Digital Frame

Digital Signage & Out-of-Home Media

The Challenges

A system was already running in production and had to be moved without interrupting the screens it fed.
Four components - Frame Manager, Frame Viewer, Frame Updater and Frame Tools - worked in isolation. Data did not pass between them, so the same information had to be handled more than once.
The people producing display content are operators, not designers. Anything that required design skill would not get used.
Once content left the platform, nobody could tell what a device was doing. Checking a screen meant going to look at it.
There was no record of who changed what, which made it impossible to answer a client asking what played and when.
Kiosk terminals held their own data and fell out of step with the web platform.
Exhibition work happens on the floor, under time pressure, with the client standing there. It cannot depend on someone at a desk.
The platform had to reach both web and mobile users without building the product twice.
Some functions - device control, performance-sensitive work - could not be done cross-platform.
Generative AI produces variable output. Content going in front of a paying client cannot be a surprise.

Migrated the original system to Flutter, covering web and mobile from a single build, and dropped to Java, Kotlin and native Android for the parts that needed platform-level access or performance.
Connected the four Frame components into one data flow, so information entered once moves through the system instead of being re-entered.
Built Frame Manager as the web control point: operators assemble media from supplied templates, so publishing does not wait on a designer.
Folded device monitoring into Frame Manager through DMS, giving status and device information from one screen, and logged every action through HMS.
Built Frame Viewer and Frame Updater as the mobile side, pulling and pushing data from Frame Manager, running the service logic and driving the content onto the monitors.
Built Frame Tools for the people on site - quick device registration, install and publish, and a controller for driving content live during an exhibition from a tablet.
Ran real-time communication over WebSockets, UDP and MQTT so device status arrives and remote commands land without lag.
Automated synchronisation between the physical kiosk terminals and the web platform, removing the manual step.
Used ControlNet and LoRA alongside Nano Banana so AI-generated content is directed rather than sampled.
Connected Google Drive for continuous file synchronisation into the content pipeline.

Operators publish their own content from templates. Campaigns go live without a designer or an agency in the chain, so the cost and the waiting time of a content change both drop.
The state of every device is visible from one screen, so problems are found from the office rather than discovered by a client or on a site visit.
Devices are controlled remotely, which means a screen showing the wrong thing is fixed in minutes instead of staying wrong until a technician is dispatched.
Every action is logged, so the business can prove what ran, where and when - the question that comes up whenever a client queries an invoice.
Content can be changed on the exhibition floor from a tablet, so a client changing their mind mid-event is handled on the spot instead of becoming a complaint.
Kiosks and the web platform hold the same data without anyone re-entering it, which removes a class of errors that used to surface in front of customers.
AI-generated content is predictable enough to put in front of a paying client, which makes it usable commercially rather than experimental.

Cross-platform: Flutter (Dart) for web and mobile; Native Android
Native / backend: Java, Kotlin - platform-specific features and mobile performance
Database: PostgreSQL
Cloud: Google Cloud Platform
IoT & real-time: WebSockets, UDP, MQTT; real-time device status upload and remote device control
System sync: automated synchronisation between kiosk terminals and the web platform
AI: Nano Banana, ControlNet, LoRA for controlled content generation
Third-party: Google Drive integration and continuous file sync

FlutterJavaKotlinPostgreSQLGoogle CloudWebSocketsMQTTControlNetLoRA