Remote Display Monitoring Software for the World’s Leader in LED Industry

Customer

The Customer is one of the world’s leaders in LED display manufacturing and distribution that contributed to the image of Times Square as an advertising Mecca.

Challenge

With their LED displays located worldwide, the Customer used third-party services to provide their clients with uninterrupted display monitoring capabilities. However, after the Customer’s partner failed to keep up with the clients’ ever growing expectations, the Customer set out to build their own web portal that would expand on the current monitoring functionality and help to avoid frustrating instances of poor customer service.

Solution

ScienceSoft’s team of a BA, 3 developers, and a tester delivered a solution that encompasses a polling software for communication with the Customer’s displays and a web-based application for online customer service.

The polling software runs on the Customer’s or their clients’ computer (be it a PC or an industrial computer) that is connected to a LED panel. The software collects data about the display’s health (temperature, humidity, voltage, etc.) from on-panel sensors and software. Polling times are configurable and can be set from the server, which allows the Customer to distantly tune polling options. Moreover, the app accumulates data about the condition of the computer running the polling software, including such parameters as CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, and others. Then the app sends this data to the database, from where the web application retrieves it for further delivery to users.

The web portal functionality includes four major features:

• user management
• display management
• display monitoring
• notifications settings

The access level to the listed features depends on a user’s role (e.g. the Customer’s or an end client’s admin / other employees).

User management allows the Customer’s admins to handle account-related issues, such as creating, removing, editing, and viewing user accounts.

Display management is used by the Customer’s and end clients’ admins to manage display lists via adding / removing monitored displays and organizing them in editable groups.

Display monitoring, the portal’s core feature, gives the Customer’s clients a quick and easy look at the real-time condition of distant displays. Highlighting with colored clickable signs, the system marks displays with the error, warning, or normal statuses on a dynamic geographic map. In addition, it specifies error parameters, provides displays’ details and shows up the polling history. Through a range of filters, a user can quickly arrange displays in a preferred order, e.g. to show items with the error status first or to start with displays belonging to a particular company / display group.

Our team also implemented the feature for sending notifications on an error or warning based on user preferences. Notifications are automatically generated using the templates predefined by the Customer’s admins and then distributed to users via SMS or e-mail.

As the Customer’s clients are non-technical people, the solution’s ease-of-use was of great importance. For the sake of user convenience, the web portal is compatible with desktop, tablet and phone screen sizes.

Results

In 3 months, ScienceSoft’s custom software development team came up with a custom solution for remote LED panel monitoring. It consists of a polling app and a web portal, both available for the Customer’s staff and their clients alike. The project helped to dramatically reduce the need for on-site checks of displays condition and thus cut the Customer’s operating costs while contributing to their clients’ higher satisfaction with the service.

Technologies and Tools

ASP.NET MVC, Web API 2, WPF, Win API, PostgreSQL.