Infoscreen v 0.9 by Thomas Preece
http://tpreece.net
thomas@tpreece.net

DESCRIPTION
===========

Infoscreen is a program to display a studio clock and other relevant 
information. The typical use case is a radio studio; the program can 
also display a "dead air" warning, which overrides all of the other 
information.

USAGE INSTRUCTIONS
==================

Infoscreen is written in Python and uses SDL for display, so you need 
Python and Pygame installed. By default it will open a 1024 * 768 
display in windowed mode, so it's recommended to test it on a large 
monitor. Change to the directory where the script is stored and run 
./infoscreen.py

The time displayed is current system time; you should generally use NTP 
to ensure that your system's clock is always set correctly.

The variable information can be changed at runtime and is stored in info.json.

Once you have adjusted the information to your liking, save the file and 
then send a SIGHUP to the program. On most Linux systems you can find 
the process ID by running "ps ax | grep infoscreen", and then run "kill 
-1 <process ID>".

Alternatively, you can have Infoscreen write its process ID to a PID file. This 
is enabled by default as of version 0.7 - you can configure the path to the PID
file in config.py. This mechanism can also be used to prevent multiple copies of
Infoscreen from running at the same time.

The idea behind this is not that you would update the messages manually, 
but that you would have a server process insert appropriate messages and 
then notify the Infoscreen with a SIGHUP.

Additionally, the Infoscreen can display a "dead air" warning. To 
display this message, send a SIGUSR1 (kill -10). To hide the message and 
return to the normal clock screen, send a SIGUSR2 (kill -12). Yes the 
"artwork" is incredibly poor - but on the other hand it is suitably 
scary and should motivate presenters to fix the dead air situation! How 
to replace it with something better is explained later.

This SIGUSR1 / SIGUSR2 mechanism ties in with my "Dead Air Alarm" 
software; you can use it directly with Infoscreen without any further 
interface. However the interface is hopefully simple enough that you 
should be able to connect it to any dead air detection system of your 
choice.

You can exit the program by using your window manager's normal close 
mechanism, or by pressing Escape.

The software can be customised by editing config.py - this file contains
comments which document the various options. Most of the program's
functionality is customizable. You can also change the images, which are
stored by default in the "images" subdirectory.

BUGS AND TODO
=============

Add the ability to show more information. There is space to add some 
indicators at either side of the screen. These could be used to show 
various things such as which studio is on air in a multi-studio complex.

There are possibly some bugs that have been introduced by rebasing URN's
changes onto a later version of the codebase.

LICENCE
=======

Copyright (c) 2009 - 2013 Thomas Preece

You may freely use this software under the conditions of the MIT licence 
- see the LICENCE file for details.

SUPPORT / CONTACT
=================

No formal technical support is available for this software, however I am 
generally happy to answer questions and provide some assistance with 
setting it up; if you need help, please don't hesitate to contact me. I 
always like hearing from users of my software, and would be very 
appreciative to hear from anyone who is using this software and finds it 
useful, especially if you're using it in a live broadcast environment. I 
also welcome patches for bugfixes and new features in the usual git 
format.

VERSION HISTORY
===============

v 0.9 (2013-04-01) - merge some more URN changes

v 0.8 (2013-03-21) - merge some changes made by URN

v 0.7 (2012-09-30) - add PID file code

v 0.6 (2012-09-11) - increased customizability, renamed some files

v 0.5 (2012-09-03) - first published version

v 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 - unpublished versions