Concerto Frontend Stability

[Dancho Working]

Hi guys, 
Recently I stumble on Concerto in my search for a CMS system I can use to advertise contend on sites my company manages. 
The requirement was cheap, only photos, to be able to change multiple photos on a single TV, to be able to change content on demand, on schedule, to be able to run on an android devices or/and browsers, and so on.
All of this is supported by Concerto, so I went to GitHub and downloaded OVA image file (Concerto 2.3.6), run in on VirtualBox initially, then converted its drive as vhdx so I can run it on the Hyper-V cluster I manage and set it up successfully. 
Configured some screens, attached content on them and tested it with a browser on my PC following the link http://my-concerto-srv-ip/frontend/1 and incremented number for the rest of the screens. 
Also tested in on some android 7.0 devices using ConcertoTV_0_2_0.apk I also downloaded from GitHub. Runs great for now.
Doing that made me think a little and this is the place where I can ask questions:

1. How many screens I can configure, is someone running a large amount of screens using frontend? How stable Concerto is if 200+ screens are created in it?

2. Is there a way to keep the content on the browser or ConcertoTV_0_2_0 app if the connectivity is temporary lost? (for example a few hours a device is offline, but operational or a certain site losses connection to the Head Office where the concerto server is located) 

3. is there a way to set custom number for the link of a screen? (example: instead of http:/my-concerto-srv-ip/frontend/17 to be http:/my-concerto-srv-ip/frontend/310201, where 3102 is the site number and 01 is the screen number of this particular site. We manage sites with internal  company numeration like 3102, 3106, 3112 and many more.)

4. Concerto's content. How large can the content base become, before Concerto starts experiencing issues and unable to accept new pictures as content? Is there some storage limitations, database limitations? Current drive size is 8 GB and I plan to extend it at least to 100GB to accommodate content. (pictures my team will upload in the future)  

5. is there some pluggins to review all the uploaded content, regarding if it is expired or active? I know clicking on a username will show me all the content the content already uploaded, but only by the specific user I clicked on, not all of the content that exist inside Concerto. 

I still test it to determine if it will suit our needs and more questions can arise in the future, so I will update this conversation in this case. 

[Bob Hall]

Greetings;

I have recently set this system up for use at some campgrounds I manage - there are 20 screens in total, some are done using mini-pc's, some using VMware player. I don't have a lot of answers for you, but I have about 300meg of pictures streaming off my server with no issues at this time. There is no way that I am aware of to keep the content on the browser and looking at the APK it requires a direct connection also - you may be able to modify the apk but that would requrie space on your devices which typically don't have much.

That being said, before I read your message today, I didn't know there was an APK and I have a ton of android media boxes kicking around. I just tried loading the apk and am curious how you got it to work? I've be able to set the server and tried using http://<server>/?mac=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx and using the mac as a token but no success.

So far I've had no failures, the system has been up about 6 months.

Good Luck!

bob

[Bob Hall]

As an update to my question below, it turns out after a bunch of mucking around the apk does work perfectly - although I couldn't find any documentation on how to make it work, I did the following:

1) Install the APK

2) run the application

3) on the menu there are 2 options 1) Change Server, 2) Change Mac

4) I first changed the mac to random series of numbers: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

5) I then changed the server address to: http://<servername>/frontend/?token=12345

Once that was done, it came up with the screen displaying the actual token of which I then set up the screen on the Concerto server. NOTE: You don't need to change the ?token=12345 in the server line as it doesn't use it anyway BUT it's how you get the screen to show up.

Lastly, i found a cheesey application called "launch on Boot" by Andrea Bianchini that you can download and then install via USB onto your Andorid device (unless you use google store then you can just get it from there). It's nothing special, you simply pick the Concerto application to start on boot and voila it works.

Hopefully somebody finds this useful.

Bob

[Brian Michalski]

The Concerto TV APK is a gloried web browser from the inaugural Google TV days in 2011, I'm surprised to hear it still works :)

If you run into trouble it'd be worth checking out any other full-screen android web browser apps. I don't have any I'd recommend off hand, but there's nothing Concerto-specific about the flavor of the Concerto APK that you're running.

Optimistically, there are a few other kiosk-style Android apps which can accomplish the same thing by pointing it at that URL

~Brian M

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Concerto Digital Signage" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to concerto-digital-s...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/concerto-digital-signage/0d652fd9-6999-4fb3-b891-ec3fb2ff95b5n%40googlegroups.com.

[Dancho Working]

Hi Bob, 

Hi Brian,

Bob, I'm glad you discovered a way to use your android boxes with your Concerto setup, the app should work fine, since Android has backwards compatibility and even newer versions are able to run old apps like Concerto APK. As Brian mentioned, the APK file is a limited capability fullscreen web browser that opens the concerto URL. Brian is right, you can use anything remotely capable of opening a URL on fullscreen. That includes mini PCs, obsolete Windows PCs, any Linux,  Raspberry Pi, Android Boxes etc. since Concerto server creates a URL for each screen you configure. You can even connect multiple devices on a single Concerto screen URL, if you wish to broadcast a certain image on more than one device.
Bob, you don't even have put /?token=12345. You can use http://my-concerto-srv-ip/frontend and it will show up a token

Personally I don't use tokens, but rather I create the screen as public in Concerto Server and get the URL by opening it with "Preview Screen" button inside the Concerto Server screen icons. This allows me to group some of the monitors running on different sites, but showing the same content. and reduces management of the screens.

Brian, I'm not aware of any kiosk mode apps that I can use at the moment. I will appreciate if you suggest some android based free to use apps. Thanks.

Anyways, my questions are still unanswered. 
My biggest concerns are the stability of the system if the old content is not regularly deleted and content broadcasting on sites where the connection is not as stable as I wish to be.
The rest is manageable and/or negligible to say the least.

Jordan A.

[Bob Hall]

Hi Jordan,

Hi Brian;

Thanks for you both for your responses - Jordan although I cannot answer your other questions, I can tell you a couple of items - In my case I converted the OVA file over and ran it on esxi as I have a lab at my house that runs production sites. The issue I had was the fact that the original OVA was only 8 gig in size and ran out of space quickly. It’s actually quite easy to expand it if you have not already - and if you do, and update the sources file to “archive.* so that linux can get it’s updates, the image runs very stabily.

Because I like to live on the edge, I added  the Debian GUI to the system and xRDP (not that you cannot SSH in, but sometimes it’s handy to have the GUI and RDP.

Extending the drive on the image, running the upgrade and some basic house keeping, has in my opinion in ion taken a great system and made it better.

I’ve done a TON of displays over the years, initially writing my own software and then spending a bunch of money on online services - I wish I had found this earlier because it’s pretty sweet, KUDO’s to the guys who created it and maintained it.

I am considering developing a KIOSK app for Android for it if I have time, but for now, I’m happy the original one worked for what I need.

Cheers;

Bob

Bob Hall | Technologist / Blogger / Motivational Speaker 

cell: 613.218.9787 | email:va3...@gmail.com | HAM: VA3BJH

On Jan 15, 2025, at 4:40 AM, Dancho Working <dancho....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Bob, 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/concerto-digital-signage/154cabc9-e4b3-4ca0-b254-226a37835197n%40googlegroups.com.