signagetools

Self-hosted digital signage — complete, with no paywall. One server (Go + PostgreSQL), one player, one browser UI. Everything included: video walls, reports, multi-user, offline players, campaigns — MIT-licensed, nothing is locked behind a "Pro" tier.

The admin UI is fully bilingual (German/English, auto-detected from the browser language, switchable under Administration). Die deutsche Fassung dieses READMEs ist README.md.

Features

• Layout editor in the browser — free-form zones, images/videos/playlists, plus widgets: clock, weather & air quality, calendar (iCal), RSS/Mastodon, tables/data feeds (CSV/JSON), KPI/progress, countdown, ticker, HLS live streams, web pages and more. Portrait and landscape up to 4K.
• Draft & publish — saving creates a draft, players only show the published state; version history with rollback.
• The shortest path to a screen: media → layout → save → "Play now on …" (one device or all) — no schedule required.
• Scheduling — priorities, scopes (global → location → group → device), time windows across midnight, holiday/exception dates, nth weekday, maintenance windows (black/pause), week/month preview through the real resolver, plain-language conflict warnings. Campaigns bundle multiple rules and switch them on/off together.
• Device fleet — pairing by code, locations & groups, live preview (screenshots), pause/blackout/mute per device, remote reload and container update, fleet diagnostics (version, uptime, memory).
• Video wall & time sync — multiple players as one surface with bezel compensation; shared server time base, clock offset visible in ms, resync at the push of a button.
• Instant messages — reachable from anywhere in the UI, any target, urgency levels, templates and auto-expiry.
• Media management — nested folders, multi-select (move/replace/delete), validity periods per asset, usage tracking ("used in N layouts").
• Reports — proof of play (what ran when and where), CSV export.
• Offline notifications — webhook and/or e-mail when a device stays offline too long, with escalation stages and a "back online" notice; status & test send under Operations → Diagnostics.
• Multi-user — roles (admin/editor/viewer), audit log, full backup & restore.
• Bilingual — German/English, automatic, switchable.
• Built-in first steps — demo content in one click, a web player to try things right in the browser.

Design	Schedule

Layout gallery	Operations

Quick start (Docker Compose)

git clone https://forgejo.thiel.tools/thiel/signagetools.git
cd signagetools
ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me docker compose up -d --build

Then open http://<server>:8080. The bundled docker-compose.yml starts PostgreSQL and the server; media and database live in volumes. Instead of building locally you can use the published image (forgejo.thiel.tools/thiel/signagetools:latest).

First steps in the UI:

1. Design → "✨ Create demo content" — three ready-made layouts to explore.
2. Operations → Devices → "↗ Open web player in this browser" — a test screen with zero installation; match the pairing code and approve it.
3. In the editor "⬆ Publish" → "Play now on …" — done.

Real screens (Raspberry Pi, mini PC, Docker, tablets) are driven by the signagetools-player — from the zero-install web player to an offline-resilient kiosk appliance.

Configuration (environment variables)

Variable	Meaning	Default
PORT	HTTP port	8080
DATABASE_URL	PostgreSQL connection	postgres://signage:signage@localhost:5432/signage
MEDIA_DIR	media storage path	./data/media
ADMIN_PASSWORD	emergency admin password; empty = open mode (development only)	–
REQUIRE_LOGIN	1 = always enforce login	–
CORS_ORIGIN	only needed when the builder is hosted separately	*
ALERT_WEBHOOK_URL	webhook for offline/back-online reports	–
ALERT_EMAIL	e-mail recipients (comma-separated)	–
ALERT_OFFLINE_AFTER	seconds until the first report	300
ALERT_ESCALATION	escalation stages in minutes, e.g. 5,30,120	–
ALERT_ESCALATION_EMAILS	extra recipients per stage (; separates stages)	–
SMTP_HOST SMTP_PORT SMTP_USER SMTP_PASS SMTP_FROM SMTP_TLS	mail delivery for alerts	port 587, starttls

For TLS put a reverse proxy in front (Caddy/Traefik/nginx). Details: docs/DEPLOYMENT.md; offline alerts: docs/monitoring.md. (The design docs are in German.)

Architecture

• One deployable: a Go server embedding the admin UI (/) and the web player (/play) — same origin, no CORS. PostgreSQL for data, media on the file system, optional ffmpeg transcoding.
• Pull model: players fetch a time-resolved manifest plus hash-checked media and keep running offline.
• Frontend: a single HTML file with React (frontend/builder.html). The repo keeps it as JSX (dev mode: the browser compiles it); the image build precompiles it and embeds React — fast startup, no internet required.
• Design documents live in docs/ (architecture, scheduling rules, data model, deployment, monitoring).

Development

docker compose up -d db          # PostgreSQL only
go run ./cmd/server              # server on :8080, frontend in dev mode
go test ./...

Edit frontend/builder.html directly — reloading the page is enough.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. All features, all players, no restrictions.