Data Server: How do I configure clock based triggers

Triggering ads every minute (instead of every 30 seconds) is significantly more simple as you can remove all conditions and triggers that involve checking the Seconds values.

Additionally, repetition of ads each period/quarter or for various time slots could allow you to simplify the logic as well. This document, however, will not address those details.

There are 4 major areas of work to accomplish setting up new trigger logic based on an All Sport Clock:

1. Custom DID Creation (modify an existing one)
2. Trigger Condition Creation
3. Trigger Logic Creation
4. Actions Creation and Assignment

Lastly, trigger setup is tedious. You must click Save or your work will be lost. I recommend saving after creating conditions (close the conditions window then click Save in Triggering Window. Then go back and set up Triggers. Save again after Triggers have been set up and multiple times while setting actions.

1. CUSTOM DID CREATION


Modify the AS5_SportName.DID file to add new data fields (as seen above):

• Main_Clock_Minutes
• *Main_Clock_Seconds_Tens Digit
• *Main_Clock_TenSecondTimer

Here are the fields if you want to copy and paste:
<Result name="Main_Clock_Minutes" description="mm" type="int" sampleData="88" offset="5" length="2" show="true" rtdColorField="" rtdFontField="" rtdEffectField="" rtdJustification="Right" />
<Result name="Main_Clock_Seconds_TensDigit" description="s" type="int" sampleData="8" offset="8" length="1" show="true" rtdColorField="" rtdFontField="" rtdEffectField="" rtdJustification="Right" />
<Result name="Main_Clock_TenSecondTimer" description=" mm:s" type="string" sampleData="88:8" offset="5" length="4" show="true" rtdColorField="" rtdFontField="" rtdEffectField="" rtdJustification="Right" />

Depending on your other triggers, additional fields may be added or have their type modified to be more specific (i.e. change from string to int) to make triggering logic simpler. For ad triggers every 30 seconds based on the All Sport clock the above changes are all that is needed.

This custom DID may be replaced by the default file during Venus Control Suite or Data Studio software updates and may need to be recreated if a copy of the custom DID was not saved.
This custom DID should replace the one that exists in C:\ProgramData\Daktronics\Data Server\DIDs
This custom DID should not be used by Content Studio, the Player, or anything else besides Data Server.

2. TRIGGER CONDITION CREATION

1. To avoid evaluating triggers every second (10th of a second while under 1 minute), create a ‘Change’ condition for the Main_Clock_TenSecondTimer field. If ads change once per minute use the Main_Clock_Minutes field instead.
2. Create an ‘=’ condition with the new Main_Clock_Minutes field for every minute value that the All Sport Clock may display (0 through 20 for college men’s basketball games).

3. If ads change every 30 seconds, create an ‘=’ condition with Main_Clock_Seconds_TensDigit for:
   1. 5 (for xx:59.9 – xx:30.0) triggers when clock hits xx:5x.x (usually xx:59.9)
   2. 2 (for xx:29.9 – xx:00.0) triggers when clock hits xx:2x.x (usually xx:29.9)
   3. 0 (special case for when the clock resets to 15:00.0 or whatever the period duration is)

4. To play different ads every period of a basketball game, create an ‘=’ condition against the existing Period field for 1 through 4. (this step may differ slightly from sport to sport)

3. TRIGGER LOGIC CREATION

1. Add a root level trigger using Clock TenSecondTimer Changed.

This ensures we only evaluate triggers once every ten seconds including resetting the clock from 0:00 to 20:00 between periods instead of once per second and ten times per second when under a minute.

2. Add a sub-trigger to it for Period = “1” (or Quarter = “1”).

Wait to add the other periods or quarters as we will just clone the Period = “1” condition three times in step 8.

3. Add sub-triggers to Period = “1” for Seconds_TensDigit = 0 and Seconds_TensDigit = 5.

Wait to add the trigger for Seconds_TensDigit = 2 as we will simply clone the Seconds_TensDigit = 5 trigger in the step 6.

It may be more intuitive to check for Minutes first (steps 4 and 5) but logically you will write fewer total triggers if you check the seconds first (assuming there are more minutes checks than seconds checks in your scenario).

4. Add a sub-trigger to Clock Seconds_Tens = 0 for Clock Minutes = 20

This handles when the clock is reset to 20:00 after each period in NCAA men’s basketball. You’d use Clock Minutes = 10 for NCAA women’s basketball and Clock Minutes = 15 for football.

5. Add sub-triggers Clock Seconds_Tens = 5 for the remaining minutes (Clock Minutes = 14 … 0)

These will trigger actions each time the clock passes below a full minute mark. ( 14:59, 13:59… 0:59)

6. Right-Click the Clock Seconds_Tens = 5 trigger and select Clone Trigger.
   1. This creates a new sibling sub-trigger.
   2. Modify the condition of the newly generated trigger to Clock Seconds_Tens = 2.

These will trigger actions each time the clock passes below a 30 second mark. (14:29, 13:29… 0:29)

7. Change every setting of the SubTriggers column from All to First

We know only one of these triggers will ever be true at a given time, so this allows us to be more performant and stop evaluating other triggers once we’ve found one to be true.

8. Right Click the Period = “1” trigger and select Clone Trigger three times.
   1. This creates three sibling sub-triggers.
   2. Modify the conditions the newly generated triggers to Period = “2”, Period = “3” and Period = “4”

Now create and assign actions to various Clock Minutes = # triggers as explained in the manual.

Important things to remember:

• After creating an action once you may re-use it in other Triggers by selecting Add Existing Action.
• When creating similar actions select Add Cloned Action to create a new Action pre-filled with data from the cloned action. Then alter the information differs (i.e. Filename or Sign #) allowing you to avoid re-filling out the other fields such as Library, Drive, Display Mode or # of Times.
• You may assign multiple actions to the same trigger (as seen in the Clock Minutes = 20 trigger.
• Clone Trigger includes any assigned actions as well, so if actions are to be different it may save you time if you clone the trigger prior to assigning actions to avoid removing unwanted actions in the cloned trigger.