The Monitors Section

The Monitors section contains the settings that monitor the performance and health of the player PC. If possible, Broadsign Control Administrator will then take corrective action.

Note: This section is one of several under Configuration Profile Properties for players. For general information, see Configuration Profiles - Players. For edge server profiles, see Configuration Profiles - Edge Servers.

Use the Emergency tab to configure emergency messaging. The source of emergency messaging can be as follows:

  • A URL to the Broadsign Publish emergency messaging.

    • Copy this URL from the Emergency Messaging section in the Broadsign Publish Admin Dashboard. For more details, see Configure the Emergency URL in the Broadsign Publish documentation.

  • A URL to the Broadsign Creator emergency messaging.

    • Copy this URL from the Settings tab of the Broadsign Creator interface. For more details, see the Broadsign Creator "Help" PDF.

  • A URL to a static file on an external server.

Note: Emergency messaging is displayed on the browser that you have selected in the Browser Support setting of The HTML Tab section in the Configuration Profile Properties window.

Configure Emergency Settings

The following options are available:

  • Enable the Emergency Monitor – Enables the feature.

  • URL – Your unique emergency messaging URL.

  • Send "Power On" RS-232 command to attached displays – When enabled, if you are using RS-232 device control, an emergency message will automatically turn on your screen if it is not already on. Likewise, it will restore the correct power state after the emergency message finishes. You must define the “Power On”, “Power Off” and “Assert Power” actions for this to work. For more information, see Add a Device Control Time Span.
  • Append Player Id – Enables the player targeting feature. You can add behaviours that target specific players (for example, site-specific messages).
    • Variable name – The default player ID variable is com.broadsign.suite.bsp.player_id. You can rename the variable, if you want. For example, you can change the variable name from player_id to franchise_id or retail_player_id.

      • Note: The player append its ID as an HTTP GET variable to each request, allowing server-side logic to selectively activate emergency messages per player.

You can activate/deactivate the emergency message protocol by adding and removing a static file on the remote server. The player sends an HTTP HEAD every 60 seconds to the specified URL.

  • If the response is anything other than a 200, the player ignores the response.
  • If the response is a 200, the player follows up with a full HTTP GET. The contents of the URL response is displayed in a browser, in fullscreen. The emergency message is now considered "active".

    • Note: When active, emergency messages interrupt the loop and play fullscreen.

    • The HTTP HEAD requests continue every 60 seconds until the player receives a response other than 200 (for example, 404 not found). In that case, the player uses the response to deactivate the emergency message and return to the normal loop.

Note: If you are using multiple frames, the frame_id in which the emergency is playing is appended to the end of the URL. The frame_id is always 0, and not what it was previously, because emergency messages use the whole screen and are not associated with a frame ID.

Broadsign Control supports valid HTTPS website URLs.

Note: You can use a BroadsignObject for your emergency messages.

The CPU tab contains settings to enable High CPU usage and duration thresholds.

  • Threshold – With the Threshold setting enabled, the Player will send an incident notification if the CPU usage exceeds the High CPU Threshold for a duration longer than the High CPU Period specified in seconds.
  • Frequency – The Frequency section controls how often the CPU usage monitor verifies the CPU usage settings and how often CPU usage is logged. A log frequency setting of zero (0) seconds disables the logging.

The Memory tab enables or disables the Player’s ability to reboot itself if it exceeds 90% usage of the system memory.

This ensures that third-party content does not exhaust all the system’s memory, leading to swapping, poor playback or crashes.

The Reboots tab contains settings that allow you to define scheduled OS reboots and/or player restarts.

Although Broadsign Control Player does not need any scheduled reboots or restarts, in some cases, third-party software and drivers might require it. If this is the case, you can define a reboot or restart schedule according to your business needs by first enabling the reboots or restarts, then checking the days of the week you would like to have it performed, and lastly, the time of the day that it should occur.

Note: Player reboots and restarts do not use the Custom Timezone setup on the display unit. Instead, they use the player's local time.