Architecture

The application is split up into a server component and a frontend component. Each component can be run on own devices where the frontend component is interacting with the server component by using an API.

Setup

It can be decided to

• run frontend in the local network but server component in the internet
• run frontend in the local network and server component too
• run frontend and server on same device in the local network

In all cases the frontend component is interacting remotely with the server component using the API provided by the server component.

Frontend local network and server in the internet

This way the server component can be run on a central device, which provides all the information about the frontends, the photos in collections, the photo processing and more.

Frontend local network and server local

Same setup mentioned in the section before can also be setup in the local network without having a component in the internet.

Frontend and server on same device in local network

On the other hand it is also possible to run both components on the same system. In this case the server API is also used, but just from the local device.

Server component

The place where all the configuration is set up is the server component. It provides an web interface which can be used to setup photo collections, apply some further processing, configure displays to show them.

For this case the following parts can be configured:

• frames - a frame is a representation for a photo collection
• displays - a display is a physical device showing content from a frame

Frontend component

This component runs on the device showing the photos. Usually a device connected to a display/monitor.

There're also some settings which are frontend specific and which can be managed by a web interface (e.g. device geometry, network setup, etc.).

API

All components mentioned before provides an API to interact with other components or to controll the system by external systems.

For example, the frontend API is used by the frontend itself to show up the status information. The server API is used by the frontend to retrieve configuration or other data to be able to show up items on the frontend display.