ConnectPort Display SlideShow

Question

Could someone tell me what the limitations are running a slideshow from a USB flash drive. I am currently using a 512Mb Fat32 drive with approx 1000 slides but not all of them appear in the sequence. Probably only the first 200, maybe 256, are displayed although I have not had a change to check this exactly.

The following info would be useful:
Supported drive Format Fat32 / NTFS?
Max drive size?
Max number of slides?
Do all the slide need to be in the root or can separate slide shows be place in folders?
Picture format bmp jpeg?
Max picture resolution?

Answer 1

Supported drive Format Fat32 / NTFS?

FAT32

Max drive size?

Not that we're aware. We've used an 8 GB USB flash drive.

Max number of slides?

No limit other than total space fitting on the USB flash drive.

Do all the slide need to be in the root or can separate slide shows be place in folders?

They can be categorized by folders.

Picture format bmp jpeg?

The following formats are supported: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, and .png

Max picture resolution?

1600x1200

FYI, if you don't already have it, here's a link to the product manual:
http://ftp1.digi.com/support/documentation/90000898_a.pdf

About the issue you reported, I've asked our Engineering group if we're aware of any limitations regarding the file names. That was my first thought as to what might be causing this issue. Please keep me updated with any further details, i.e. troubleshooting on your end, and I'll let you know what our Engineering group has to say.

Answer 2

I got some feedback from our Engineering group.

1. In case this issue is related to running out of memory (i.e. due to large images), check available memory while running into this issue. You can check this by opening a web browser then typing the IP address of the ShowBox. That should log you into the web interface. Click the "System Information" link on the left. Monitor the "Free Memory" value.

2. Could you clarify whether this is the number of slides being displayed while running the slideshow, or the number shown in the thumbnails view (or both)?

3. File names cannot have these characters: " * / : < > ? \ |

We believe max characters in a file name (actually path) is 256. Check that your file names follow these two rules.

4. There are known issues with the generation of short names, which could cause the issue you're seeing. Basically, if you have a lot of files that start with the same characters you may run into conflicts with the generated short names. Another symptom of this might be that you see the wrong images for some files in the thumbnail view. The workaround is to ensure that the first several characters of file names are relatively random and unique.