Tasks and Responsibilities

THIS PAGE IS NO LONGER BEING MAINTAINED.

Future Tasks

  1. Fix or remove default InfoCast features: twitter feed and crawl.
  2. Investigate VLC or ffmpeg to create laptop screen capture to MPEG stream for display on wall.
  3. Install updated nVidia drivers on all players (266.58).
  4. Remove unnecessary software from all players (e.g., Adobe Acrobat and Flash, and especially unnecessary things that start at boot time and run in background).
  5. Configure systems to allow psexec for batch-oriented player updates.
  6. Consider creating a Ghost image of the players.
  7. Investigate VBrick (http://www.vbrick.com/) products for possible purchase and use with the video wall.
  8. Investigate video cameras for content creation (both low cost and high quality).
  9. Investigate analog-to-digital audio converter for Player outputs. Recommendation from WVU: Atlona boards (low cost!).
  10. Move sources and documentation to Google code site.

Completed Tasks

  1. Purdue photographer to take pictures on Thursday.
  2. Install Win7tv software on Manager to control Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 card. Create InfoCast for BoilerTV.
  3. Final code cleanups and review
    1. Client App
    2. Administration App
    3. Server
  4. Do course evaluations: http://www.purdue.edu/eval
  5. With help from facilities staff: Move NetVX and Creator to data center (creator becomes player spare). Move videowall.cs, too.
  6. Rebuild r1c2 from restore partition (by request from Harris tech support).
  7. Get NetVX working: There is an existing trouble ticket with Harris tech support (1-465042141; call 1-888-534-8246) (Now working; tech support deleted and reinstalled the network interface. Set transmission to multicast: 224.1.1.1:8000.)
  8. Need call to Harris Tech Support for these issues:
    1. Enable triggers on videowall.cs.purdue.edu. (Done. Windows 7 64-bit has different registry location.)
    2. Get departmental webcams working in wall mode (they work in standalone mode). (Waiting for new beta.)
    3. Get NetVX stream working wall mode (works in standalone mode). (Waiting for new beta.)
  9. Investigate pulling ustream.tv as video source (dig into Flash behavior or use intermediate conversion?). (Does not seem possible.)

InfoCast Ideas

  1. Delete old test InfoCasts (keep good ones!).
  2. Modify InfoCast pages for bios, structuring in a way that allows the InfoCast to sync properly.
  3. Create/organize more InfoCast demonstrations:
    1. Departmental Photos: A collage of high res pictures taken from around the department.
    2. Video Wall Photos: A collage of photos taken during the setup of the video wall.
    3. Harris Overview: The 6-minute video from Harris.
    4. NASA Video: Shuttle lift-off footage.
    5. Sample videos from http://csta.acm.org/Advocacy_Outreach/sub/CSEdWeek.html.
    6. Try a very-high-resolution video, e.g., from http://www.tomguilmette.com/wp/my-blog/archives/2913/comment-page-2.
    7. Credits: A crawl of everyone we can think of who helped with the wall.

Android Client and Server Improvements

  1. Generalize client and server with configurable rendezvous location.
  2. Retrofit JUnit and other tests to the code. Goal is to allow testing of code without the video wall (e.g., client and server running independently but on same machine).
  3. Create configuration file for server voting items and corresponding triggers. (Ideally, pull the voting items from the InfoCast.)
  4. Change voting algorithm to (1) allow users to change votes (rather than voting multiple times), by remembering IP address of vote, and (2) discard votes older than some time parameter (e.g., default 15 minutes).
  5. Find permanent home for server: vw-manager?
  6. Add administrator enhancement for authorized users and/or devices.
    1. Switch InfoCasts (tricky; needs communication with Manager).
    2. Power on/off displays (tricky; needs communication with NEC displays).

Implementation Notes

The notes that were mingled with the task lists are now on a combined implementation notes page.

Responsibilities

Area Guru(s)
Creator Jon MooreJon Mooretweartwear
Player tweartwear
Manager tweartwear
Android Nick HendrickxNick Hendrickx ; Sohail MehraSohail Mehra ; Maaz HumayunMaaz Humayun ; Jon MooreJon Moore
Eclipse tweartwear
Git/GitHub/Mercurial/JavaForge tweartwear
Server to Android Rick_FRick_F ; Nick HendrickxNick Hendrickx
Server to Manager Nick HendrickxNick Hendrickx ; Rick_FRick_F
User Surveys Sohail MehraSohail Mehra ; Maaz HumayunMaaz Humayun

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the following Harris Corporation and Purdue staff who assisted with the video wall…

  • Brian Board, CS Hardware Engineer
  • Bruce Townsend, Harris Technical Support [add to app]
  • Dan Trinkle, CS Technical Systems Administrator
  • Dave Burford, Purdue Electronics Shop
  • Don Hewitt, Harris Corporation
  • Jeremy Mullenberg, Purdue Electronics Shop
  • Jim Clamons, Harris Corporation
  • Jim Smith, Purdue Carpenter Shop
  • John Steinhauer, Purdue Electronics Shop
  • Melanie Church, CS Windows Administrator
  • Mike Motuliak, CS Hardware Engineer
  • Nick Hirschberg, CS Webmaster
  • Peter Tsegaye, Harris Technical Support [correct in app]
  • Randy Copas, Purdue Crew Chief
  • Ron Castongia, CS Facilities Manager
  • Scott Cochran, Purdue Carpenter Shop
  • Tom Barbour, Purdue Electronics Shop