by looking to the bottom-right of the video where you will see a "CC" button if there are captions. If not, then that option will be absent.

Since Vimeo is a 3rd party service, we do not have control over its availability, features or stability. Occasionally you may find that a video won't reliably play.

Other issues can happen, such as when the owner of the video changes its privacy from public to private.

Lastly, sometimes great videos that you've chosen are deleted by the author.

To avoid all of these issues, the thing to do is to download the Vimeo video and upload it to our system. You can do this using free software from Clipgrab.org. Officially, you should own the rights to the video or obtain permission for its use if you are using it outside of the Vimeo app.

Once you have downloaded it, then you can upload it using the Video tool inside the designer.

There is a great app called "Layout" for your smartphone that works with Instagram and allows you to post multiple photos at once. These will then be in-turn displayed on your screens. 

For communications with our systems to work correctly with Instagram for hashtag queries your Instagram account must be configured for business use. Here's a great article written by Hootsuite about how to do that.

https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-instagram-for-business/

If you are signed-in to Facebook while you are designing a page, then you can easily add your account:

Once you add your account you can then choose what pages the app should pull your posts from (i.e. your personal page or one of your business pages). IF however, the page you need is managed by somebody else, then all you need to do is to sign into their account on your computer instead. 

You can have multiple accounts active for your overall signage systems. You can have one page show posts from your account and a different page show posts from the other account.

If you've added an account and need to delete it (for example if the staff member is no longer with you) then please contact us to assist you with that. 

There are certain situations where it can be difficult to get a page to reliably refresh. In those cases, here are some tricks:

1. The first thing to attempt is to add ?ABC=123 to the end of the URL (web address) that you're trying to display. This should force the browser to refresh. For example: http://www.myserver.com/soms/path/image.png?ABC=123

2. This next trick is most useful for getting a single image to refresh. For example, let's say that you want to be able to upload an image to a web server and have it automatically display on the signage and also have it automatically refresh if you change the image.

1. Upload the image to your server. Let's assume that your image is labeled as image.png
2. Next upload this HTML file to the server in the same folder as the image (right click this link and choose "save link as". image.html This file contains a small bit of javascript code that references the "image.png" file. If your image will be named something else or is an image format other than .png then you'll need to modify the html page accordingly using a text editor such as Windows Notepad.
3. Finally, inside the SmartSign2go design portal you will want to use the Web Page app to display the image.html page, which in turn will import the photo for you. Now if you upload a new image with the same name as the original image, then it will automatically refresh.
4. Keep in mind that the page will refresh EVERY time it loads and so it is good to keep the image size as small as possible to limit bandwidth usage. You can extend the time that the page is displayed to reduce the number of times the page is refreshed in a day.

In Google Presentations, choose "File > Publish to web...". Then in the popup box, select the "Embed" tab, instead of the "Link" tab. Click the publish button and then copy the web address between the quotes after the "scr=". Now in the SmartSign2go Web page app you should do 2 things:

Use the web address from the "src" attribute as web address for the Web page app.

Make sure the presentation is within the view range of the web page app, by setting the "web page height" in the Web page app to something a lot smaller than the default 3000 (e.g. 1000). 

To show any type of Microsoft Office document (Excel, Word or Powerpoint) in a SmartSign2go page, you need to have the document available in an Office365 web environment. From here you first need to share the document and then use the Web Page app to embed it in your SmartSign2go page. Here's how that works (we'll use Excel as an example):

1. In your Microsoft environment, open the document.
2. Go to File > Share > Emed.

3. Copy the embed code and paste it into a text editor (such as your e-mail composer or MS Word) so that you can easily see the entire block of code.

4. Copy JUST the URL from the embed code and then paste that into the Web Page app.

For example, the following Embed Code...

<iframe width="402" height="346" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="https://onedrive.live.com/embed?resid=6CC147BAE3B70842%211267&authkey=%21AIh81NWpv1euc8w&em=2&wdAllowInteractivity=False&wdHideGridlines=True&wdHideHeaders=True&wdDownloadButton=True&wdInConfigurator=True"></iframe>

Becomes JUST the URL that you see in between the quotes above in bold.

https://onedrive.live.com/embed?resid=6CC147BAE3B70842%211267&authkey=%21AIh81NWpv1euc8w&em=2&wdAllowInteractivity=False&wdHideGridlines=True&wdHideHeaders=True&wdDownloadButton=True&wdInConfigurator=True

5. In some cases the URL will contain "&amp;" and that should be replaced with just "&"

6. Since the presentation is vertically centered inside the Web page app, you need to set the Web page height property of the Web Page app to something a lot smaller than the default value. Set it to 1000, for example, to make sure the presentation is visible within the app.

In Google Sheets, choose "File > Publish to web...". Then in the popup box, select the "Embed" tab, instead of the "Link" tab. Select the sheet you want to display and then click the publish button. Next copy the web address between the quotes after the "scr=". Now in the SmartSign2go Web page app you should do 2 things:

Use the web address from the "src" attribute as web address for the Web page app.

To add a Google Doc to your signage do the following:

Open the document and then choose "File > Publish to web...". Then in the popup box, select the "Embed" tab, instead of the "Link" tab then click the publish button. Next copy the web address between the quotes after the "scr=". Now in the SmartSign2go Web page app you should do 2 things:

Use the web address from the "src" attribute as web address for the Web page app.

Paste that into the web address field in the Web Page app. Then set the sizing of the properties of the app and the element on the canvas to show the part of the document you wish to show.

In some cases when you try to insert a URL into the Web Page app it will pop-up with a message saying that "Unfortunately the owner of the website does not allow this site to be shown inside another web page."

In this case you need to see if you can have the web host for that site modify the X-Frame-Options header so we can show their content in an iframe. So either they can remove the header entirely or use X-Frame-Options: allow-from http://playr.biz/  see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-Frame-Options). 

Removing the X-Frame-Options header does not increase the risk of cross site scripting. In fact the X-Frame-Options header is only used by content driven sites like The New York Times to prevent their content being shown as part of other websites. Most sites don't have a need to be concerned in this way.

In some cases, the inability to display a 3rd party site inside our system is caused by a conflict of the non-secure "http" software playback environment and a website that uses https security. In this case your site's web host can often modify the page to function in a non-secure http page or we can configure your signage page to run over a secure https connection.

Windy.com is a super cool website that has an incredible variety of region-specific weather forecasts. You can choose from all sorts of readings such as radar, satellite, temperature, wind, air quality and so much more for your specific area of the world. And the best part is that it's FREE (at least at the time of this writing). 

Quick Disclaimer: As with all third party websites, they are outside of our control...not all features may run reliably in our system, nor can we control pricing and availability. With that said, Windy sure looks like a neat add-on to us!

How does one use it? With the Web Page app! Here's how...

STEP 1

Go to www.windy.com and configure the site so that it is displaying the specific type of forecast or reading that you're interested in.

STEP 2

Click on the menu button at the top-left of the page.

Click on "Embed widget on page"

STEP 3

Drag the map around on your screen so that it is showing the view that you're interested in.

STEP 4

Set the sizing and other variables. For full screen set the size to 1920W x 1080H, otherwise choose a smaller size so that you can add other material onto the page in our software.

STEP 5

Copy the embed code to your clipboard

STEP 6

Paste the code into an e-mail or other document so that you can see the entire block of code and then select and copy JUST the web address that is in between the quotation marks:

STEP 7

Open up the page of your choice in SmartSign2go editor (click on a page and then choose "Edit"). Next add the Web Page app to your page...

After clicking on the app at the left or dragging it onto the canvas you'll next need to size the overall page. To use it in full screen simply double click on the page as in the example below otherwise drag the corners of the app around until you get it into the position you'd like:

STEP 8

Paste the Windy URL that you copied earlier into the properties of the Web Page app, hit enter and then the refresh arrow to see it on the canvas.

STEP 9

That's it! Save the page and go back to the dashboard. 

If this is a brand new page then be sure to drag it down into the playlist of your choice. You'll also want to set the "playback duration" of the page in the playlist so that it will display for however long you'd like. The default is 15 seconds.  ENJOY!  :-)

It is often easy to display a file shared on cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, by sharing the file and using its link in the Web Page app. Box, however, has some security restrictions that won't let you embed the file in a SmartSign2go page as is. The solution is to choose to embed the file like so:

1. In your Box account, find the file you like to share and click on the button with the three dots.
2. Go to More Actions > Embed Widget.
3. Select the web address between the quotes right after src= and copy that (it might be convenient to first copy the whole text from the little box to a text editor first). You don't need to select a size.

Then in your SmartSign2go designer:

1. Add a Web Page app to your page.
2. Paste in the web address that you copied from the Box text box into the Web address field.

To show a Microsoft PowerBI in a SmartSign2go page you first need to share the document and then use the Web Page app to embed it in your page. Here's how that works:

1. In your PowerBI environment, open the report you like to show.
2. Go to File > Publish to web.
3. Copy the web address shown in the "Link you can send in email" field

Then in your SmartSign2go designer:

1. Add a Web Page app to your page.
2. Paste in the web address that you copied from PowerBI into the Web address field.
3. Since the report is vertically centered inside the Web page app, you need to set the Web page height property of the Web Page app to something a lot smaller than the default value. Set it to 1000, for example, to make sure the presentation is visible within the app.

We have many customers who are showing their facility's cameras via our platform. Below are some tips and resources to help you be successful with this task. We highly recommend consulting with an expert in the field on this so that you get the best result for your money.

