Player monitoring in Cockpit
From SpinetiX Support Wiki
Introduction
Player Monitoring is a Cockpit service offering the possibility to remotely monitor various player parameters for any number of SpinetiX players, using either a Basic or a Premium monitoring service for each player.
- Basic monitoring offers free access to standard monitoring tools and limited update rate.
- Premium monitoring offers unlimited access to advanced monitoring and notification tools with high monitoring precision.
Simply add your player to Cockpit and benefit of the following monitoring tools:
- Map summary - shows your players on a map along with their status and summary information.
- Players status summary - lists all the registered players and their status.
- Premium tools:
- Player Dashboard - gives access to the detailed status of a player: health trackers (temperature, storage, CPU usage, up-time, ...), timeline (list of status and events) and player snapshot.
- Alerts - define the alerts you want to receive by email or by SMS regarding your players.
- Remote maintenance - allows remote operations such as: player shutdown, player restart, update the player firmware to the latest version.
Trial:Players page
Click on the top menu "PLAYERS" link to get a quick overview of your registered players by their status.
The following shortcuts are present on the left-side menu:
- "Add player" offers some instructions about how to add a player to Cockpit, if your player is running firmware 3.1 - for all the others, see how to quickly add and remove players from Cockpit.
- "Players access" lists the foreign players you have access to as a viewer.
- "Status" lists your players by their status.
- "Monitoring Licenses" lists the monitoring licenses assigned to your players.
When clicking on a player row within a listing view, the following player details are added onto the left-side pane: device name, serial number, player model, firmware version, owner name, plus the following shortcuts: "Dashboard", "Monitoring Licenses", "Maintenance", "Events" and "User Access".
Players list by status
This page lists all the registered players by their status. All players are shown by default and several status filters are present as shortcuts on the left-side menu. The list can be searched using the text entry on the top-right of the page.
For each player, the following information is shown.
- Status of the player indicated by the color of the row: Ok, Warning, Failure, Offline, and Not monitored .
- Type of license (trial, freemium or empty for premium)
- Events traffic lights, indicating events that have occurred since the last time the dashboard was opened.
- Player name
- Player serial number
- HMP model
- Firmware version
- Time of the last status update.
- Snapshot of the player content.
Note:Players list by monitoring license
This page is not available to Viewers.
This page lists all the monitoring licenses assigned to your players. All players are showed by default and several status filters (Trial, Valid, About to Expire, Basic) are present as shortcuts on the left-side menu. The list can be searched using the text entry on the top-right of the page.
For each player the following information is shown:
- Name
- Serial number
- Model
- License type
- Can be one of the following: Trial, Basic, Premium.
- Expiration date
- The date when the trial or premium monitoring license is set to expire.
- Progress bar
- A visual representation of the player monitoring license; a red bar means that the license expired and got switched to basic monitoring license.
Note:Player Dashboard
This is only accessible for players using Premium monitoring licenses.
The player dashboard is composed of three main elements:
- Health trackers
- The health tracker indicated the current state of the player. It can be used to get a quick indication of the current player status.
- Timeline
- The timeline represent the history of the player. Status changes and events are show in chronological order.
- Content snapshot
- Advanced player information, useful for developers.
Note:Setup
The setup page let the user configure the player information and delete the player from cockpit.
In addition to the player name the user may configure
- Notes
- Free form notes to indicate extra information for this player
- Contact
- Free form contact information for this player in case of need.
- Address
- Localization of the player. If the address is filled up, Cockpit will try to automatically find the GPS coordinate and position the player on the map.
- GPS coordinates
- Cockpit will use automatic GPS localization of the player based on its IP address. You can correct this position either using the address, or directly by moving the player on the map.
Monitoring Licenses
This page contains the following sections (boxes) :
- Status
- A green box indicates that the player has a valid premium monitoring license assigned to it. A red box indicates the opposite.
- Renewal
- Configure whether a premium monitoring license should be manually assigned (default value) or automatically assigned if one is available in the licenses pool.
- Available Licenses
- Shows how many licenses are available in the licenses pool and buttons to start a trial (if available), assign a license to a player and request an offer to buy premium monitoring licenses.
- Monitoring License history
- Shows the license history for this player.
Maintenance
This is only accessible for players using Premium monitoring licenses.
This page allows performing the following remote actions:
- Shut down the player
- Restart the player
- Update the firmware, if it's not the latest.
Events
This page allows configuring the events to be monitored and the interval during which the player should be monitored by Cockpit.
The following category of events can be configured:
- Connectivity
- If unchecked, the player will not be detected as off-line and no notifications of off-line, on-line status will be sent.
- Screen
- If unchecked, the screen status will not be monitored by Cockpit,
- Storage
- If unchecked no storage warning will be present in the timeline, storage health box will still be displayed and populated
- Temperature
- If unchecked, no temperature warning will be present in the timeline, temperature health box will still be displayed and populated.
- Note that this will not present player reboots events if the temperature exceed the maximum thresholds.
The option "Monitor this player" is enabled by default; you can disable it to prevent Cockpit of monitoring the player, while still keeping the player in your Cockpit account to have access to your channels. Note however that after re-enabling this option, you need to access Control Center of the player, click the "Stop Monitoring" button under System > Cockpit, then click "Monitor with Cockpit" button.
