Re: Displays round the house - architecture...

["PatrickLidstone" <patrickl@xxxxxxx>]

Some random thoughts:
An alternative approach is to let each *display* take the decision 
about what to display locally - transmit message text(s) and triggers 
to all devices. (Note that it is the trigger event, not the trigger 
criteria that is transmitted to a display). I can see a number of 
advantages in this approach:

-  There is no cental controller to fail; it is a distributed 
architecture
-  Triggers can be generated from *any* network connected device, 
possibly including other display units (perhaps with keypads?)
-  Complex conditional logic can be applied (not necessarily excluded
with your original design, depends on what the output server does)
-  Local control and centralised control can be achieved 
simultaneously using the same infrastructure with a minimum of 
additional work.

Configuration information for each display is read from server(s) at 
boot time. This server could also cache recent events so that a 
display shows current information immediately on re-boot.

I think this architecture extends beyond just displays to provide 
(one possible) foundation for an HA network protocol. I could ramble 
on, but I'd wager that a detailed discussion is probably outside the 
interests of the majority of the list. 

Patrick

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