Some things to consider:

1. Use the correct lens for the field of view and the image quality that you want (distance and overall area to be surveilled)

1. Consider which physical form factor will install best (dome, bullet, PTZ, etc)

1. Wired is always better, but if it must be wireless then ok.

Requirements for camera use with SmartSign2go:

1. Must be a network (IP) camera
2. The camera must be able to "auto-play" upon page load. For example, you visit the link for the camera in your browser and it starts playing automatically without clicking anything.
3. The camera must be able to serve the video to viewers in a Google Chrome browser without having to download a program or load a special extension. Cameras that either won't do this or will only do it via the now defunct Internet Explorer probably won't work.
   

Example Camera Manufacturers:

UniFi

Vivotek

Axis

Samsung Techwin (now Hanwha Techwin)

Companion Services:

IPCamLive.com (this service is a great option to take video from a wide variety of camera types and make the feed available for streaming within SmartSign2go and/or your own website.

SETUP STEPS:

1. Configure your camera(s) so they are fully operational and will auto-play when you view them in Chrome on your computer via the camera's URL (or via an IPCamLive.com URL or similar service).

1. Copy and paste the web address into the Web Page app on a page of your choice in our system.

Using the Kiosk function within Planning Center, you can generate a URL for use with our Web Page app to display your Events! This is done within the Calendar section in Planning Center where you will create a "kiosk view" of your events. Simply take the URL you generate, paste it into the web page app and size the app appropriately. Done!

Walls.io offers "power tools" for social media. Their system will allow you to display a "social wall" of posts on your screen from many different platforms, some of which that we don't offer yet. They also have some great content moderation tools, to control what posts get to your screens. Walls.io has a different kind of search mechanism that can also bring in "recent posts" based on a certain hashtag, even when those posts were not made by you. Check out the video below for a brief intro on how to use walls.io and integrate your wall with SmartSign2go!

https://youtu.be/RC4wjx8qX90

We have a QR code generator app, but what if you wanted to know how many people had scanned the code? This is easy to do by way of a number of methods. 

* Option 1: Use your Google Analytics account and the GA URL generator tool. Once you have created a URL that is trackable inside that account then you can paste the URL into our QR code generator.

* Option 2: Use one of the free independent tracking systems on the market. Here is a link to one that is easy to use. In this case, you can either paste the URL that is generated into our QR code app or you can download the QR image that they made for you and upload it into our system as an image.

That's it!

If you don't already have an audio file that you want to play then here are a couple sources for soundtracks:

http://www.hendrikjansen.nl/henk/streaming.html  (scroll down to whatever location/language you want)

http://www.radiosure.com/stations (use the search box!)

What you want is the direct stream URL that is set to autoplay such as this one from Ireland: http://av.rasset.ie/av/live/radio/radio1.m3u

This app is a bit like our web page app in that it requires a URL (web address) of the content you want to use. So there are two ways you can use it.

Option 1: audio that you own and want to play

* In this case you need to upload the audio file to a web server that supports streaming audio such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). If you don't have a way to do this you can send us the file and we can host it for you on Amazon. 

Option 2: you want to play general music or radio

* For this scenario "all you need" is the direct URL (web address) for a streaming audio station with a format of mp3, ogg, wav, aac or flac and the station needs to automatically start playing when you visit that URL.

HOW TO USE THE APP

Once you have the URL for the file then all you need to do is past it into the audio app, either on an individual page (audio will only play on this page) or on a blank foreground page for your entire playlist. The app won't be visible in any case even though you see it within the designer.

The current functionality of Slideshow is to play the oldest file in the folder you've selected first, moving through the rest of the photos in order ending at the newest. "Age" of the photo is determined by when you've uploaded it to the system. 

So in order to playback photos in a specific order you should upload them one at a time waiting a few seconds between uploads.

Creating Custom Apps

In the settings section, click Custom apps in the column on the right hand side to access the list of own apps that you have created. You can add and edit your own apps and remove existing ones, provided that they are not currently in use.

The way it works is that you write your own Transformation logic in the Javascript programming language to transform the data from your source into one or more "articles". An "article" is much like a news article and can be shown either one at a time upon each new page transition or as a ticker of multiple consecutive articles.

Base Properties

You start by configuring a number of base properties. Some of these are core to the app and its structure, which means that they cannot be changed by the end user when he/she uses the app in the designer. Other base properties can be changed by the end user and the values you configure here will be the app's default values in the designer.

Transformation Logic

Transformation logic is written in the programming language Javascript. There are a number of basic objects and functions available that enable you to format data you get from the data source. Please read the transformation logic guide to learn how to write correct transformation logic.

App-specific Properties

Apart from the base properties, you can also create your own app-specific properties that you can use in the web address of the data source as well as your transformation logic. This allows the end user to customize the app's behavior when it's used on a specific page.

Creating App-specific Properties

Each app-specific property is defined by its:

1. Type: primarily defines the way the end user can configure the property in the designer:
   1. boolean: represents a true/false value that can be configured with a checkbox
   2. enumeration: represents a list of selectable options. The format of selectable options is [value1,label1],[value2,label2],...(etc.), where the values are the only things you work with in the web address and transformation logic. The labels are only shown to the end-user when he configures the app. In general you want values and labels to be strings of letters (and optionally digits), in which case you need to enclose them between quotes. For example ["NY","New York"],["LA","Los Angeles"],["SF","San Francisco"] shows the end user a list of three city names. The code of the selected city is available in your app. The default and test values must not be enclosed in quotes, so you can simply fill out (e.g.) NY.
   3. integer: represents a number between a minimum and maximum that can be configured with both a slider and an input field
   4. string: represents a string of any type of characters that can be configured with an input field
2. Name: the exact label that is shown in the designer when the end user configures the app
3. Default: the default value that the property has when not explicitly configured
4. Test: this is only used for testing your transformation logic within the custom app creation page.

Using App-specific Properties

You can reference app-specific properties by their "camelized" name. This means the name is transformed as follows:

1. the first letter becomes a lower case letter
2. if the name consists of multiple words (separated by spaces, dash or underscore), then they are joined together with each word starting with an uppercase letter

For example:

"Location name" => "locationName"
"CODE" => "cODE"
"App-specific property" => "appSpecificProperty"

In The Web Address

In the web address of the data source, you can embed a property by enclosing it in double curly brackets: 

For example:

https://api.geonames.org/SearchJSON?placename=&username=demo

In The Transformation Logic

In the transformation logic you can reference the property through the app.props object, like so: app.props.locationName.

In The Request Body

You can use the app-specific properties in the request body in a similar manner as in the web address: by enclosing the property in double curly brackets. But this goes even further: you can write your request body as a Mustache template, which gives you additional convenient options like conditional rendering of text.

Input/Error Inspector

The Input/error inspector is a section that is collapsed by default, but can be opened and closed again by clicking on the title. When opened it will show the latest input that has been retrieved from the data source in a browsable way. This makes it a lot easier to find the right data you need in your transformation logic.

The Errors section will show errors that occur when retrieving data or executing your transformation logic.

Sample

In a "mini page" the rendered output is shown as it would be displayed when the app is used. When you click the Refresh icon, the next formatted article will be shown here or the running ticker with the formatted output.

By default the sample page has a white background, but if you are creating the app with light colors to specifically be used (by default) on a dark background, you can use the Sample background color color picker to display the app against a fitting background.

Using Custom Apps

When one or more custom apps have been created, they will show up in a separate "Custom apps" box in the designer. From here you can drag the "custom app" of your choice onto the canvas to use it on the page.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Transformation Logic Guide

Transformation logic is written in Javascript. If you're unfamiliar with Javascript, there are many ways to learn it online. Here are just two suggestions for online beginner guides:

• The JavaScript For Cats web page
• The free Intro to JavaScript video course

To create your own apps, it is particularly usefull to learn about strings, values, variables, loops, arrays, objects and using functions.

The App Object

Out of the box you get one predefined object: the app object. It contains three base objects that you need to work with:

In addition there are the following functions that help you create appropriate objects:

Input

You read your data from the app.input object. In many cases this is a list structure, e.g.

[ 
    { home_team: "Boxers", visiting_team: "Jets", score: "6-4" },
    { home_team: "Fiskers", visiting_team: "Blokes", score: "3-4" },
    { home_team: "Patriots", visiting_team: "Angels", score: "3-6" }
]

Format

The app.format object gives you a range of formatting functions that operate both on individual strings, as well as an array of strings.

