NEUSHAPE CASE STUDY
Developing a fully connected music player device
About
Jukebox.HR offers clients personalized business radio, with customized music content, and the ability to include advertising content and public announcements. Clients are mostly shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, retail facilities etc.
Client
Work
- Research
- UI – UX Design & Prototype
- Software & Hardware Development
- Support & Maintanence
Research
In order to create a high quality and fully complete solution, we needed to research available technologies and competition in the market. During this initial phase, we worked closely with music editors and producers so that we can better understand the requirements of the system we are building and choose the right technology to cover all the requirements of the system while thinking about possible future upgrades. Also, since the main component of the system is a device for playing audio content, it was necessary to find a quality hardware solution that meets all the needs of the project.
Prototype
This phase of the project included two separate processes in order to complete the approach system development itself. In the first part, prototyping and UX design of the administrator interface were done to gather all the necessary information about the interface and agree with the client on all the possibilities and appearance of the interface. The second part involved the development of a prototype application for audio content playback to present all the possibilities of the selected technology before the development of the final application to our client.
Development
After the research and prototype we started with the main phase of our project. During the project development we used these technologies:
- OS – Linux Kernel, Buildroot
- Player – C++, Qt, libVLC, ALSA, WebSockets
- Socket Server – JavaScript, Node.js, WebSockets, Redis
- Backend – PHP, Laravel, MySQL, Redis
- Admin Frontend – JavaScript, Vue.js
Maintenance & Further Development
We are continuously working on maintaining and improving the system. As this is a very complex system consisting of several large components, there is always room to improve existing and implement new functionalities. In cooperation with the client, we monitor trends and competition in the market to ensure that the system is compatible with all the requirements of target customers.
Hardware
Jukebox Player is a complex and extensive system that provides a simple and reliable solution for planning, playing and controlling music content, commercials and notifications. The system enables complete control and monitoring of the player in real-time, and it is possible to monitor the sequence of actions and playback for each device. The main component of the system is the actual device (player) for which we developed a custom Linux OS to maximize resource utilization and have complete control over the functionalities. Within the OS, there is a playback and management application that provides all of the functionalities. The device is connected to our back-end system (wired or wireless) and syncs all the changes. In case of connection going down, the device still plays content since it’s downloaded.
Results
The device we developed has been deployed to more than 2000 facilities (shopping malls, stores, gas pumps etc.) and is playing music for thousands of customers daily. Some of the big names using it: