Digital Signage Deepens Security Awareness at West Virginia University
Digital displays get messages out in seconds with the help of SMS and Email.
content management system (DS CMS) via the campus LAN, and push the content to displays, through a broadcaster device that converts the computer video streams into TV-like signals that the displays can be tuned to receive.
The media players are custom-built to meet WVU’s demanding specs for video content. “We use a lot of video, so our players are configured with a powerful video card and a lot of RAM,” says Graham. “Each player gets a small 16-port ‘broadcaster’ box next to it. Each port can connect to a CAT5 run that in turn would go to a digital signage display. Some buildings may have 6 to 8 signs, and we’re prepared in case we need to accommodate more.”
For the digital signage content management system (DS CMS) to create and manage content, and send it to the media player computers, WVU Information Stations currently use X2OMedia Xpresenter software.
WVU Information Stations selects the products to use, going through integrators and resellers. Each department, college or building getting digital signage pays for the displays, player and broadcaster, along with the installation costs, going through Graham’s group. Deployments in campus “common areas,” along with the content provided by Graham’s group, are funded directly by the administration.
Hardware costs for two displays, a media player, and a broadcaster are around seven to eight thousand dollars, depending on the size of the monitors, according to Graham. “Plus installation, which depending on the location, can be the biggest cost, more than the hardware, since you’re often retrofitting existing facilities to provide the networking and power.”
Ready to Issue Alerts
The WVU Administration and WVU Police Department are responsible for determining when an alert needs to be issued.
Alert types, says Graham, are either EMERGENCY, indicated with a red screen, or WEATHER, with a green screen. “Weather alerts are for conditions that make the university plan to shut down, which has only happened once or twice since I started working at WVU,” says Graham.
Based on the Information Stations Emergency protocol defined by the university, to issue an alert, the WVU Police Department sends a text message from its account with the cloud-based e2Campus alerting service.
“When X2OMedia Xpresenter gets the alert through its RSS feed, it switches all the digital signs into emergency notification mode,” says Graham. “This includes overriding the current info-loop with the alert message, along with having one of the speakers associated with the sign issue an audio alert to get people to look at the digital sign.”
To help ensure the emergency notification system will function in the event of power or network problems, “We have a fail-over server, located on a separate campus, on a different power grid and a different network switch,” notes Graham. “So if our main digital signage CMS server has a problem, the other server takes over within a few minutes, to maintain full Emergency Messaging capability.”
Additionally, WVU uses e2Campus to send alert email and SMS text messages to WVU students, faculty and employees who have signed up for them – currently, about 11,000 people.
The alert is also pushed to the WVU Today web page, as well as to the WVU channel on its campus cable feed, which any television set connected to the WVU campus cable television
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