Here's an example of how you apply the above functions:

var game = input[0];
var gameDescription = game.home_team + " against " + game.visiting_team + " ended in " + app.format.bold(game.score);
var descriptionInRed = app.format.textColor(gameDescription, "#FF0000");

Article

When you have formatted your data, you need to compile the formatted text strings into an article. You start of with creating a new article object:

var article = app.createArticle();

Next can add one or more (formatted) text strings with any of the following functions:

For example:

var game = input[0];
var gameDescription = game.home_team + " against " + game.visiting_team + " ended in " + app.format.bold(game.score);

var article = app.createArticle();
article.addLine(app.format.bold("Latest game"));
article.addParagraph(gameDescription);

Table

A table object enables you to visualize a list of data as a table. The app object has the function that easily lets you create a new table, optionally initialized with relative column widths and column headers:

var table = app.createTable([2,2,1], ["Home team", "Visiting team", "Score"]);

As mentioned with the format function, you can also format arrays of text strings. This is especially convenient for formatting arrays with texts for multiple columns, e.g.

var boldHeaders = app.format.bold(["Home team", "Visiting team", "Score"]);
var table = app.createTable([2,2,1], boldHeaders);

The table object itself supports the following functions:

For example:

var table = app.createTable([2,2,1], ["Home team", "Visiting team", "Score"]);
table.addRow([input[0].home_team], input[0].visiting_team, input[0].score);
table.borderWidth(2);
table.borderColor("#CDCDCD");
table.headerRowBackground("linear-gradient(#F0F0F0, #E0E0E0)");

Output

Now that we have seen all ways to format data into visualizable structures there is on thing left to do: write the created visualization to the app.output object. Only then will the newly created article be shown either upon each single article refresh or in the ticker. There is only one function you need to do this:

Complete "Single Article" Example

It's time for a complete example. Let's starts with one in which we create just one article to be shown as a single article, like so:

First there is the input we used in the previous examples as well:

[ 
    { home_team: "Boxers", visiting_team: "Jets", score: "6-4" },
    { home_team: "Fiskers", visiting_team: "Blokes", score: "3-4" },
    { home_team: "Patriots", visiting_team: "Angels", score: "3-6" }
]

Let's turn that into a title and some lead in text, followed by a table created by iterating over every entry in the input data.

var article = app.createArticle();
var title = app.format.relativeTextSize(app.format.bold("Last played games"), 1.5);
var leadIn = app.input.length + " games have been played recently. Here are the results.";

article.addLine(title);
article.addParagraph(leadIn);

var table = app.createTable([2,2,1], ["Home team", "Visiting team", app.format.alignCenter("Score")]);
table.borderColor("#333");
table.borderWidth(1);
table.headerRowBackground("linear-gradient(#101010, #101010)");
table.rowColor("rgba(15,15,15,0.6)");
table.evenRowColor("rgba(5,5,5,0.6)");

for (var i = 0; i < app.input.length; i++) {
  var game = app.input[i];

  table.addRow([
    game.home_team,
    game.visiting_team,
    app.format.alignCenter(app.format.fontType(game.score, "Anonymous Pro"))
  ]);
}

article.addTable(table)

app.output.addArticle(article);

Since we'll be creating one big table, we will create just one article. Next we create a nicely formatted title, followed by a lead in text. The title is added to the article as a single line and the lead in text as a paragraph.

Next we compile the table. We start of with a new table with some relative column widths and a header row, followed by formatting the table. Note the different ways you can specify colors:

• by common names, like white, red, yellow, etc.
• by RGB hexadecimal string, e.g. #FF8810, #421
• with RGB decimals, e.g. rgb(250, 249, 128)
• with RGBA numbers, where the A is the alpha (or opacity) value ranging from 0 to 1, e.g. rgba(15,15,15,0.6)
• by setting the background (not the background color) to a linear-gradient creating a nice gradient effect, e.g. linear-gradient(#101010, #101010)

We iterate over the input and for each game found we create new row with game information. When the table is complete, we add it to the article. Finally, the one article is added to the output.

Complete "Ticker" Example

Here's another example in which we create a ticker with the game results, using the same input from the previous examples.

for (var i = 0; i < app.input.length; i++) { 
  var game = app.input[i];

  var article = app.createArticle();
  article.addLine(game.home_team + " vs. " + game.visiting_team + ": " + app.format.bold(game.score) + "   |   ");
  app.output.addArticle(article);
}

In this example we iterate over every entry in the input data again, but this time we create an article per game. The article contains just one line mentioning both teams followed by the score and an article separator.

Tips

Writing the transformation logic can be tricky and it is easy to make a mistake or two. To monitor if there are any errors in your logic, you can use the development tools of you browser in which you can see the network requests that retrieve the data from your data source as well as errors that occur when running your transformation logic. Here are the links to the descriptions of how you open these tools in Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

You can also debug your transition logic by placing a breakpoint in your code and then stepping through it. You can add a breakpoint by putting the debugger; command in your logic. Then make sure that your browser's development tools are open. The next time your transition logic is run, it will stop on the line with the debugger; statement. From here you can inspect the values of variables and step through your code.

For example:

for (var i = 0; i < app.input.length; i++) { 
  var game = app.input[i];
  debugger;
  var article = app.createArticle();
  article.addLine(game.home_team + " vs. " + game.visiting_team + ": " + app.format.bold(game.score) + "   |   ");
  app.output.addArticle(article);
}

The advanced options section provides you with a couple of specific parameters that you might need to get your app to work correctly.

Within your company, you can configure multiple OAuth providers. An OAuth provider is a configuration to access an OAuth2 app that you have configured on a specific third party website. E.g. let's say you like to access the LinkedIn API. Then you need to have a LinkedIn account with which you go to LinkedIn's Developer section. There you create a new "app" through which you can access the LinkedIn data on behalf of yourself. You don't need much to configure such an "app"; the most important thing is that you need to specify the right callback URL, which should be set to:

https://playr.biz/auth/oauth2_generic/callback

On the SmartSign2go end, you need to configure the settings listed below:

When you create a custom app it will be available on all dashboards by default. From the custom app overview you can select the On dashboards option for a particular custom app to configure on what dashboards it should be available.

With an Enterprise subscription, you configure what apps you'd like your end users to be able to choose from. You can do this by navigating to the My apps section, switching the relevant apps on or off and then saving your selection.

While we do have apps that allow you to playback video from YouTube and Vimeo, there are many advantages to hosting the actual video within the designer system, like you do with photos.

In order to do that you must either already have the video on your hard drive or be able to download it from the location where you found it.

Most services such as YouTube don't have an integrated way for you to download the file. Instead you need to use a 3rd party software such as the free Clipgrab.org software. 

Clipgrab is simple to use and it allows you to download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and more. Simply paste the web address (URL) for the video that you are interested in into Clipgrab and hit the download button.

Oftentimes the software that came with you PC is not great, so we recommend using something like the Video Converter software from iSkysoft.com. It isn't free, but for $40 it will save you a lot of headaches. It's very fast and is great for trimming videos.

High Definition (720p) is recommended whenever you can get it. 

Video is streamed to the player from our servers. One best practice is to not upload a longer video than what you will want to play (for example, a 30 minute video when all you want is 3 minutes of it) because the player will attempt (and likely fail) to download the entire video into its buffer. 

We recommend trimming the video down to the section that you want. iSkysoft's Video Converter software does a great job of this. Otherwise the software on your computer may perform this task handily. 

The recommendations for image size in your signage projects depend partly on the size of the TV display that you are using and how much of the screen the image will occupy.

Keep in mind that anything that you place on a page must be downloaded to your player, so the overall amount of content needs to be small enough to download in relatively short-order. This obviously depends on your Internet speed and the strength of the player's connection to it (ethernet cable being strong, whereas WiFi varies based on distance). Since your signage won't be printed, the file sizes can be lower resolution without visible loss in quality.

In general, for smaller images that take up a corner, such as a logo, the version that you use on your website can work just fine (depending on how well it was produced).

A typical maximum size would be 1280x720, but it really depends more on the resulting file size. A 3MB file for example can sometimes be too large.

At the end of the day, try it and if it looks good and plays smoothly, great. If not, adjust accordingly.

To add a table simply click on the Text tool in the Basic Elements section at the left. 

Next click on the table icon in the toolbar at the top as seen in the image below:

Once you've added a table you have many options for styling that table. Read on...

Clicking on a cell in the table will give you a pop-up selection for table and cell properties:

TABLE HEADER

Click this icon to add a header row to your table, which can then be styled further.

DELETE TABLE

Click this icon to remove your table from the canvas.

ROW TOOLS

Click the icon highlighted above in red to add or delete individual rows.

COLUMN TOOLS

Click the icon highlighted above in red to add or delete individual columns.

TABLE LINE & CELL STYLING

The border selections (Solid vs Dashed) affect all of the lines in the table. By default the lines are only visible while you're editing, but if you'd like to be able to see the lines in the table on your signage display then choose one of the border options. To remove borders simply select the option again.

The alternate rows selection is used for creating rows of alternating colors:

MERGING OR SPLITTING CELLS

Click the icon above to merge multiple cells into one or to split one cell into two. To merge cells drag your cursor across multiple cells to select them and then the merge cells option will be available. To split cells, place your cursor in the cell that you'd like to split.

CELL BACKGROUND COLOR

Click this icon to set a color for the selected cell's background color.

VERTICALLY ALIGN TEXT

Click this icon to align text in one or more cells in three different ways.

HORIZONTALLY ALIGN TEXT

Click this icon to align text in one or more cells in three different ways.

CELL HIGHLIGHT OPTION

Click the above icon to open up options for highlighting one or more cells with a red outline, either thin or thick.

When you decide to split your text into columns for a ticker, you can also define your own custom format. 

This is essentially just a string of text in which the following characters have special meaning:

• *: anything between a pair of single asterisks is formatted as italic text
• **: anything between a pair of double asterisks is formatted as bold text
• ***: anything between a pair of triple asterisks is formatted as bold italic text
• c1, c2, c3, ..., cX: is replaced by the contents of column number X. The first column is referred to as c1, the second c2, etc.

For example:

 Applying the above formatting ***c1*** *c2* - c3 to the text columns with "Column 1, Column 2, Column 3" typed into the "lines of text" field will yield the following ticker: 

You can instead choose from predefined styling options:

So, for example, if you would like the text in your ticker to be formatted with the first column in bold, the next column in italic and the next in normal font then choose one of the Bold>Italic>Normal options. Hit the curly arrow button to preview what the ticker will look like on your TV!

Very commonly, when you first connect your sign player, the sign will appear to be missing some of the content around the edges. 

What to do:

1. First ensure that you have turned your player on AFTER the TV is powered on. If not, your player will oftentimes default to a low resolution mode, which you can verify under SETTINGS>ACTIVE SCREENS.

