Plug & play content from USB drive

Description

As the name implies, this content deployment method can be used as a quick way of providing content to the HMP by connecting a USB drive into its USB port. If configured to do so, the HMP would play the project directly from the USB drive, for as long as it is connected to the HMP; once removed, the HMP would switch back to playing the content from its internal storage.

• When connecting a USB drive, its content is not automatically copied onto the HMP internal storage to prevent accidental loss of existing content - that can be done from the Control Center, but this particular case is considered outside of the plug & play paradigm.
• A USB drive can also be used as permanent storage extension, but for that, it must be formatted as ext3 / ext4 to be writable by the HMP (most PCs won't be able to read that USB drive!) and should remain connected all the time, thus this particular case is considered outside of the plug & play paradigm as well.
• For security considerations, this should be seen more as a temporarily solution - it's better to deploy the content via the network, either by pushing the content onto the player or have the player pulling the content from a content server.

How to

To use a USB drive for plug & play content, follow these steps:

1. Connect the USB drive to your PC.
2. Check if it is using the FAT32 file system - otherwise, format it as such.
3. Publish a project from Elementi onto the USB drive.
   • If another method is used, make sure that the project is copied into the root folder of the USB flash drive, where the HMP checks for an index.svg file; if that is missing, nothing is played.
4. Disconnect the USB drive from your PC, using the "Eject" option to avoid storage corruption.
5. Connect the USB drive to your HMP.
   • For HMP400 and HMP400W with DSOS SYSTEMS license - open Control Center → Peripherals → USB page and enable "Use external USB drive to store content" option.
   • For HMP350 and HMP300 - open the player web interface and schedule the USB content for playing.
   • For HMP200, HMP130, and HMP100 - open HMP Control Center and enable "Set Local Storage to USB storage device when available" option (disabled by default) from Content Settings, so that the player can accept USB drives as content source.

Advantages

• Once the player is configured, no network access required - only physical access to the USB port of the HMP to connect the USB storage device.
• Larger storage space for the content.
• The FAT file system is readable by any PC, thus you can simply connect the USB device to your PC, publish a project from Elementi, then connect it into an HMP.

Limitations

• FAT32 supports a single file size of maximum 4 GB and a volume (partition) size of maximum 2 TB. To use files that are larger than 4 GB (like big video files), use the USB drive as permanent storage extension.
• Fusion is not compatible with this content management method because it needs writing access - the solution for this case is to use the USB drive as permanent storage extension.