Networked Outdoor Media Player

Abstract

Digital Signs are used in wayfinding, exhibitions, public installations, marketing and outdoor advertising. Digital signage displays use content management systems and digital media distribution systems which can either be run from personal computers and servers or regional/national media hosting providers.

In this thesis, the approach of the media player content management through the networking has been represented. Because of its media and graphics processing capacity (720p @ 30 fps) Beagleboard-XM has been selected for the media player module while Desktop PC has been set up as a content server. The steps of installing linux on the board and software configuration for the networking feature have been briefly described. Theoretical aspects and implementation of the libraries and makefile utility which are used in the project are explained. To prevent unauthorized access to the content and to the media player itself AES method of encryption has been described and timing analysis has been carried out to select the best mode of operation from the available modes of operations. The concept of parallel processing, process creation, Socket and socket programming has been described that are used in the implementation of the client-server model.

The client-server model for the content management system has been represented ,In which the server process flow and the client process flow are described. A method for content management by comparing and contrasting the content of the server and client at periodic intervals has been described. A method for transferring bulk of the files at a instance from the server to client as per the process flow has been described. Lastly, an attempt has been made to write and test a start up script that automates this whole process on the system boot up.