2. All TVs come with a button on the remote that allows you to change the shape of the image. This button is typically labelled "Size" or "Aspect" or "Shape" or "Wide" or "Format." Rotating through the different aspects will usually give you want you want. The best option is typically labelled something including the word "Just" or "Fit." In some cases these shape selections are inside a setup menu of the TV.

3. If changing the aspect ratio doesn't fully fix it then what you need to do is to manually turn off Overscan. Overscan is usually turned on by default and serves to cover up the outer edges of a film due to imperfections in studio productions. For computer uses, such as with signage, we want to DISABLE overscan so that the incoming signal is fully visible on the TV.

4. For SAMSUNG TVs, typically there is a special procedure for disabling overscan which involves renaming the HDMI input in the TV's settings. Here is a forum post that discusses how to do that.

5. Some TVs are unfortunately built for ultimate economy rather than correct performance. In these cases, you may not find a mode where all of the incoming signal from your player will be displayed. If that happens then the only solution, which isn't great, is to build all your pages in a way where all the contents are pulled in slightly from the edges. That way when the TV "overscans" or "zooms in" then it won't matter that you are missing the outer edges of the page. 

One of the beauties of the SmartSign2go architecture is that your player is designed to request information from the web, rather than information being "pushed" to it, just like when you click on a link and a new page appears. This means traffic flows in standard ways that most businesses don't have restrictions for.

Having said that, some networks are configured pretty tightly, so here are the nitty-gritty details of what we need for our signage systems to function in your environment:

Firewall settings:

Standard ports 80 (http) and 443 (https) need to be open in your firewall. If you're able to browse the web at all then these are almost always already open.

Web Content Filter Settings:

This is where any issues typically lie...

If you have a web filter in place to restrict access to certain websites, then you should check to be sure that our URLs (and the Google list below) are not blacklisted. Oftentimes we are flagged as a "video gaming" website. You should have your network expert create a policy inside the router (or at the ISP if you're paying for web filtration services) to allow access to or "whitelist" http://*.playr.biz

Please note that the * is on purpose. This is a wildcard to allow all versions of the site to come through.

Additionally, please add the following Google service URLs to the list of "whitelisted" sites:

( If you need it, in-depth information about whitelisting Google URLs can be found in this article: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/3504942?hl=en&ref_topic=3504941 )

accounts.google.com

accounts.gstatic.com

accounts.youtube.com

clients1.google.com

clients2.google.com

clients3.google.com

clients4.google.com

commondatastorage.googleapis.com

cros-omahaproxy.appspot.com

dl.google.com

dl-ssl.google.com

gweb-gettingstartedguide.appspot.com

m.google.com

omahaproxy.appspot.com

pack.google.com

safebrowsing-cache.google.com

safebrowsing.google.com

ssl.gstatic.com

storage.googleapis.com

tools.google.com

www.googleapis.com

www.gstatic.com

and, specifically for kiosk functionality (especially critical):

cache.pack.google.com

chrome.google.com

clients2.googleusercontent.com

lh3.ggpht.com

lh4.ggpht.com

lh5.ggpht.com

lh6.ggpht.com

Important note: Remember that if you expect your sign to play content from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc then you will need to grant access to those websites as well if they are currently being blocked.

HOW TO PERFORM A TEST FOR ACCESS TO THE ABOVE GOOGLE URLs:

A) Connect keyboard and mouse. Turn on the player and at the "Playr" screen press CTRL + ALT + S to exit

B) Click on "Browse as guest" in the lower-left corner of the screen

C) Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ALT + T to open the Crosh terminal in your browser.

D) Type the following: "network_diag --hosts"   (note: it's hard to read that, but after the "diag" there is a space and TWO dashes followed by "hosts")

E) Press enter to run the command. It will test access to all required Google URLs (about 29 of them) and generate a list with a "PASS" or "FAIL" next to each one like the graphic below...

If any of the URLs in the list fail then they will need to be whitelisted in your web filter.

In at least one case we have discovered that customers who have their network configured for "DHCP server persistence" may have unstable or erratic connectivity or symptoms. DHCP server persistence is a configuration whereby the router will save a devices IP address based on the device'sMACaddress and ensure that it continues to have that same address if the device falls off the network and subsequently comes back online. This is an alternative waytoconfigure a static IP address. We currently do not recommend this configuration and prefer a standard DHCP scenario or if required, a standard static IP address, configured on the device itself.

 Symptoms we have observed from the one problem case:

• Intermittent crashing of the Chrome player (frown face on screen)
• Intermittent problems launching the signage app (player displays that it cannot connect to the web)
• Device shows as offline on the local screen, but remains online in Chrome Device Management, including the ability to reboot the device.
• Overall erratic and unpredictable behavior. 
• Disabling DHCP server persistence resolved all issues.

For networks that have all of their traffic directed through a proxy server, this information must be loaded by our team into the Google Admin system. Attempting to configure proxy settings on the local player itself will not save unless it has been loaded into this cloud-based management system, as intended by Google. Please contact us so that we can help you configure networks this way, if needed.

Alternatively you may be able to configure an exclusion to the proxy requirement inside your network appliance for our URL range, which is represented by http://*.playr.biz in that case communications with our servers would happen without having to go thru your proxy servers first.

In rare cases we have seen situations where you will choose a font for a block of text but that font is not the same font that appears in playback on the TV screen. In all cases we have seen, this has been due to the particular way that your network security has been configured.

Specifically it is when you have a proxy installed that strips the  "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" header from the http request as described in the first paragraph of this Google Web Fonts troubleshooting page. Correcting this should resolve the issue after restarting your Channel or rebooting your players.

In general our systems do not require a great deal of bandwidth to operate. Most material is downloaded once to the player's on-board memory and then played from that. Exceptions to this are some of our 3rd party integrations, such as YouTube and Vimeo and to a lesser degree the Web Page app, social feeds, etc. YouTube and Vimeo are streaming services and so due to their licensing requirements videos ran in that way will generate more traffic on your network than if you were to upload the video to us using the Video app.

*******

Below is  a bandwidth usage  test on a typical SmartSign2go playlist which contains many pages of content (about 10 minutes long). Attached are two screen shots of that test. The first one is while the player is booting up and playing through the playlist for the first time (and while it is downloading all content to memory). The time scale for that graph is approx 2-3 minutes. 

This second photo shows a graph of bandwidth usage once the player has played thru the playlist one time and loaded all content into the cache. As you can see the scale on that second graph is in Kbps as opposed to Mbps in the first, so you can see that once the player gets to round two on the playlist there is very little traffic. Keep in mind also that the traffic results also are showing our computer's communication with the router during the test, so what the player is responsible for is even less. 

A regular (little) PC with Windows 10 on it, is in general a very solid digital signage setup. In this section we'll show you how to install and configure Google Chrome as the browser that is used for channel playback. We also describe what you should do to have the PC shut down automatically and startup everything automatically when you switch it on again. 

Looking for an EASIER way? Check out Porteus, which makes software to convert your Windows PC into a kiosk.

Latest Video Drivers

For optimal graphics performance, make sure you are running the latest video drivers on your computer.

1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then the gear icon.
2. Type Display in the search field at the top of the window.
3. Click Display settings.
4. Click Advanced display settings.
5. Click Display adapter properties.
6. On the Adapter tab click the Properties button.
7. On the Driver tab click Update driver.
8. Click Search automatically for updated driver software.
9. A message will appear to tell you the driver is up to date or instructions on how to update your driver.

Google Chrome Installation

1. If Google Chrome is not yet installed, open your current web browser and go to http://google.com/chrome and then download and install the latest version of Google Chrome as instructed.
2. When asked, set Chrome to be your default browser.
3. If Chrome is already installed you can set it as the default browser:
   1. in Chrome, click the button on the top right with the three horizontal lines (or dots depending on the version of Chrome)
   2. click Settings
   3. select Make Google Chrome my default browser
4. Now make sure that videos with sound can play correctly:
   1. Type chrome://settings/content/sound in the address bar.
   2. In the section Allow press the Add button.
   3. Type [*.]playr.biz and press Add.

Disable Windows Auto-Updates

Just like you don't want Chrome to automatically update, you also want the same for Windows. On a regular computer that you use yourself every day this is bad advice, especially since you need to be protected against the latest threats when pulling in e-mail, downloading unknown programs and visiting all kinds of new websites. However, on a computer that only visits the same well-known website over and over again, this is less of an issue. Instead you want to make sure that the channel playback does not get interrupted by any update procedure.

In Windows 10, they made it difficult to disable auto-updates. The way to do it is to tell Windows that your network connection is a "metered connection". By default you cannot configure a wired connection as "metered connection". Here are the steps to do configure both your WiFi and wired network as "metered connections":

1. First we need to get permissions to reconfigure the networks connections:
   1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then type regedit.
   2. Click the regedit command that pops up and confirm that you like to open it.
   3. On the left hand side, navigate to the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost
   4. Right click on the DefaultMediaCost folder and select Permisssions...
   5. Click on the Advanced button.
   6. On the top of the next window, you'll see an Owner: listed (usually this is TrustedInstaller). Click Change.
   7. In the Enter the object name to select box, type the name of your Windows user account.
   8. Click the Check Names button to validate the account name.
   9. Click Ok.
   10. In the Permission entries list, also find the name of your Windows user account and double click on it. Then enable Full Control under Basic permissions.
   11. Click Ok in this and all former windows to finalize this process.
2. Now we can make the WiFi and wired network setting configurable as a "metered connection":
   1. Download this zip file.
   2. Go to the folder where the file was downloaded and double click it to unzip.
   3. Double click the Enable Metered Ethernet Connection.reg file to configure the network connections as "metered connections".
   4. If asked for permission to change the registry, accept.