User Access
This page allows configuring which of your viewers have access to this player.
For that, follow these steps:
- Under the "Access Grant" table, select the Viewer allowed to access this player.
- Note that your user is present in the table and cannot be removed.
- Click "Update" to save your changes.
Note:Basic monitoring service
The basic player monitoring is a free service that offers access to standard player information from anywhere, at anytime. It can be used for an unlimited number of players, being HMP or DiVA, new or already deployed, allowing you to monitor player's information, such as:
- Overview of players by status: OK, Warning, Failure.
- Geo-localization of players on an interactive map summary.
- Player name, serial number, model, firmware version, and snapshot of the content.
- Users having access to your players.
Note:Map summary
All players belonging to the user are shown on the map. When multiple players are on the same location, a blue circle with the amount of player is shown. Clicking on the circle will zoom the map on the all the player in this area.
The color of the player pin indicates the status of the player.
- Green: OK
- Orange: Warning, may be one of the following: no connected screens, screen turned off,...
- Red: Failure, may be one of the following: Corrupted firmware, player in Safe mode,...
- Grey: Off-line
When clicking on a player a summary pop-up is shown with:
- Player name
- Player serial number
- HMP model
- Firmware version
- Time of the last status update.
- Snapshot of the player content.
Another click on the pop-up will open the player dashboard.
Premium monitoring service
The premium player monitoring is a paid service that offers access to advanced monitoring and notification tools. It has the following additional features compared to basic player monitoring:
- Access to the player dashboard offering health trackers, timeline of player's events, large content snapshot (which can be updated on-demand). These are further detailed below.
- Player update rate of ~ 15 minutes allowing to quickly detect eventual issues.
- Automatic SMS and / or email notification alerts to react promptly in case of issues.
- Player risks scenarios through automatic detection of major failure and potential risks scenarios.
- Remote maintenance tools such as: player shutdown, player restart, update the player firmware to the latest version.
These extra features allow you to reduce your support costs and to increase your support quality. A premium player monitoring license is required for this service.
Note:Monitoring off-line status
Player on-line and off-line status is the base of the monitoring offered by Cockpit.
If the player fails to communicated with Cockpit at regular intervals, it is considered as being offline. The last status of the player (OK, warning, or failure) is kept, but the color is switched to gray to indicated that no further information is being received by the player.
An offline player status can indicate one of the following:
- The player is no longer running
- The network is down or a firewall / proxy server is blocking the player access to Cockpit;
- The "Stop Monitoring" button in Control Center has been used
- The player has rebooted in Recovery mode
Note:Monitoring screens
Cockpit monitors the status of the screen connected to the player. The monitoring of the screen itself is done by the HMP using Display Data Channel (DDC).
Screen status may be one of the following:
- ok: the screen is connected and powered
- off: the screen is connected but powered off.
- This events is a warning and will put the player is warning status.
- No screen attached: the screen is not connected.
- This events is a warning and will put the player is warning status.
Notes:- not all the screens are reporting their on/off status. In this case Cockpit may just indicated that the screen is ok, when the screen is connected to the player.
- Some VGA monitor and cable do not support Display Data Channel (DDC). In such case the screen may be reported as not attached by Cockpit.
- Screen monitoring can be turned off using the Events page of the player.
Monitoring storage
Cockpit monitors the internal storage space available in the player.
Storage status may be one of the following:
- Storage ok
- Storage almost full (85%)
- This events is a warning
- Storage full (95%)
- This events is a warning
Note:Monitoring content
Cockpit monitors the content player by the HMP, and issue that may be raised by it.
The Load average health tracker may indicated content that are not rendered correctly by the player. Load above 80% should be considered as potentially problematic. Additionally, reboot of the player because of content freeze are a good indication of over-demanding content.
In case of content failure, the player may end up in Safe mode. This will put the player in Failure state.
Typical events indicating issue with the content.
- Player restarted: Content freeze
- This events is a warning
- Player restarted: Content failure
- This events is a warning
- Player in safe mode
- This events is a failure and will put the player in failure state.
- Player restarted: Timeout
- This events is a failure as the player was left one hour in safe mode without user actions.
Monitoring up-time / power
Cockpit monitors up-time of the player and various reason for reboots.
The up-time health tracker indicates how long the player has been working without reboots. User triggered reboots (using Control Center, the Blue button or RPC) are shown in the timeline.
Restarts due to power failure are considered as warning events, and may indicated issues with the power source or the environment of the player.
Monitoring temperature
Cockpit monitors the internal temperature of the player. The current temperature with a 5 hours history is displayed as part of the health trackers.
The following events are monitored by Cockpit
- Temperature ok
- Temperature high
- This events is a warning. It is raised when the internal temperature is above 60°C (140°F).
- Player restarted: Critical temperature exceeded
- This events is a failure
Note:Monitoring firmware
Cockpit monitors the firmware version of the HMP. The following events are monitored by Cockpit
- Firmware version upgraded
- Firmware version downgraded
- Player restarted: Firmware updated
Note:Alerts
For premium monitored players, you can receive within 15 minutes an email and / or SMS alert informing you about a player status change and / or some particular events occur.
