Dynamic Media Displays Based on Novel Integration of Software and Hardware Components

MARTIN H. PRICE, ANDRES R. BLOTTA, JOSEPH R. HAMMER, RYAN M. ALBERT, DAVID M. JEFFERSON, and
MATTHEW CHABALOWSKI

Increasingly, the expectations for advertising displays are rising. Static displays are no longer a viable solution in as much as they are not reactive or adaptive. Therefore, we researched into the domain of dynamic/reactive visual displays used for, among other things, information sharing, and marketing. A key component of such an agile application would be to integrate best of breed solutions to develop a small and portable system with ultimate flexibility. Our research delved into different Internet services, database systems, and online content management applications. Based on our research, we selected SharePoint and its rich API library for use in solving this problem. Node.js was incorporated to serve as a bridge between our application code and SharePoint web services. Frameworks for JavaScript and HTML were also investigated; ultimately the React framework was selected due to its integration capabilities and dynamic content zone management. Rounding out the explorations was the adoption of Raspberry Pis due to their low cost and portability. The application architecture we developed can stand as an industry standard to drive such interactive media displays.