This should basically take care of auto-updates. There are a few more things that you can change, but they shouldn't be strictly necessary. Please refer to this How-To Geek article for more details.

Disable Energy Saving Mode

To make sure that the screen does not turn black after a few minutes, do the following:

1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then the gear icon.
2. Type Power in the search field at the top of the window.
3. Click Power Options.
4. Select the High performance plan (possibly hidden under Show additional plans).
5. Click to the right of this plan Change plan settings.
6. Select Never for all options.
7. If available, set both Brightness sliders to the right most position.

Automatically Start Chrome On Startup

To make Google Chrome start automatically when Windows starts, do the following:

1. Download this zip file and unpack it to the Desktop of your computer. Place the files StartChromeForPlayr.cmd and playr_loader.html on your Desktop.
2. Check if Chrome starts up by double clicking the StartChromeForPlayr.cmd file. If Chrome starts full screen and shows a player registration page, then this works correctly.
3. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then the gear icon.
4. Type Schedule in the search field at the top of the window.
5. Click Schedule tasks.
6. Choose Create basic task and name it Start Chrome for SmartSign2go, click Next.
7. Set that this task has to be executed When I log in, click Next.
8. Choose the action Start a program, click Next.
9. Click the Browse button and select the StartChromeForPlayr.cmd file on the Desktop.
10. To make startup more smooth: check “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish” before you click Finish.
11. Go to the Triggers tab, click At log on trigger and choose Edit...
12. Under Advanced settings, check Delay task for and choose 30 Seconds. This way Chrome will start up 30 seconds after Windows has started. This will allow for network and internet connections to have been established.

Automatic Player Shutdown (Sleep Mode)

If you like to save some energy, you can set the computer to go into sleep mode when you like your channel to stop playing.

1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then the gear icon.
2. Type Schedule in the search field at the top of the window.
3. Click Schedule tasks.
4. Choose Create basic task and name it Shut down, click Next.
5. Click Create basic task enter a name like Shut down and click Next.
6. Set the trigger to Daily and click Next.
7. Set the Action to Start a Program and click Next.
8. Set the Program to C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe and set the Argument to powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0 and click Next.
9. On the last page check “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish” and click Finish.
10. On the General tab under Security options check Run whether user is logged on or not and check Run with the highest privileges.

Automatic Player Startup

Create a task to automatically wake your computer out of sleep mode.

1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then the gear icon.
2. Type Schedule in the search field at the top of the window.
3. Click Schedule tasks.
4. Choose Create basic task and name it Start up, click Next.
5. Set the trigger to Daily and click Next.
6. Set the time the computer has to shut down, set Recur every to 1 day and click Next.
7. Set the Action to Start a Program and click Next.
8. Set the Program to ipconfig.exe and set the Argument to /renew and click Next
9. On the last page check Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish and click Finish.
10. On the General tab under Security options check Run whether user is logged on or not and check Run with the highest privileges.
11. On the Conditions tab under Power check Wake up computer to run this task.

It depends on the computer you are using if this automatic startup is going to work. So be sure to test it. The alternative is to set auto-startup in the computer's BIOS. You will have to read the BIOS user manual to find out if and how that works on that specific computer. For more details on this, also check the Linux section.

Disable User Login

You want to disable user login so that the playback device automatically starts playing content when it's powered on.

1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then type netplwiz and press enter.
2. In the User Accounts window that pops up, uncheck the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer option.
3. You will be prompted for the user's password, after which you can accept the new configuration with Ok.

Then remove the last sign-in restriction with with the following steps:

1. On the bottom left, click the Windows icon and then the gear icon.
2. Type Change the sign in the search field at the top of the window.
3. Click Change the sign-in requirements.
4. Under Require sign-in select Never.

A regular (little) PC with Windows 8 on it, is in general a very solid digital signage setup. In this section we'll show you how to install and configure Google Chrome as the browser that is used for channel playback. We also describe what you should do to have the PC shut down automatically and startup everything automatically when you switch it on again. 

Looking for an EASIER way? Check out Porteus, which makes software to convert your Windows PC into a kiosk.

Latest Video Drivers

For optimal graphics performance, make sure you are running the latest video drivers on your computer.

1. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C and select Settings.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Type Display in the search field at the top of the window.
4. Click Change display settings.
5. Click Advanced settings (to the right on the middle part of the screen).
6. On the Adapter tab click the Properties button.
7. On the Driver tab click Update driver.
8. Click Search automatically for updated driver software.
9. A message will appear to tell you the driver is up to date or instructions on how to update your driver.

Google Chrome Installation

1. If Google Chrome is not yet installed, open your current web browser and go to http://google.com/chrome and then download and install the latest version of Google Chrome as instructed.
2. When asked, set Chrome to be your default browser.
3. If Chrome is already installed you can set it as the default browser:
   1. in Chrome, click the button on the top right with the three horizontal lines (or dots depending on the version of Chrome)
   2. click Settings
   3. select Make Google Chrome my default browser
4. Now make sure that videos with sound can play correctly:
   1. Type chrome://settings/content/sound in the address bar.
   2. In the section Allow press the Add button.
   3. Type [*.]playr.biz and press Add.

Disable Windows Auto-Updates

Just like you don't want Chrome to automatically update, you also want the same for Windows. On a regular computer that you use yourself every day this is bad advice, especially since you need to be protected against the latest threats when pulling in e-mail, downloading unknown programs and visiting all kinds of new websites. However, on a computer that only visits the same well-known website over and over again, this is less of an issue. Instead you want to make sure that the channel playback does not get interrupted by any update procedure. Here's how you do that.

1. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C.
2. Click on Search and search for Windows update; click on Windows update settings.
3. Choose Change settings,
4. Under Important updates choose the option Turn off automatic updating. I want to update my computer manually.
5. Under Recommended updates check Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates.

Disable Energy Saving Mode

To make sure that the screen does not turn black after a few minutes, do the following:

1. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C and select Settings.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Go to Power Options.
4. Select the High performance plan (possibly found under Show additional plans).
5. Click to the right of this plan Change plan settings.
6. Select Never for all options.
7. Set both Brightness sliders to the right most position.

Automatically Start Chrome On Startup

To make Google Chrome start automatically when Windows starts, do the following:

1. Download this zip file and unpack it to the Desktop of your computer. Place the files StartChromeForPlayr.cmd and playr_loader.html on your Desktop.
2. Check if Chrome starts up by double clicking the StartChromeForPlayr.cmd file. If Chrome starts full screen and shows a player registration page, then this works correctly.
3. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C.
4. Click on Search and search for Task Scheduler; select the Task Scheduler from the search results.
5. Choose Create basic task and name it Start Chrome for SmartSign2go, click Next.
6. Set that this task has to be executed When I log in, click Next.
7. Choose the action Start a program, click Next.
8. Click the Browse button and select the StartChromeForPlayr.cmd file on the Desktop.
9. To make startup more smooth: check “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish” before you click Finish.
10. Go to the Triggers tab, click At log on trigger and choose Edit...
11. Under Advanced settings, check Delay task for and choose 30 Seconds. This way Chrome will start up 30 seconds after Windows has started. This will allow for network and internet connections to have been established.

Automatic Player Shutdown (Sleep Mode)

If you like to save some energy, you can set the computer to go into sleep mode when you like your channel to stop playing.

1. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C.
2. Click on Search and search for Task Scheduler; select the Task Scheduler from the search results.
3. Choose Create basic task and name it Shut down, click Next.
4. Click Create basic task enter a name like Shut down and click Next.
5. Set the trigger to Daily and click Next.
6. Set the Action to Start a Program and click Next.
7. Set the Program to C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe and set the Argument to powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0 and click Next.
8. On the last page check “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish” and click Finish.
9. On the General tab under Security options check Run whether user is logged on or not and check Run with the highest privileges.

Automatic Player Startup

Create a task to automatically wake your computer out of sleep mode.

1. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C.
2. Click on Search and search for Task Scheduler; select the Task Scheduler from the search results.
3. Choose Create basic task and name it Start up, click Next.
4. Set the trigger to Daily and click Next.
5. Set the time the computer has to shut down, set Recur every to 1 day and click Next.
6. Set the Action to Start a Program and click Next.
7. Set the Program to ipconfig.exe and set the Argument to /renew and click Next
8. On the last page check Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish and click Finish.
9. On the General tab under Security options check Run whether user is logged on or not and check Run with the highest privileges.
10. On the Conditions tab under Power check Wake up computer to run this task.

It depends on the computer you are using if this automatic startup is going to work. So be sure to test it. The alternative is to set auto-startup in the computer's BIOS. You will have to read the BIOS user manual to find out if and how that works on that specific computer. For more details on this, also check the Linux section.

If a password has been set for the user account with which you log on to this computer, then this password should be removed/disabled to prevent a login screen when the computer starts.

1. Open the right column with the Windows-key + C.
2. Click on Search and search for Require a password on wakeup; select Require a password on wakeup from the search results.
3. Check Don't require a password at the bottom of the window.

A regular (little) PC with Windows 7 on it, is in general a very solid digital signage setup. In this section we'll show you how to install and configure Google Chrome as the browser that is used for channel playback. We also describe what you should do to have the PC shut down automatically and startup everything automatically when you switch it on again.

Looking for an EASIER way? Check out Porteus, which makes software to convert your Windows PC into a kiosk.

Latest Video Drivers

For optimal graphics performance, make sure you are running the latest video drivers on your computer.

