Deployment

Prerequisites

To deploy Event-Driven Display, the site must have at least one display connected to a node. You should also have access to the App Control UI to interact with your Event-Driven Display deployments: you will need the URL of the Control UI of your organization, and your username and password.

Deploying EDD

EDD Parameters EDD Parameters

  1. To deploy the Event-Driven Display application to a site, you need an API key so that you can control the Event-Driven Display App from the App Control UI. To retrieve this key, complete the following steps:

    1. Open and log in to the App Control UI in your browser:

      https://app-control.greatbear.io

    2. Click the Generate API Key button on the side menu, and copy the token that is displayed on the screen.

      Generate API Key in the App Control UI Generate API Key in the App Control UI

  2. Deploy the Event-Driven Display application to a site, and configure EDD:

    1. Paste the API key into the deployment parameters. That way the EDD application deployed at the edge can communicate with the App Control UI. This allows you to control the content displayed on the screen remotely. (For details on using the App Control UI, see this section.)

    2. (Optional) Configure other parameters as needed:

      • Enable Monitoring: Enable monitoring of the Event-Driven Display application.
      • Enable VNC server: Deploy a VNC server alongside EDD so that you can remotely access the screen.
      • Password for VNC server: This is only required when enabling VNC server, and allows a custom password for accessing the screen remotely.

Note: Until you configure the device to display some content, it displays status and diagnostic information on the splash screen.

Splash Screen

The splash screen is the default page for the EDD agent while it waits for content to display, and can also indicate status messages of the agent. In general, there are two states that the splash screen will show: the ready mode and the error mode.

Ready mode: In this mode the EDD agent has successfully connected to the local Sync Server, and is ready to receive content from the App Control UI. When you remove content from the EDD Agent, the agent will display the splash screen again.

Ready Mode Splash Screen Ready Mode Splash Screen

Error mode: The screen below is shown when an error has occurred in setup of the EDD agent or when there is a connection issue with the local Sync Server. If you encounter this page, please try first to redeploy the EDD application to the site. If the error persists then contact the Great Bear administrator of your organization, or the Great Bear Support Team.

Error Mode Splash Screen Error Mode Splash Screen

Displaying Content Using the App Control UI

Once you have successfully deployed EDD to the nodes in your site, you can use the App Control UI to determine what content each nodes displays. The steps to do so are:

  1. Open and log in to the App Control UI in your browser:

    https://app-control.greatbear.io

  2. The ‘EDD Nodes’ section of the App Control UI lists the devices that are available to display content to.

    List of display devices List of display devices

    Only the sites and devices that are currently online are shown. Those that are shutdown or unable to be reached due to network connection issues are not displayed in the App Control UI.

    The following information is shown about each device:

    • Node Name: The name of the device
    • Site Name: The site where the device is located
    • Tags: Any tags associated with the node
    • Current URL: The source of the URL that the device is currently displaying
    • Actions: Buttons to edit or remove content displayed on the device

    To visualize which devices are located at the same site, select Overview to see a tree like view of the available nodes and sites.

  3. Use the App Control UI to change the content that a device is displaying:

    • Select the Edit icon of the device on which you want to show the new content. If you have many devices, you can use the Search field to find them.
    • Into the URL field, enter the source URL. You can use local (on-premises) and public websites that are accessible using HTTP, HTTPS or RTSP. Note that the target device must be able to access the display source on the network level.
    • Click the SEND button to push your changes to the target device. The device will automatically receive the new source URL and will start displaying the desired content.

    Changing the EDD content Changing the EDD content

  4. In order to remove content from a screen, you can select the desired device and click the Remove Content button. The target device will stops displaying the content and show the EDD splash screen.

Both the Bulk Update Content and Bulk Remove Content buttons can be used with more than one target device selected.