Российское ПО Digital Signage SmartPlayer

Event dedicated to SmartPlayer – a platform for implementing multimedia projects of any complexity and centralized device management. The advantages of the solution include: the ability to refine the software and develop new functionality to meet customer requirements, cross-platform compatibility, and local technical support.

Program: Problem statement: why is SmartPlayer needed? Licensing scheme; Use cases of SmartPlayer.

• Software demonstration.

Speakers:

• Timur Ashirov, Head of Presales;
• Artemy Karochkin, Business Development Director.

We will briefly talk about the platform, thoroughly analyze the technical aspects of its use, and discuss the functionality of the platform.

The Russian company Smart Player is a developer of a software and hardware platform for implementing multimedia projects of varying complexity. It was founded in Moscow in 2016.

It is a resident of Skolkovo, is in the RosReestr, and is not subject to VAT. This is all in demand in the Russian market, considering the departure of some Western solutions and the orientation of government institutions towards transitioning to domestic software.

The geography of sales is very extensive, with several representative offices around the world. However, the main focus is on the Russian market and the CIS countries. Over the year of our activity, we have successfully sold more than 50 thousand licenses and implemented more than 400 projects in various fields.

The main problem that customers come to us with is the need for rapid content changes. And often, the customer's site has a "zoo" of equipment, where they have to use several suppliers. Our platform allows you to combine all this into a single functionality and use only our solution. You can connect background sound, touch panels, and professional panels to our system.

Our solution is supported on 95% of the devices that are currently on the market. New things appear almost every month, mainly from China. We test everything and quickly give our assessment of the project.

We are a company that specializes not only in "out-of-the-box" solutions for playing content, but we also often integrate with the customer's internal networks. These can be loyalty systems, sensors, external data, etc.

We are capable of integrating with all of this. If there is a clear technical specification in the project, we take it for evaluation and give our verdict: whether it is possible or not.

How does our platform work? Using a tablet, mobile device, or computer, a user can access our resource, link a device, and upload pre-prepared content. Then a schedule is set, and this content will be broadcast according to the schedule. We work with the following OS: Windows, Linux, professional Samsung panels based on TIZEN, BrightSign, Android, WBS (LG operating system), and RaspberryPi.

The licensing options that are available in the company are as follows. Firstly, it is a cloud solution, also known as a subscription.

That is, you can subscribe for a year, two, three, etc. With a cloud solution, technical support is included in the license price. Secondly, it is a server solution. We deploy the server on the customer's infrastructure. This solution is usually chosen by government institutions and closed companies that do not want any external access to the cloud and want everything to be deployed on their side.

The server part is purchased. This is a one-time payment. Then, if necessary, you can only pay for annual technical support, which not only provides answers to various requests from the customer, but also updates the server every six months, trains new employees, ships new functionality, etc.

We have different licensing options. Our most popular licenses are SmartScreen. This license is suitable for standalone screens and for playing static and dynamic content. It uses Full HD, HD, and 4K resolutions. This license also allows you to play all kinds of widgets, i.e., mini-applications specially created in our system. This can be an exchange rate, a weather widget, traffic jams, navigation, anything.

The next license is SmartVideoWall. In essence, it is very similar to the SmartScreen license, but it is designed for screens with non-standard resolutions. As a rule, these are LED screens 3/1, 10/1, 18/17, etc. A separate license was created for such screens.

The SmartTouch license is designed for interactive screens and panels. It is suitable if the customer wants to create some interactive scenarios. All this can be done using our internal editor. A certain area is marked on the screen, and when you click on it, a certain action occurs. This can be a transition to a website, or it can launch a widget or other necessary scenario. All this is configured through our platform.

The SmartSound license is the simplest license. It allows you to play background sound, but it has its own features. The first is the ability to play advertising inserts. You can assign advertising inserts using our internal console. This can be done manually so that they appear at a certain time. You can set a certain frequency for their appearance, for example, once every 3, 4, or 5 minutes. You can play with the sound. For example, the main background music plays at a volume of 20, and the advertising insert plays at a volume of 40. This is so that the advertising insert attracts more attention.

Next, let's move on to the technical part and show our functionality. My colleague Timur Ashirov, Head of Presales at Smart Player, will help me here.

He has now logged into the platform. It is a web interface through which all management takes place. Regardless of the type of solution, whether it is a purchased history with a local server or the use of a cloud solution. In any case, management takes place through a web interface.

The navigation panel and menu are located on the left. And the working field is in the central right part. I am currently inside our demo account. The maximum functionality is loaded here. In principle, everything that is developed on our platform is in this account. Today we will analyze the main situations that most customers work with.

The "Overview" tab. Provides information about what is happening in the system in principle. Now I see in the "Device Summary" section how many devices are on-line, whether there are devices in offline, and whether there are devices in the car. There are none, which means the device is working correctly.

The schedule summary provides us with information about how many schedules have been created in principle, whether we have devices without schedules. This is all clickable. We can "fall through" deeper. And if we had at least one device without a schedule, the system would display them to us.

Active sessions. Since there can be several people in the system at the same time, whether they are marketers, content managers, or an administrator, all this will be displayed here. User summary. Information about which account we are currently logged into the system under.

Storage usage statistics. By default, we allocate 15 GB for storing all content. If a local solution is used, the amount of space is limited only by how much space will be allocated on the server.

