Im building a small local digital signage solution. My client need to show content from different data sources (RSS, Streaming video). I have a server which is a set of services where everything is controlled. I have a number of clients connect to this server to get content, schedules etc.
I have been thinking about an architecture for allowing dynamic data into my system (right now its statis data, text, image, video – being uploaded to my server and distributed). Today if a client need to show something from the internet a web site )eac h client holds its own connection to the internet/the data source. My concern is this: how can I introduce data sources into my system, and how do I go about it? Should i let the clients connect to the dynamic data individually or should i stream all data sources (RSS, video, etc, tv) though the server?
Pros of streaming through server:
-
I control update frequence central
-
Clients does not have to have access
to the Internet
Cons to server solution
- Configuration of clients and configuration of feeds on server
- Controlling bandwidth to multiple downloading clients
Any good ideas of experiences on this?
Many years ago I worked on kiosks which required multiple screens in a shopping mall to show the same ads, news, announcements et al. The design we used was to have a single computer aggregate the data (in our case, analog video) and output it to dumb terminals (CRT TV sets) via dedicated channels (coax cable).
Perhaps your hardware is different, but the design worked well; everything of value (hardware, content, control, internet access) is centralized. The clients are dumb, read-only terminals which are cheap to replace and cannot be hacked because they are not programmable. Hijacking the connection is useless because it has no outside access and is read-only.