Please note that refresh and monitoring not enabled in the Standalone version of this software. The exception being the RSS control.
Repeat Signage editions
Monitoring of contents files such as pictures and text files as a presentation is playing is a feature of the Standard and above editions.
YouTube videos
Controls - Monitoring files for changes and updating the screen dynamically
Check for updated content (Standard and above editions)
When you insert a picture, text from a text file, video, etc, Repeat Signage can check the file's date/time periodically to see if that file has been changed since your presentation loaded. For example, you may display text on screen in a shop with information on a special offer such as:
Today's offer - 2 for 1 on chocolate biscuits
If this text is in a text file on a network drive, such as n:\Offer.txt then you can change this text when ever you like by editing this file in Windows Notepad. Put a tick in the 'Check for updated content' tick box and then specify how frequently you want Repeat Signage to check. In most cases, every 1 minute for network files should be fine. This means that it will detect the change within a minute. Repeat Signage will then monitor this file for when it changes. If you then update the offer to:
Today's offer - 3 for 2 on fruit cakes
then Repeat Signage will detect the change and update the screen usually within a couple of seconds.
Instead of monitoring a local or network file, you could use files from an Internet websites, FTP site, or files hosted at our free www.repeatserver.com service. We would recommend checking for new files every 5 minutes as it takes a lot more work to check files on the Internet that on local or network drives.
For example, if that offer file was placed on the shop organisation's website, such as at www.yourcompany.co.uk/Offer.txt, or in a free www.repeatserver.com account, then if your presentation in one or more shops is pointing at this, then the offer would be updated within 5 minutes.
Collecting text from websites is very flexible as the head office can update text on screens. For example, there could be multiple shops and you put a file on the website for a different offer in each shop:
www.yourcompany.co.uk/OfferLondonStore.txt
www.yourcompany.co.uk/OfferEdinburghStore.txt
www.yourcompany.co.uk/OfferCardiffStore.txt
The presentations in each shop would collect text from their own text files. As long as you don't put links to these files from your website pages, then these files will never be seen by people browsing your website.
In a production environment, you could use Repeat Signage to display messages to members of staff.
Checking for new content at RepeatServer.com - October 2015 changes
RepeatServer.com is a free service to allow you to create RSS feeds and facilitates the remote updating of Repeat Signage. We have changed the minimum check for updated time to 40 seconds when using this server. This is because some users were checking every 5 seconds which ties up our servers with continual requests, and makes it less responsive to all users. Checking every 40 seconds means that on average, screens will be updated around 20 seconds after you have updated your RepeatServer.com RSS feed or hosted files.
In most cases, leaving the checking at the default 15 minutes will be sufficient.
Check for updated content when using databases
If you are using 'Check for updated content' with a database, then file based databases such as MS Access and XML files will be read and if their date/time stamp doesn't change then the content will not be updated. With server based databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server and databases accessed with ODBC, then we don't have a date/time stamp so every time this routine runs it will read the database and check to see if the data has changed. If it has then it will do a refresh. If you are collecting a lot of data, such as using the Data grid control to display information, this can mean a lot of database reads, so you are advised not to refresh too often, such as under a minute, with every 15-60 minutes being a better option. If using with the Text Label, Text Block or WebBrowser controls, then the amount of information collected is likely to be small in comparison.
Periodic refresh - Force refresh of content whilst presentation is playing (Standard and above editions)
This is a good option for web browser controls and when using playlists pointed at folders. With text files, pictures, etc, you can read the file date to detect if a file has changed. With dynamically generated website pages, such as .aspx pages, then the file date can remain the same indefinitely, but the page may be different on every viewing because information is collected from a database. You can get Repeat Signage to automatically refresh the page periodically by ticking the box and specifying show often it should refresh.
Repeat Signage checks that the Internet file is accessible before doing a refresh. This is in case the Internet connection or website is down.
You can specify a folder to collect items from. For example, a pictures folder on a network drive and get the picture control to cycle through all the pictures in this folder. Repeat Signage doesn't currently monitor folders for new files, but you can get around this my periodically doing a refresh, say every hour, so that new files are collected and displayed.
NOTE ON BROWSER REFRESH NOISE - Repeat Signage uses Internet Explorer to display website pages. Internet Explorer has a refresh/navigate sound that is played on refreshing a page or navigating to a new page. Repeat Signage inherits the same noise. If you want to disable this noise whilst using Repeat Signage, then you need to open System Settings from the main screen and go to the Player tab. Put a tick in the 'Disable Internet Explorer web browser refresh noise' tick box and save. This means that Repeat Signage and Internet Explorer will not play this noise whilst Repeat Signage is loaded.
IMPORTANT NOTE - You cannot use 'Check for updated content' and 'Periodic refresh' together
If you get Repeat Signage to 'Check for updated content' every 5 minutes, then as soon as the file changes, it will load and display the new version. If you have also set periodic refresh for say every hour, then this will just be reloading the playing file. All this does is to use extra computer resources with no benefit.
Play sound on refresh or next play list item (Standard and above editions)
This allows you to specify a .wav sound file for when monitored files are changed. For example, you could use the 'Check for updated content' option above to monitor a text file on the network at a doctor's surgery called 'NextPatient.txt'. Whenever the text in this file changes, then the next text is displayed automatically. With this 'Play sound on refresh' option checked and a .wav file selected, this sound will play on every refresh. The text in the NextPatient.txt could be 'Mr Smith to Dr Jones' office'. However, this text file could be automatically created by other software in use at the doctors surgery if necessary, allowing control of your Repeat Signage display from other applications.
When using in play list mode, then the sound will play every time next item in the play list is displayed.
Text to speech option for text and RTF files for messaging and patient call systems (Standard and above editions)
With the above 'Play sound on refresh ..' option, there in an 'Action' dropdown list that can be changed to 'TEXT TO VOICE'. What this does is that every time a text or RTF file being monitored (with the 'Check for updated content' check box) is to read out the contents of the text file. See Text to speech for messaging and visit/patient call for more information.