Initially, work begins with the installation of client applications. They can be downloaded from the "Distributions" section. For a cloud solution, they are available by default, but if a local server is used, they are assembled taking into account the server configuration. I repeat: we work with Samsung based on TIZEN, LG - this is directly WBS. Devices running Android. These can be both professional displays based on Android and Android set-top boxes.

We also work with devices on Windows and Linux. I would like to note separately that we work with the Russian "Astra", which is currently very relevant, the RaspberryPi single-board computer, and BrightSign professional players. We can select the necessary distribution, download it, and install the device.

And then in the "Device" section we add it and can interact with it. At the moment, I have one device connected. This is my computer. This means that I can interact with it, I can update the Screenshot, find out what is currently being broadcast on the screen, view an enlarged Screenshot, history. That is, we already have status monitoring.

Next, the power management functionality, volume control, and device deletion. We can also configure management automation. This is also a very popular functionality for saving electricity, as well as for managing the device itself so that it does not play anything idle. We can configure reboot timers for both the client application and the device. We choose how often this action should occur and at what time. Similarly, on/off timers are configured. If an external control computer is used, you can also configure the display itself to turn on/off.

When there are a large number of devices in the system, they need to be structured. To do this, we can create a group, give it a name, and thus build a hierarchy similar to how we work at our computers. In addition to the ability to view with tiles, we can use a list. This is more convenient for some people to work with. Moreover, in list view mode, the platform administrator will have more information. Here we will already see the IP address, Mac address, last connections, and the date of the last snapshot. This list itself is customizable.

After we have added and configured the device, the next step is to add content. The content itself can also be structured in the same way as we structured the devices earlier. There are already several pre-created folders here, and content has been added and structured.

In addition to the fact that we structure the content manually, the system itself also additionally divides it into images, video, audio files, the ability to work with documents, we directly support working with pdf files, with various links, these can be links to both external sources and internal ones, text documents, tables, and widgets.

After the content has been added, we proceed to create the broadcast itself. The simplest option is the functional content device. By default, it creates a Full HD horizontal orientation. If the customer uses a vertical orientation, then with literally two clicks of a button we change the orientation of the display. If your customer has a custom resolution, i.e., an LED screen, then this can also be specified here. Then we simply add the materials we need.

The system works with Drag and Drop. The playlist will be displayed at the bottom. There is an option to preview it. If necessary, we can delete unnecessary files, change their places, or, if required, add some other media file.

After we click "save", the system automatically transfers us to the next stage. This is the stage of selecting devices. We can select both a device individually and a group of devices. All devices that are in a certain folder will be selected, and the created broadcast will be applied to them.

Click "Next" and proceed to the final stage. This is the assignment of a schedule, i.e., the rule according to which all this will be played. By default, the mode is "forever" and "for the whole day". That is, until we physically delete the created schedule, it will be broadcast on our devices. There is an option to select the playback parameter, i.e., once, daily, weekly, when we can choose on which days of the week it will be played. The platform also calculates the number of impressions, duration, and total number of content impressions. The "forever" and "specific days" modes - in the calendar we can choose on which days to display the broadcast.

We can limit the playback of the broadcast not only throughout the day, but also set a specific period of time. Suppose from midnight to morning. Something like that. Click "save" and our schedule has been applied to all selected devices, we are transferred to the broadcast section. Here we see all the blanks we have created and in particular the one that we have now created and applied to our devices.

The second option for interacting with the creation of a broadcast and a schedule is the broadcast item. This functionality is more flexible. Here there is already the possibility of finer tuning, in particular, it is not uncommon for customers to need to create some separation. We do this by creating zones. The number of zones is not limited. But integrators should remember that each zone is a separate stream and there is an additional load on the player itself. And we transfer the necessary materials to each zone.

Similarly, you can create other scenarios. If we are using a video wall, then we can set its parameters. Suppose it is 4K. And, suppose, we divide it into 4 screens, fill them with the appropriate content, and output them to the devices. The basic functionality also includes a reporting system. We can take reports on devices, broadcasts, or content. Advertising campaigns are a separately loaded functionality. As you can see, the overall interface is similar to how we assigned the schedule. We select the period for which we need to generate the report. We can specify the report time, additionally specify the report type, this is content playback, device operation, or quality assessment, video analytics, total cost. The last three are projects and require additional integration with the customer's systems.

Next, we select the device. You can select one device or a group. Click "create report". Here, in the reports section, the generated reports appear, and the system uploads the necessary information.

Several people can manage the system at the same time, so it is necessary to separate their access rights. When we add a new user, we also need to specify a role. The platform administrator can use pre-prepared roles or create their own roles. By default, all functionality will be disabled, access is granted separately for each functionality.

Moreover, access is configured very finely. You can grant access to the entire folder or to each file separately.

The "LICENSES" section. Here the administrator will see the number of free licenses, how many licenses he has in use.

"SETTINGS". Here all settings relate directly to the interface itself, highlight a few separately. This is DEFAULT GRAPHIC CONTENT, many customers starting to work with our system may make some mistake, i.e. do so that no content will be displayed on the screen, to reduce the negative, you can set a screensaver. In the settings there is DOCUMENTATION, which leads to our Wikipedia, here is documented work with all platforms.