Signage Monitor - Digital Signage Monitoring and Administration software

Plugins so you can choose your features, or have custom features for your project....

Plugins expand the features and functionalities present in the core Signage Watchdog Software. Available for the Signage Watchdog Pro system, simply by installing one or more of the plugins you can enable extra features, monitor specific devices and systems, and produce a standard interface for your application developers to talk to different hardware components.

Also, as most Digital Signage solutions include some level of customised features, hardware or systems, we can also develop specific plugins for your specific requirements without having to redevelop the core Signage Monitoring application so they can created very cost effectively.

Examples of this include:

Connections to customer’s own hardware watchdog
Monitoring and control of Air and Digital Signage conditioning systems,
Monitoring of web servers and network connections
Control of specific LCD monitors
Links to webcams to ‘watch’ for lack of changes to an image (to see if something has been left at a Digital Sign or vandalised)
Security Image recording from a webcam.
Links to hard-reset devices
And more...

Current Plugins Include:

	SNMP NMS system allows SNMP enabled devices (including hardware, PCs, routers, and applications running on the Digital Signage) to be polled at regular intervals using the Standard SNMP protocol to check for operation and set trigger levels. If any of the monitored events go over or under the trigger thresholds, the plugin reports it as a fault.

	Magic Pixel™ although many commercial grade LCD/Plasma screens have a serial connection (many others don’t), failures of the display can still occur, so that your Digital Signage player is unaware. The Magic Pixel™ is a very small device (0.5cm) mounted on the corner of your LCD or Plasma screen (can also be mounted in a frame around the screen or using a lightpipe behind the screen) which integrates with our plugin to report screen failures, backlight failures, etc. If used with certain Digital Signage software, this can also be used to stop playback to ensure accurate reporting too.

	Power Management Most Digital Signage is not required to be operational 24 hours a day, and although it's good to be green and conserve power, hard-powering off of the Digital Signage PC can damage the drive and components. Instead, this Powermanagement plugin allows you to specify time of day for the Digital Signage PC to power down into Sleep/Hibernate mode overnight (saving money and the planet) and automatically turn on again in the morning. Different days can have different times, and an interface is available for your application to initiate the sleep procedure.

	Reboot Although all applications (including Watchdog!) and drivers in the operating system are usually well written and protected from system ‘leaks’ which over time can cause them to stop working, it is possible that badly written drivers, or sometimes 3rd party applications can contain a resource leak. Although the Watchdog software will monitor all mandatory applications for this and take appropriate action, other applications and drivers cannot be monitored, so the Reboot plugin simply forcibly reboots the Digital Signage PC every day at a specific time to release all the resources and memory so it never becomes a problem.

	Serial Monitor Do you have a hardware device which needs regular monitoring but it doesn’t have an intelligent 2-way interface driver? An example of this would be a professional grade LCD monitor/plasma screen with a serial or USB port. The Serial port connection can thus be used for regular polling of the device using a command (e.g. ‘Turn on and change to the PC input’) to device, and waiting for a response. If an error message is received or no response is received, then the plugin reports a fault.

	Serial Trigger Some Digital Signs occationally require manual intervention from time to time. It is useful to log the times when people do this to assist it tracking faults and other issues. By simply installing a push switch into the access doors of your Digital Signage and connecting it to one of three connections on any Serial port on the Digital Signage PC, this plugin logs the times whenever these are opened and closed again. (note if your Digital Signage PC includes other hardware interface cards, we can develop a custom plugin for you to monitor more switches and sensors – contact us for more information).

	Defrag Depending on how often your Digital Signs are used and/or updated, you may find your Digital Signage PCs slowing down over time as the data written to the hard disc gets placed in different locations (as it takes time for the HD heads to hop around to read it again). The Defrag plugin runs regularly when the Digital Signage PC is not in use (using an interface to your program) to tidy the files up and keep them in long continuous streams for the fastest access.

	Webcam Viewer Provides you with a way of remotely monitoring the Digital Signage housing for damage or vandalism by simply adding a webcam to the Digital Signage PC.

	Winbond Watchdog Many professional grade PCs include a hardware watchdog produced by Winbond. This plugin communicates with the hardware watchdog and confirms the correct operation of the operating system and applications. In case that due to a hardware fault or driver fault the operating system has frozen (preventing Signage monitor Watchdog from repairing the fault), the Winbond watchdog will reboot the PC, and the Watchdog software will then report an unexpected reboot has occurred. (note other watchdog cards are also supported through other plugins).