You have a few options for turning monitors on and off based on a schedule. This feature depends on the BrightSign Player model you have, the cables that you have (and how they are connected), and the model and manufacturer of the display you’d like to control.
We suggest reaching out to an integration specialist who is familiar with these technologies and troubleshooting them if you are having problems with your deployment. We support Serial, Power Save, and HDMI-CEC but due to the technical nature of these communication protocols and virtually limitless configurations we can’t promise a perfect solution for everyone.
Building a Schedule
You'll want to create a schedule for the Players to use. You can create one under the top-right menu > Configure > Players > Monitor Control Schedules.
Click ‘+New’ to create a new schedule, name the schedule, enter in your preferences, then hit ‘Save’. If you have a more complex schedule in mind you can add multiple entries. 'On Time' tells our system to send a command to turn a monitor ON, 'Off Time' tells the monitor to turn OFF.
Monitor Control Codes
Serial codes are only option you can configure and create here. Otherwise, this screen is only helpful to see what options you have and how many Players are using which option.
Enable Monitor Control on a Player
Edit a Player from the top-right menu > Configure > Players > click the little pencil to Edit then scroll down to ‘Monitor Control’. You can select a Control Schedule and a Control Code here. There’s also some test buttons to try it out! Use these to see if the Control Code and interface work with your Player and display.
Types of Monitor Control
HDMI-CEC (BrightSign only)
This sends basic hard-coded CEC ON and OFF commands.
The command we use to turn a monitor on: 400D
To turn a monitor off: 4036
The most important thing to note for most customers is this works with some displays but not all displays. These are hexadecimal strings which are converted to raw data and sent to a display using HDMI-CEC from a BrightSign Player.
Power Save
Power Save turns the video output off on a BrightSign Player. This means the display it’s connected to will stop receiving a video signal from the Player during the Off Time, and will receive a video signal from the Player during the On Time. You could simulate this if you went and unplugged the video cable from your monitor and then plugged it back in later.
I would note that your display has it’s own internal settings for sleep behavior, and most of the time these can be manually adjusted. Refer to your TV or monitor manufacturer’s documentation for additional information.
Serial
Serial control uses the DE9 or 3.5mm port on a BrightSign Player to send codes to a monitor. The default (editable) control codes in the list are all Serial. Using this assumes the BrightSign Player model has the interface for this, the cables and pinouts are correct with the model and display, and the codes have been checked in the display manufacturer’s documentation. This one is only recommended for advanced users or integration specialists.