1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Display.
2. Click Change display settings.
3. Click Advanced settings (to the right on the middle part of the screen).
4. On the Adapter tab click the Properties button.
5. On the Driver tab click Update driver.
6. Click Search automatically for updated driver software.
7. A message will appear to tell you the driver is up to date or instructions on how to update your driver.

Google Chrome Installation

1. If Google Chrome is not yet installed, open your current web browser and go to http://google.com/chrome and then download and install the latest version of Google Chrome as instructed.
2. When asked, set Chrome to be your default browser.
3. If Chrome is already installed you can set it as the default browser:
   1. in Chrome, click the button on the top right with the three horizontal lines (or dots depending on the version of Chrome)
   2. click Settings
   3. select Make Google Chrome my default browser
4. Now make sure that videos with sound can play correctly:
   1. Type chrome://settings/content/sound in the address bar.
   2. In the section Allow press the Add button.
   3. Type [*.]playr.biz and press Add.

Disable Windows Auto-Updates

Just like you don't want Chrome to automatically update, you also want the same for Windows. On a regular computer that you use yourself every day this is bad advice, especially since you need to be protected against the latest threats when pulling in e-mail, downloading unknown programs and visiting all kinds of new websites. However, on a computer that only visits the same well-known website over and over again, this is less of an issue. Instead you want to make sure that the channel playback does not get interrupted by any update procedure. Here's how you do that.

1. Go to Start > Control panel > Windows update
2. Choose Change settings,
3. Under Important updates choose the option Turn off automatic updating. I want to update my computer manually.
4. Under Recommended updates check Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates.

Disable Energy Saving Mode

To make sure that the screen does not turn black after a few minutes, do the following:

1. Go to Start > Control panel > Power options
2. Select the High performance plan (possibly found under Show additional plans).
3. Click to the right of this plan Change plan settings
4. Select Never for all options.
5. Set both Brightness sliders to the right most position.

In addition we need to make sure that the computer does not automatically go into sleep (hibernation) mode:

1. Go to Start, type cmd and hit the enter key
2. In the black window that you see now, type

   powercfg -h off

Automatically Start Chrome On Startup

To make Google Chrome start automatically when Windows starts, do the following:

1. Download this zip file and unpack it to the Desktop of your computer. Place the files StartChromeForPlayr.cmd and playr_loader.html on your Desktop.
2. Check if Chrome starts up by double clicking the StartChromeForPlayr.cmd file. If Chrome starts full screen and shows a player registration page, then this works correctly.
3. Quit Chrome by pressing Alt + F4.
4. Go to Start and start typing Task Scheduler; select the Task Scheduler from the popup window.
5. Choose Create basic task and name it Start Chrome for SmartSign2go, click Next.
6. Set that this task has to be executed When I log in, click Next.
7. Choose the action Start a program, click Next.
8. Click the Browse button and select the StartChromeForPlayr.cmd file on the Desktop.
9. To make startup more smooth: check “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish” before you click Finish.
10. Go to the Triggers tab, click At log on trigger and choose Edit...
11. Under Advanced settings, check Delay task for and choose 30 Seconds. This way Chrome will start up 30 seconds after Windows has started. This will allow for network and internet connections to have been established.

Automatic Player Shutdown (Sleep Mode)

If you like to save some energy, you can set the computer to go into sleep mode when you like your channel to stop playing.

1. Go to Start and start typing Task Scheduler; select the Task Scheduler from the popup window.
2. Click Create basic task enter a name like Shut down and click Next.
3. Set the trigger to Daily and click Next.
4. Set the Action to Start a Program and click Next.
5. Set the Program to C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe and set the Argument to powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0 and click Next.
6. On the last page check “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish” and click Finish.
7. On the General tab under Security options check Run whether user is logged on or not and check Run with the highest privileges.

Automatic Player Startup

Create a task to automatically wake your computer out of sleep mode.

1. Go to Start and start typing Task Scheduler; select the Task Scheduler from the popup window.
2. Click Create basic task enter a name like Start up and click Next.
3. Set the trigger to Daily and click Next.
4. Set the time the computer has to shut down, set Recur every to 1 day and click Next.
5. Set the Action to Start a Program and click Next.
6. Set the Program to ipconfig.exe and set the Argument to /renew and click Next
7. On the last page check Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish and click Finish.
8. On the General tab under Security options check Run whether user is logged on or not and check Run with the highest privileges.
9. On the Conditions tab under Power check Wake up computer to run this task.

It depends on the computer you are using if this automatic startup is going to work. So be sure to test it. The alternative is to set auto-startup in the computer's BIOS. You will have to read the BIOS user manual to find out if and how that works on that specific computer. For more details on this, also check the Linux section.

If a password has been set for the user account with which you log on to this computer, then this password should be removed/disabled to prevent a login screen when the computer starts.

1. Go to Start > Control panel > Power options.
2. Click Require a password on wakeup in the left column.
3. Check Don't require a password at the bottom of the window.

Android

1. Open the Google Play Store.
2. Search for our generic playback app called "playr"  
3. Install the app.
4. Restart the device. The app should now start automatically.

No Play Store? You can download the APK directly at the following link. Keep in mind that you won't receive updates by loading the app in this manner, so we always recommend downloading via the Play store.

Tips: 

As of 2020 Android still doesn't do a very good job of playing video in an HTML5 environment like our platform uses (we aren't alone). In order to get the best possible performance out of any video usage it's important to use video full screen (EXACTLY full screen). Otherwise the device will need to scale the video to whatever size you've chosen and you will miss out on the video optimizations that exist for full screen use (Ever watched Netflix on your Roku or Fire TV Android box in less than full screen? No, because video processing on these entry-level devices is not optimized for anything but full screen). 

The easiest way to fill the screen perfectly is to simply double click on the video once you've added it to the canvas.

Basically iPads are not really designed for "kiosk" purposes. With that being said, there are ways around most of the issues.

For a tablet to be a truly viable signage display a person would want it to be able to do the following:

1. Run a browser in full screen (no URL bar or nav buttons visible)

2. Locked to that one purpose so that someone can't hijack the screen or navigate elsewhere

3. Automatically boot up into that app upon reboot

4. Auto-play videos without user interaction

None of the above is possible with an iPad by default. The only way that we are aware to get most of that functionality is to configure the iPad under a corporate Apple ID and make it "Supervised" using Apple's AC2 software. Next the iPad would need to be enrolled into a third party mobile device management software, such as Scalefusion (approx $2-3/mo per iPad).

Here's an article from Scalefusion on making an iPad supervised:

https://help.mobilock.in/article/0uptouezjq-how-to-make-a-ios-device-supervised  

Software such as Scalefusion will unlock all of the features in the list above. In order to overcome the video auto-play issue we recommend configuring Scalefusion's specialty browser "Prosurf". You can enable and set Prosurf in single app mode and then from device management->>whitelist website->>whitelist a website->>Apple settings->>prosurf settings->>enable auto play videos.

Overall, unlike Chrome or Android devices, the iPad wasn't designed with this possible use in mind, so if nothing else it's certainly more hassle and expense to get it to cooperate. 

A better choice in most cases would be a Chromebase, which is a commercial grade tablet with kiosk as a core functionality. They are made by various manufacturers, but we think that currently the AOpen models offer the most wide appeal:

https://www.aopen.com/US_en/products_info/Chromebase-commercial 

You can purchase these yourself and there is a simple process to enroll them into our Google ecosystem or you can special order them thru us and they will arrive ready to use (approx $500-$900 for the 10" and 22" respectively. 

1. Plug a mouse into the player and connect the player to your TV display and power.

2. Once it boots up you will see a screen like the image below. Click on the "Set Content" button:

3. Next type in the SmartSign2go player registration URL of http://smartsign2go.playr.biz/play

4. Next the player will countdown 15 seconds and then display a registration code that you can enter into your account to register the player.

5. Inside your SmartSign2go account, click on Settings at the top and then Players at the right and then look towards the top where you can enter the registration code, give your player a name and direct it to play the Channel of your choice.

6. Now just wait for the countdown on-screen to complete and your Channel will begin running!

In order to be reasonably sure that the player will be able to run reliably over time you will need to simply let it run for awhile and ideally watch it. If the content is too difficult for it to play then it will periodically crash and perform an automatic reboot. 

Based on our observations so far, this player will only be able to run reliably with fairly static material. If you try to use many of our animation features, videos and/or an overly long playlist then it won't be able to keep up. This is to be expected since it is the lowest performance, lowest cost model that IAdea offers.

Porteus Kiosk

The Porteus Kiosk is free software, with the option to pay for automatic updates, based on Linux and other open source components that turns a PC into a kiosk that boots straight into a browser. The official website of Porteus Kiosk can be found here. The software can be run from a USB thumb drive but we advise to use the install option and use that to install the software on an internal SSD.

Porteus Kiosk can only be used on a "regular" computer (for instance an Intel NUC). You cannot put it on a USB flash drive and run it on a TV directly, an Android device or a Chromebox. It can also not be used on Raspberry Pis or other ARM based devices.

The steps that are needed to get Porteus Kiosk running on your device are as follows:

1. Download the Porteus Kiosk software
2. put it on a USB thumb drive
3. run the software, after you choose options from a wizard, the software is installed on your device
4. remove the USB thumb drive and restart the device The player will now show the code that enables you to register the device. After that your channel will start to play automatically.

