NetBoards are situated displays designed to fulfil and augment the role of non-digital personal noticeboards in the workplace. The system is deployed over the Graphics & Interaction Group in the University of Cambridge Computer Lab.
The project is written using web technologies for modern web browsers. The front-end is written using HTML5 and JavaScript, using the jQuery, Paper.js, Lo-Dash and Moment libraries. The back-end is written in Python. SASS is used to generate the CSS for the front-end.
For more information please see the paper, presented at ITS 2014.
All files should be placed on a webserver. Python files in the cgi-bin directory must be able to excecute, and the user that the webserver runs as must be able to read and write to the content directory.
- assets/ images
- cgi-bin/ back-end Python scripts
- css/ CSS for front-end, including SASS code
- js/ JavaScript scripts and libraries
- archive.html view images screenshots of the boards over time
- board.html interactive viewer/editor
- index.html index page for users
- information.html info about the project, and a QR code to the index page
- logviewer.html view usage logs
- set_status.html page to set text status
- settings.html page to configure users for each room
- viewer.html static viewer
In our deployment, each NetBoard uses a 22-inch portrait-oriented wall-mounted touchscreen, with a resolution of 1080 by 1920 pixels supporting 10-point multitouch. The NetBoards are powered by PCs (Windows 8.1, 3.40 GHz processor and 4GB RAM). Each PC is mounted in the void under the floor and powers two NetBoards.
These PCs are configured to auto-login at boot and to start the Chrome web browser automatically. The Window Positioner plugin for Chrome is used to load, position, and fullscreen the browser windows.
The project is hosted on a Virtual Machine in the Computer Laboratory's VM pool. The server supports Python for the server-side scripts, and also runs board-rendering scripts periodically.