Location programs: an overview

A location program drives a display from where it is rather than from a clock. As a vehicle moves, the content changes with it. A welcome loop in the harbor, a live map on the open water, a commentary clip as you pass the lighthouse.

Location programs are built for on-board signage and audio commentary on tour boats, buses, trains and shuttles. 

A location program is one of four content types you can assign to a display — alongside a playlist, a schedule, or a media item

Before you start

You'll need:

• A Signage - Standard license on every display that will run the program. Signage - Basic does not include location programs. See License types and what each includes.
• A way for each display to know where it is. See Where the position comes from below.

The three layers

A location program has three parts, and each one is a tab in the program editor.

Zones: the ambient layer

Zones are areas you draw on a map. While the display is inside a zone, that zone's content plays and loops. This is the background layer, and it's what's showing whenever nothing more specific is happening.

Outside every zone, the screen is blank. That's deliberate, not an error.

See Location programs: zones and live maps.

Triggers: the interrupt layer

Triggers are points on the map with a radius. Crossing into one interrupts whatever is playing with a specific piece of content, like a commentary clip or a photo of the landmark you're passing. The display then hands back to the ambient layer.

Triggers fire on their own, from position alone. Nobody presses anything.

See Location programs: triggers.

Manual cues: the driver's buttons

Manual cues are content a person triggers by hand. The driver or guide gets a list of labelled buttons, such as Safety briefing, Lunch stop and Welcome aboard. Pressing one replaces what's playing.

Cues have nothing to do with position. They're for the parts of a tour that don't happen at a fixed place.

See Location programs: manual cues and controller mode.

How the layers interact

The ambient layer runs underneath the whole time. Triggers and cues interrupt it, then it resumes.

When an interrupt finishes, the ambient layer is worked out fresh, not restored. The vehicle has moved while the clip played, possibly into a different zone, so the display resolves its position again.

A program-wide setting, When a trigger interrupts, decides what happens when a trigger fires mid-content.

• Skip the trigger: ignore it if something is already playing. This is the default.
• Replace what is playing: cut to the trigger immediately.
• Queue after the current item: let the current item finish, then play the trigger.

Manual cues always replace what's playing, regardless of the "When a trigger interrupts" setting. If a guide presses a button and nothing happens, it looks like a fault — so cues always take the screen.

Where the position comes from

A location program needs a position, and there are two ways to get one.

• On device: the device's own GPS. This works on a phone or tablet with GPS hardware.
• Poll a server: the display fetches its position from a URL on the vehicle's own network. This is how a Fire TV Stick or a Windows PC gets a position, since neither has GPS.

One device with GPS can serve its position to every other screen on board. A single tablet can drive a whole vehicle's worth of HDMI panels.

See Set a display's location source.

Build a location program

In your Signage project, go to the location programs section and create a program. Then:

1. Draw your zones and give each one a playlist, a media item or a live map.

2. Set the zone order. Where zones overlap, the one highest in the list wins.

3. Add triggers for specific points of interest.

4. Add manual cues for anything the guide triggers by hand.

5. Set the When a trigger interrupts behavior for the program.

6. Assign the program to your displays, and set each display's location source.

A location program editor, with zones drawn on the map.

Behavior notes

• While a display waits for its first position fix, the screen shows a satellite icon and "Waiting for a location fix."
• The basemap is downloaded to the device when the program loads, so a live map keeps working at sea or in a tunnel. You'll see "Downloading offline map" in the loading sequence.
• Content is cached the same way any other content is. Once a vehicle has loaded its program, it needs no connectivity for the rest of the day.
• The When a trigger interrupts setting applies to the whole program, not to individual triggers.

Next steps

• Location programs: zones and live maps
• Location programs: triggers
• Location programs: manual cues and controller mode
• Set a display's location source