Update an offline signage screen with a phone hotspot

What you need

• The display, mounted and running the player. A lobby and reception display is built for exactly this kind of room: flush in a cut-out, portrait or landscape, playing offline with no subscription. The offline playlist autostart setup covers getting the show up on its own; this article adds the sync and the weekly visit.
• A phone with a working hotspot and spare monthly data. The example below budgets 35 MB per weekly sync, about 150 MB a month.
• Your own web server over HTTPS. The player pulls a playlist from your own web server on a timer; it does not host anything itself. Any static HTTPS host that can serve your images and video will do, and for where this sits between pure offline playback and a full cloud subscription, the offline versus cloud guide lays out the trade.
• Media the player reads. JPG, PNG or WebP images and MP4, M4V or WebM video, with H.264 MP4 the dependable choice, since H.265 and VP9 depend on the unit. PowerPoint, PDF, HEIC and GIF do not play.
• Power at the sign. The phone brings the internet, not the electricity. Power reaches the unit through the DC terminal adapter in the box; the AC adapter is sold separately.

Set it up once

1. Put the show on your HTTPS host. Upload the media files, write the playlist that lists them, and note the playlist's HTTPS address. If several people will feed the sign, settle who edits what and when before the first sync; the remote signage content workflow planner walks through that split.
2. Enter the sync address and set the check timer on the unit. The sync settings take the playlist's HTTPS address and an interval. For a weekly visit, set the interval to one hour: any visit that outlasts one interval always catches at least one check.
3. Introduce the unit to the phone. Start the hotspot, join the unit to it once in the network settings, and let the first sync run. The unit keeps the hotspot among its saved networks and joins whenever that name appears. Watch one pass of the playlist to confirm the show plays; that is the check for the whole setup.
4. Set the daily on and off times. Outside them the screen shows black at minimum brightness, because the app cannot switch the backlight off. Set the on time near opening and the off time near closing, and no one touches a switch at the wall all week.

The player has no dayparting: the playlist it last synced is the show, and it plays whenever the screen is on. Plan each week as one show and let the weekly visit swap it wholesale.

The weekly visit

1. During the week, edit the content on your host. Upload the new slides or video and update the playlist to include them.
2. On site, start the phone hotspot.
3. Wait out one full check interval. With the one-hour timer that is up to 60 minutes plus the download, so budget 65 minutes and spend the wait on other work in the room.
4. Check the new content is showing. Look for a slide you added this week. What plays on the wall is what synced; there is nothing else to verify.
5. Switch the hotspot off and restart the unit. It comes back to the show at power-on, full screen, and the room is left with a box that started cleanly that morning. If the supply dies mid-week, recovery is designed to run through the same startup path: power returns and the show comes back full screen; the signage power loss recovery guide covers what to expect.

Example: data and time for a weekly update

A clubhouse sign shows notices and one short video each week, with content sized for a 1920 x 1080 screen.

• Six new JPG slides at about 2 MB each, a typical weight for a full-frame 1920 x 1080 photo: 6 x 2 MB = 12 MB.
• One 30-second H.264 MP4 encoded near 6 Mbit/s, a common rate for full-frame signage video: 6 Mbit/s x 30 s = 180 Mbit, and 180 / 8 = 22.5 MB.
• The playlist file itself: under 0.1 MB.

The Monday sync therefore moves 12 + 22.5 + 0.1 = 34.6 MB, call it 35 MB. Over a tethered phone connection at a realistic 10 Mbit/s, that is 34.6 x 8 / 10 = 27.7, so about 28 seconds of transfer. With the check timer at one hour, a 65-minute hotspot window covers the wait and the transfer with room to spare. Across a month of Mondays, 35 MB x 4.3 weeks = about 150 MB, which sits inside 1 GB of spare plan data with most of the allowance untouched. And if a week gets missed entirely, the screen keeps playing the copy it holds until the next sync, which is how the player is designed to behave with the network away.

If the update does not show

Work down this order; each step rules out one cause.

1. Confirm the hotspot is actually passing data. The phone's own settings show how much data the hotspot has moved today. If that reads near zero, the unit never joined: check that the hotspot name and password are unchanged since setup, because the unit joins the saved name, and a renamed hotspot leaves it playing last week's show offline.
2. Confirm a full interval has elapsed. The sync runs on the timer, so a 10-minute visit with a one-hour timer can end before the check falls due. Wait out the 65-minute window from the example before calling the visit a failure.
3. Confirm the address is unchanged. The HTTPS address entered on the unit must still point at the playlist on your host. If the host moved or the file was renamed, the player is designed to keep playing its last good copy.
4. Check the new files are formats the player reads. GIF, PowerPoint, PDF and HEIC do not play, so a playlist full of them looks like a dead sync even when the download worked. If images pull but refuse to show on screen, the two usual reasons are covered in the HTTPS mixed content fix and the signage image file troubleshooting pages.

If all four pass and the wall still shows last week's content, the cheapest test is the next visit: leave the hotspot on for two full intervals, and put a laptop on the same hotspot to open the playlist address in a browser and confirm the server is serving what you think it is.

Recommendation: Set the check interval to one hour, keep each week's new files under about 50 MB so the transfer finishes inside a minute on a typical tethered connection, and open the hotspot for one full interval plus five minutes at each weekly visit. If the room has no fixed internet and the content changes once a week, this is the whole routine: your server holds the show, the phone lends it an hour of network, and the screen carries the rest of the week alone.

Questions