Video Walls 24x7x365

[EJN]

I'm almost done with our installation of 100 MV cameras and I have our video walls configured. We have 3 staff that will have a video wall (or video wall rotation) on during business hours, say 8-4 daily.

Has someone run into any issues leaving the video wall(s) up 24x7x365? I'm more interested in the 24x7 than the 365, meaning I would expect to have to reboot or refresh the views every so often. How often is my main concern, due to possible failure (hic-cups) on the system rather than failures on our part (power failure, network failure, internet failure). Any of the latter I would expect will possibly require a refresh/reboot/reconnect/re-login.

Any insight into this?

Thanks.

[PhilipDAth]

I haven't done this myself - so this is second hand information.

I understand when the user sessions times out that the video wall stops working.  I have heard of people using browser plugins to manually refresh the page every now and then to prevent the user being timed out.

[EJN]

I will look into refresh plug-ins. I will also test to see if wall-rotation basically serves as an auto refresh. I will setup a test PC (or two) on Monday and see what results I get.

[Raj66]

I would expect the wall rotation to serve as a refresher but I have not tested this either. refresh plug-ins are what I generally. I would also keep an eye on the RAM time to time just to make sure the browser is not spiking and crashing it

Cheers!

Raj.

[Boulder38]

I've setup a second layout and set the rotation. It does refresh all the video feeds when it changes, but doesn't refresh the page which is good.

Not sure if it'll help with the cameras that freeze though, will go set it now and see what happens

[Boulder38]

Hi,

I've just this week setup our PC for security to monitor our new cameras (MV72s at the moment).

We're half way through our camera installation due to engineers time availability.

We currently have 10 cameras up on the video wall and a couple of times since being full screen, and 24x7, 2 cameras have froze a couple of times with a refresh of the page being needed to bring them back.

I've looked at the auto-refreshes, but it brings it out of the full screen so has to be clicked back to full screen which will become an annoyance for the security staff so I haven't activated that yet.

I'm waiting to get another 7 cameras up (Only 15 or 16 will be on the video wall though) to have it a fully fledged system to then see how it behaves.

I was originally going to use Edge with the Windows 10 built in Kiosk mode which is great a setup for multiple users not having to login, and only allows them on that 1 page only, as everything else is hidden, but there's a live view issue with Edge at the moment, so tried IE, and it was quite flaky and slow, so now trying Chrome, where we get the above issues.

How did you get on with your test systems?

Thanks

Luke

[Priesty]

I am very interested in how you achieve this and the result as well. Please keep us all posted!

[PhilipDAth]

What about using Chrome in kiosk mode?  For example:

chrome --kiosk https://www.google.com

Note that you need to have Chrome closed before running this, otherwise it just adds a new tab.

[PhilipDAth]

Actually I just found this article about using Chrome in kiosk mode and it has lots of other tips as well.

mode

[Boulder38]

The Chrome Kiosk mode is nice, for within Chrome, but the Windows 10 Kiosk mode automatically logs the computer, with a limited local user account, doesn't allow you to break out of Edge, and only allows you to the 1 page, same as the Chrome Kiosk mode, it's really decent for a built in feature.

At the moment, live view isn't working with Edge though 😞

I've updated the cameras to Beta3.33 yesterday but still 2 out of the 10 cameras froze overnight, but did come back without refreshing, not sure how long it took them to come back though

[wvmtneer]

We are finding the same issue. I am also using Windows 10 Kiosk mode and Edge to build a dedicated Meraki Camera kiosk. I have found Chrome and Firefox browsers work but not able to control them as easily in Kiosk mode.

[Boulder38]

I've found in the next Edge version (only tested Beta), the HLS (what Meraki uses) video issue has been fixed.

I'm currently using Chrome in Kiosk Mode but will return to Edge once it's updated in the next version of Windows.

I'm finding Chrome to memory hog as usual!

[wvmtneer]

Great to know.   Thank you for sharing the info.

[wvmtneer]

I tested today with one of the Chromium based beta versions of Edge and HLS is working.

I am testing on Windows 10 ver 1903 with Edge version 79.0.309.11.   So there is hope.  I see this will be GA on January 15, 2020.

[TheChad]

I just tried this on the MV71 running 4.0 code.  Chromium Edge on my Mac.  "Seems" better, but there is still about a 3 second lag.

[tlawrencescb]

We're beginning to roll out cameras to 50 sites and it's been frustrating that there isn't a supported solution for this request.  I see similar requests on the community board going back to 2017.  I submitted a tech support case and the reply was to use the make a wish function, which I did.

Having worked with analog and other IP video systems for a long time, it is a bit irritating to have to jump through all of these hoops to provide a guard station solution; a concept that has been around for decades.  

My solution so far is to set our company up as an MSP to separate our other network functions from the camera networks so we can maintain tight admin controls in one area of the portal but allow for less secure options in the camera networks like no time outs, no MFA, etc.

The plan is to use a NUC with an i5 or better processor and chrome extensions to remember the video wall login and auto refresh the page.  We'll use Meraki SM or another MDM solution to lock the device in kiosk mode with Chrome set to full screen.  We'll probably need to install VNC or LogMeIn to troubleshoot when the browser inevitably crashes.

[PhilipDAth]

I've been tossing up creating one with a Raspberry Pi 4.  I like they now have dual HDMI outputs.  Need to find out what size video wall it's GPU can handheld.