For this you need, apart from the device/player that you want to use to playback SmartSign2go content and a connected TV screen:

• One USB thumb drive of at least 4GB size, from which the data can be erased
• A mouse and keyboard that you can connect to the player device
• A computer that you use to download the Porteus Kiosk software and put that on the USB thumb drive

Creating the Porteus Kiosk thumb drive

To create thumb drive with the Porteus Kiosk software on it that can be used to install the software on your device follow these steps:

1. Use your computer to download the Porteus Kiosk software image from this page. Use the button named Porteus Kiosk with the current version number.
2. To put the downloaded image on a USB thumb drive:
   • Windows and MacOS users should download, install and use Win32DiskImager
   • Linux users can use the command line tool dd but should first convert the downloaded image file to ISO-hybrid by using isohybrid (install syslinux and syslinux-tools for that). The commands are:
     $ isohybrid -u ./Porteus-Kiosk-<version>.iso
$ dd if=Porteus-Kiosk-<version>.iso of=/dev/sdX
     with "sdX" being the USB thumbdrive.

Installing the software on the player

We describe two ways to install the Porteus Kiosk software on your player. The first (fastest) way uses a standard configuration that we have prepared and is downloaded during the process. The second way takes longer but allows you to fully control all the options that Porteus Kiosk offers. In most cases the first approach is the best in the sense that it will result in a working player in the least time.

Fastest way to install the software on the player

To install the Porteus Kiosk software on the player you need to connect the player to the TV screen and connect the mouse and keyboard to the player. Then follow these steps:

1. Put the USB thumb drive in one of the USB ports of the player and turn it on
2. On the first screen of the start up wizard choose the type of network connection the player will use. We strongly advise to use a wired network connection. If that is not yet present you should invest in making a wired connection available for the player.
3. On the next screen choose Configure connection using DHCP (unless the player needs to have a static address)
4. If you chose a WiFi connection you will presented with a selection of available networks, you need to supply the encryption type and passwords if necessary
5. On the next screen you can configure proxy settings, it is most likely that you can press the Next button on this screen (proxies are usually only used in enterprise environments)
6. Choose the browser you want to use, we advise the use of Chrome, if you do you are presented with the Google Chrome EULA. Read it and press Ok if you agree with the EULA.
7. On the confirmation screen click Next
8. Now the selected browser (and possibly additional components) will be downloaded, this will take a little time
9. On the next screen choose the Point kiosk to remote management configuration option
10. In the entry field enter the URL: https://playr.biz/porteus_kiosk_config, if you use an Intel NUC as player you should add '?device=NUC' to the url (so it becomes; https://playr.biz/porteus_kiosk_config?device=NUC). Click the Test config button. You should see a window with some lines of configuration text and click the Ok button (if no configuration text is shown check the URL you entered). On the window where you entered the URL click Ok.
11. On the next screen you see a list of choices that you made, click Next
12. On the next screen you can opt for a paid subscription to automatically keep the Kiosk software up to date. Please note: this subscription is paid to and fulfilled by the Porteus company. Click Next
13. On the next screen (System installation) select the internal SSD(/HDD) of the player and click Install system
14. If the message is shown that the the software has been installed successfully you can remove the USB thumb drive and the player will reboot automatically.

After the player reboots it will install additional packages caused by the configuration that was loaded. This only happens after this first reboot.

The player should now show the page with the SmartSign2go registration code. If you see the wizard screen you will probably were too late removing the USB thumb drive. No problem; just turn off the player, remove the USB thumb drive and turn the player back on. When you see the registration code please on-screen steps to register your player to your account.

Manually installing the software on the player

To install the Porteus Kiosk software on the player you need to connect the player to the TV screen and connect the mouse and keyboard to the player. Then follow these steps:

1. Put the USB thumb drive in one of the USB ports of the player and turn it on
2. On the first screen of the start up wizard choose the type of network connection the player will use. We strongly advise to use a wired network connection. If that is not yet present you should invest in making a wired connection available for the player.
3. On the next screen choose Configure connection using DHCP (unless the player needs to have a static address)
4. If you chose a WiFi connection you will presented with a selection of available networks, you need to supply the encryption type and passwords if necessary
5. On the next screen you can configure proxy settings, it is most likely that you can press the Next button on this screen (proxies are usually only used in enterprise environments)
6. Choose the browser you want to use, we advise the use of Chrome, if you do you are presented with the Google Chrome EULA. Read it and press Ok if you agree with the EULA.
7. On the confirmation screen click Next
8. Now the selected browser (and possibly additional components) will be downloaded, this will take a little time
9. On the next screen choose the Launch the Kiosk Wizard to create new configuration option
10. In this screen change the following settings:
    • Choose Enable under Homepage and on the next page
      • Specify the home page: https://play.playr.biz
      • Choose MAC address on; Append string to the homepage
      • Choose Yes on; Homepage availability check during boot
      • Click OK
    • Choose Disable under Private Mode
    • Choose Disable under Disable zoom controls
    • If you chose the Firefox browser choose Disable under Address bar
    • Choose Disable under Navigation bar
    • Choose Full under Persistence level
    • Choose Disable under input devices
    • If you want sound (for video or streaming audio) choose Enable under Default system sound card and on the next page:
      • Choose a sound device, usually the first HDMI device is correct when you connect the player to your TV using a HDMI cable
      • If you want to verify your choice click Test selected card
      • After a browser window appears it will play an audible sound
      • Close the browser with the x button on the tab at the top
      • If no sound was audible (make sure the volume of the TV is not set too low) choose a different card and click Test selected card again
      • Otherwise click OK
    • Under ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS choose Enable under Additional fonts
      Click Next. If you have questions about the options not mentioned here please contact us
11. The next screen sums up the settings that were configured on the previous pages, click Next
12. On the next screen you can opt for a paid subscription to automatically keep the Kiosk software up to date. Please note: this subscription is paid to and fulfilled by the Porteus company. Click Next
13. On the next screen (System installation) select the internal SSD(/HDD) of the player and click Install system
14. If the message is shown that the the software has been installed successfully you can remove the USB thumb drive and the player will reboot automatically.

The player should now show the page with the SmartSign2go registration code. If you see the wizard screen you will probably were too late removing the USB thumb drive. No problem; just turn off the player, remove the USB thumb drive and turn the player back on. When you see the registration code please register the player described on-screen.

Running from a USB thumb drive

It is possible to create a USB thumb drive that you can use to run Porteus Kiosk from. This means that you do not need to install an SSD in the player. Since the price of small SSDs has come down so much in the past few years we strongly advise you to use an internal SSD instead of a USB thumb drive attached to a USB port. USB thumb drives are much more sensitive to power outages and long term use; the chance that a USB thumb drive will survive multiple years in use is very small. The time you spend fixing a broken USB thumb drive by buying a new one and reinstalling Porteus Kiosk on it is likely going to be more costly than the extra money you will spend on a small SSD (8GB or more is enough, the cheapest SSD you can find will probably have more than 16GB capacity).

If you decide/need to run from a USB thumb drive you should follow the steps as described above except in step 13 you choose the USB thumb drive. The installer will then overwrite the USB thumb drive with a fully configured version of the Porteus Kiosk software and reboot. The player will then start up with a registration screen and just follow the on-screen steps from there.

General Functionality

Regarding content distribution, it is important to note that in the case of SmartSign2go, nothing is "pushed" to your local network, so there is no need to open up any ports in your firewall nor anything else of that nature. Instead the players request the latest content from us and it is downloaded, just as if someone were browsing the web. 

Portal Security

We use HTTPS and the passwords are stored "hashed and salted." We base this part of the security in industry best practices and keep our frameworks and software up to date. In that sense we are more secure than many SaaS providers. We use the Amazon Cloud as underlying technology. This platform is used by almost all leading Cloud service providers so in that sense we also are on par with what is available in the SaaS market.

All this technology and effort will however not protect customers that do not take security seriously themselves. If an account is shared amongst users or the password used is too simple no measures that we take can protect the user from being hacked. Even if an account would be hacked and inappropriate content would be inserted we would be able to respond quickly to requests from the account holder to remove content and restore accounts to the rightful owner. We would assume the customer would simply stop their players to prevent this content from being displayed on the screens even before that.

Downstream and Player Security

Customers on our Enterprise tier of software have access to additional content protections on the playback side of the system. These options include:

1. Enforced playback over HTTPS secure connections
2. Restriction of playback to registered playback devices
3. Restriction of playback to particular IP addresses or IP ranges

Chrome OS Security Resources

While we support a wide variety of operating systems, Chrome OS is our top recommendation and is the operating system that our in-house player hardware is based on. Chrome OS is widely considered to be one of, if not the most, secure operating systems on the market. This is great news for your IT department, your network and the security of your content. Below are some resources regarding what makes Chrome hardware a great choice for network security.

https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3438631?hl=en&source=genius-helpouts  

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview 

https://www.chromebookhq.com/antivirus-for-chromebook/ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1bzZRxesoQ 

The page that you land on when you first login to the software is called a dashboard. It contains the section for Pages, Playlists and Channels for all or a particular part of your organization. If you have more than one player then it may or may not make sense to add one or more dashboards.

The most common usage for multiple dashboards is for an organization that has multiple locations or areas. This allows you to keep all of the aspects of managing a particular number of screens in a given location separated from other locations. For example a headquarters, franchisee 1, franchisee 2, etc. Or building 1, building 2, etc.

When adding users you must choose their authorization level:

1. Company Administrator: full access rights. Has access to Settings and all capabilities for publishing.
2. Editor: No access to Settings, but has the ability to publish and make changes to content. Will only be able to access the dashboards that are assigned to them.
3. Author: This role has no access to settings. Additionally, any changes, additions or deletions will be marked as "concept" and must then be approved by someone with Editor or Admin privileges.

