Signage

The CSL Signage displays

Signage refers to the set of ten electronic displays located all over the school. A "Signage" refers to a display that displays useful information maintained by the CSL across the school.

All signages (except for cs-audlob) have the same types of features which include:

  • The schedule of the current school day.

  • Ion announcements

  • 8th period activities.

  • A bus map

  • A map of the whole school.

Signages can also showcase important announcements made by the Sysadmins or FCPS.

The current version of Signage is Signage3.

The core of Signage runs on Intel Compute Sticks (official website) running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

The main contact for signages are our Signage Lead(s). The Intranet Lead(s) are usually the deputies for signages if the Signage Lead(s) are not present.

History

Signage1

The first Signage displays were installed around the first release of Ion (source) (around May 2016). They were originally developed as a complement to Ion. These efforts were led by James Woglom. The Signage displays ran on a mixture of Raspberry Pi 1s, Raspberry Pi 2s, and Raspberry Pi 3s.

Signage2

Development of Signage2 began in April of 2017 to serve as a rewrite of Signage1 using Python's Kivy framework. Various limitations imposed by Kivy and slow performance led to the end of development around March of 2018.

Signage 3

Development of Signage3 began in March of 2018 to serve as a rewrite of Signage as a webpage hosted on Ion. Signage3 was deployed on newly-arrived Intel Compute Sticks on April 12, 2018. Signage3 remains the current Signage deployed throughout the school.

List

The current deployed Signage displays are named (and located):

  • cs-nobel (Nobel commons)

  • cs-curie (Curie commons)

  • cs-galileo (Galileo commons)

  • cs-cafeteria (Cafeteria)

  • cs-gandhi-a (Ghandi commons)

  • cs-audlob (Outside the audlob)

  • cs-library (Library hallway)

  • cs-hopper (Hopper commons)

  • cs-cafe (Cafe commons)

  • cs-einstein-a (Einstein commons)

Current Setup

Each Signage display has their own Intel Compute Stick which runs Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS. Using getty, each Signage display logs in as user and opens up a specific web page on Ion (https://ion.tjhsst.edu/signage/display/<display_name>) in Chromium. The Signage pages can be rendered server-side or as iframes. The code for Signage can be found here.

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