Yarely – A Software Player for Open Pervasive Display Networks Sarah Clinch, Nigel Davies, Adrian Friday, Graham Clinch School of Computing and Communications, InfoLab21 Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4WA. United Kingdom. [s.clinch | nigel | adrian] @comp.lancs.ac.uk,
[email protected] ABSTRACT signage system that has operated at Lancaster University This paper describes Yarely, a software player designed to since 2005. The system consists of a wide range of displays support the next generation of pervasive display networks. including indoor and outdoor installations and both pro- We identify five design goals for future digital signage play- jected and LCD technology. Content creators in e-Campus ers: the ability to provide basic signage functionality (media use the system to create \channels" of signage content that scheduling and playback) and support for openness, extensi- they subsequently publish within the network. Display own- bility, resilience and appropriation. The paper describes the ers subscribe their displays to these channels and the system design and implementation of Yarely in light of these design automatically schedules content to each display based on the goals. We present an evaluation of the system in the form combination of subscriptions and channels relevant to that of deployment and usage data alongside a reflection on the display. Of particular note is the fact that e-Campus offers degree to which Yarely successfully addresses the needs of an API that enables developers to create new applications future pervasive display systems. to control the signage network [14]. The e-Campus system was based on an experimental soft- ware infrastructure that relied on a complex series of mes- Categories and Subject Descriptors sage events to coordinate playout amongst screens.