When you add users, you must choose how you'd like them to login: with their e-mail address and password or by using their existing Google account. In the latter case, make sure that you fill out the e-mail address of the Google account. Then, when that user chooses to log in with Google from the login page, SmartSign2go will match the user's e-mail address with the e-mail address of the Google account and it will log him/her into the system.

For extra security, we highly recommend using two-factor authentication. This way you will not only be asked for your email and password when logging in, but also for a one-time code that is generated by the password management software of your choice (eg. 1Password, Authy, etc). Your password manager needs to support TOTP (Time-based One Time Password) authentication.

To setup two-factor authentication, select Your profile from the little person icon on the top right of the dashboard in SmartSign2go. If you have login method "E-mail and password" selected, you will see the "Enable two-factor authentication" button which you can click. The next page displays a unique QR code that you need to scan with the TOTP app of your choice from a mobile device. This creates an entry for SmartSign2go in the app and will show the first one-time code that you need to fill out along with your password in order to enable two-factor auth. After this, you're good to go. The next time you login, you will be prompted for the one time code that expires after 30 seconds as an additional login requirement.

Your Sign Player Lite (Google Chromebit) is managed by SmartSign2go via Google Admin tools. In order for you to use the device for other purposes we must deprovision it for you. After that is completed the final step is for you to "wipe" the device to return it to factory default settings. From that point you can configure it as if it were brand new.

How to perform a wipe on the Chromebit:

1. Unplug the player from power. 

2. With the player connected to the TV insert a paperclip into the small hole on the underside of the device and depress the button while plugging it into power. 

3. It will say “Chrome OS is missing or damaged” on screen. Now with the keyboard press CTRL+D 

4. Press the recovery pinhole button briefly once more 

5. On the next screen press the "spacebar" key and then the "enter" key 

6. The player will reboot and you'll come to a login screen. You're done with the wipe!

Your Sign Player Pro (Google Chromebox) is managed by SmartSign2go via Google Admin tools. In order for you to use the device for other purposes we must deprovision it for you. After that is completed the final step is for you to "wipe" the device to return it to factory default settings. From that point you can configure it as if it were brand new.

How to perform a wipe on the Chromebox:

1. Turn the box off 

2. Insert a paperclip into the small hole on the right side (below the slot) and depress the button while powering the box back on 

3. It will say “Chrome OS is missing or damaged” on screen. Now with the keyboard press CTRL+D 

4. Press the recovery pinhole button briefly once more 

5. Once a new screen press the "spacebar" key and then the "enter" key 

6. The box will reboot and you'll be asked to connect to your network.

6. Next you'll come to a login screen. You're done with the wipe!

For all subscription tiers

This first set of recommendations applies to all types of subscriptions.

One dashboard per department

Within SmartSign2go you can create as many dashboards as you'd like (the dashboard is the view you land on when you login). A dashboard is a fully autonomous container of content. If you'd like to give different departments in your organization control of their own content, then creating a dashboard per department is the way to go.

Along with that it is advisable to create user accounts that only have permission to access content on a specific dashboard.

Combining content from multiple dashboards

In most organizations the goal is to combine (part of) the content of different departments onto the screens. Combining content can be done in several ways. It is possible that the way that seems the easiest at the start may lead to extra work in maintaining and organizing that content later. We advise organizations to share and combine content in the form of playlists (not pages).

For combining content it is best to use a separate dashboard to combine the content of the different departments into channels that can be used throughout the organization. It is also possible to combine the content on the dashboard of a specific department as long as it is clear for all which department is responsible for combining the content.

Combining content using playlists goes as follows:

• Each department creates pages for their own and for combined use
• The pages that are going to be combined at company level are put in specific playlists
• On the dashboard that is used to combine the content these playlists are added by using the Add then From other dashboard option
• The playlist is added to the dashboard but the pages are not available for editing on that dashboard. Meaning the content of these pages is maintained by the department that created them
• The playlists can now be combined in channels and scheduled to specific times and dates
• On the dashboard that is used to combine the content a foreground page can be added to the playlists to enable branding at the department or company level

We advise the strategy of combining content in the form of playlists to enable;

• each department to concentrate on creating and maintaining their own content;
• maximum flexibility for each department in terms of organizing and presenting their content;
• branding can be partially done on a single dashboard
• combining and scheduling of the content is done on a single dashboard

When using these tips together with creating a uniform style using background pages (see next paragraph) you can very efficiently create and manage professional looking content even for large organizations.

Create a uniform style with background pages

To enforce the use of a uniform company style across all pages, it is wise to use background pages for all of your content pages. By default, users will always have to manually select the proper background page of a newly added blank page. This can be easy to forget or tedious to do. To get the proper background page from the get-go, there are two alternative options:

1. Instead of starting with a blank page, have the user copy an existing page that already uses the relevant background page and then modify that newly copied page.
2. In your company settings, configure a default background page to be used whenever the user adds a new blank page. You can select one page per aspect ratio (e.g. 16:9 (landscape) and 9:16 (portrait)).

Use login with Google if your company uses Google accounts

If your company uses Google user accounts for many/all services, then you might want to use those for SmartSign2go too. The great benefit is that the user can simply login with her/his Google credentials. And when the employee leaves the company, you only need to disable her/his Google user account to prevent her/him from logging into SmartSign2go in the future.

Content curation

If you don’t want all users to be able to publish content without supervision, then you can restrict publish permissions by giving users the author role. With this role, they can update content, but when they save it, it will be saved as draft. A user with an editor or company administrator role needs to approve the draft before it is/can be published.

Lock elements by default

To prevent a user from accidentally moving key elements around on a page when using the designer, you can enable the option Lock elements by default in your company settings. This way, when a user edits a page, none of the existing elements can be moved or resized by default. Only when the user explicitly unlocks the page can the elements be moved and resized again.

Match your corporate identity with your own colors

In your company settings, you can predefine a set of colors that will be offered to the user when she/he opens a color picker in the designer. By setting this to the colors that match your corporate identity, it becomes a lot easier for your users to pick the right colors.

Register your playback devices

Channels can be played simply by visiting their unique channel playback address, e.g. http://playr.biz/1234/5678. As a result, configuring a playback device is as simple as setting the web browser to open this playback address.

However, we recommend taking one extra step during setup and that is to register your playback device. This is typically already done by our team, but in case you're setting up a special device, you do this by configuring the web browser to open http://play.playr.biz. Only the first time will you see a registration code, with which you register the device in the Players section of the company settings. Subsequently you can configure which channel should be shown on that playback device. The nice thing is that this enables you to conveniently switch channels later, if you so require.

In addition, you can configure a number of other options for that particular playback device, like its time zone (so that it properly applies content schedules), its content language (so that it displays things like dates and times in the appropriate format) and its content read speed.

Limit playback to only registered playback devices

If you do not want just anyone to play your channel content (if they have somehow managed to get hold of your channel playback address), then go to your company settings and check the option Playback only on registered players. That way you can only play a channel from devices that are registered through the procedure described above.

For Enterprise tier subscriptions

An Enterprise level subscription is very much tailored for use in larger organizations/enterprises. If you have an Enterprise subscription, the next recommendations are for you.

Create company templates

Next to adding a blank page, the user can also choose to start with a copy from the “sample pages” collection. However, these sample pages are quite generic. Instead you might rather want to create your own collection of company-specific sample pages (or “templates”) which a user can choose from. You can start a company template collection by creating one or more pages that you like to share in this manner and then selecting the Share option on the page on the dashboard. Select Share within my company to add this page to your company template collection. You can even restrict this page to only be shared with users that work in a particular language.

To fully enforce the use of company templates, be sure to go to your company settings and enable the option User cannot add blank page when there are company templates. This way the Add button in the page section will open the company template collection for a user to choose from, instead of adding a blank page to the dashboard.

Also note on the company settings page the option that says When copying a page with background page from another dashboard. This allows you to select one of two options:

1. Copy the background page too (if needed): if the page being copied has a background page, then with this option that background page will be copied over to the user’s dashboard as well. If it already exists, then it will not be copied again. This way the users of the target dashboard have full autonomous control over the background.
2. Reference the background page on the source dashboard: if the page being copied has a background page, then with this option that background page will be left on the source dashboard and is simply referenced from the target dashboard. The main benefit of this is that you can update the uniform style throughout the whole company by simply changing the one background page on the central dashboard. However, that might be unexpected for content managers of other dashboards who are using this background page.

In short: be sure to choose the option that matches the procedures that you have agreed upon with all departments.

Match your corporate identity with your own fonts

If you have a corporate style guide, then one or more company fonts are most probably also a part of that. As an Enterprise user you have the option to upload your own fonts and selectively enable and disable certain system fonts. This way you offer your user optimal guidance towards picking the right font when creating content.

Visualize data from sources of your choice

SmartSign2go comes with a number of apps to access online services and display their data. Chances are that there are specific data sources that you like to request data from to display on your screens a way you prefer. With an Enterprise level subscription you can create your own apps, which accesses JSON or XML data, that you can then transform into individually formatted articles or a horizontal ticker.

Get an alert when a playback device is offline

In the Players section of your company settings, you can always see at a glance what playback devices are currently playing and which ones are not. That requires a user to actively watch the list to “monitor” these devices.

Instead you can choose to create an activity monitor, which will monitor if playback devices are active when they are supposed to be. When they are not, you will receive an email message listing the devices that are currently unexpectedly offline.

Configure IP-address-based security

As an additional layer of security on top of or in stead of “only playback content on registered players”, we enable Enterprise users to only allow content to be played from a specific IP-address or IP-address range. This can be configured in your company settings.