ESL Web Server

Revision as of 27 March 2024 15:01 by jsaunders (Comments | Contribs) | (→First Steps)

(diff) ← Previous revision | Current revision | Next revision → (diff)

First Steps

Login

Default:

Username:admin
Password:admin

If security is a concern, it is recommended to change this as soon as possible as well as disable SSH:

Go to System > Settings > Click on network settings tab > SSH settings
OR: https://ebs50.local/System/Settings#networkSettingsTab > SSH settings

Registration

This process should only take approximately 5 minutes and is recommended and free.

Without a license, the software can only connect to a single base station and can only manage:

20 labels at <= 2.9" screen diameter.
3 labels at >= 2.9" screen diameter.

If your license has not been activated yet, the ESL server will show a warning in the top left corner. To enter the license page, either click on the warning or go to ‘Advanced’ > ‘License’
Step 1: After accessing the licensing page click on the blue hyperlink to register. Note the Unique ID displayed in the green box. Step 2: Click on Sign Up
Step 3: Fill out the login page. It should look some thing like this: *Notice the street number is on a different field** Step 4: Click Register You should see a registration confirmation.
Step 5: Click "Confirm My Email Address". An email address confirmation notification should appear.
Step 6: Log back into the registration screen.
Step 7: Input the Unique ID for your device from Step 1. If you don't have it, just repeat Step 1 to retrieve it. Click on "Request" to generate the software key. The software key will be generated below the request button. This may take a few seconds to generate.
Step 8: Copy the generated key to your clipboard.
Step 9: Go back to Step 1 and paste the license key and click confirm.
You should see the following in a few seconds:

Activation

On arrival the ESLs already have their batteries inserted.
However, to allow safe transport by airplane, it is likely that the ESLs will show a DEACTIVATED message in their top left corner.
This means the ESLs do not emit any radio signals and won't be searching for base stations at this point.

Reactivation Process

Hover your mouse over the ESL tab and click on Reactivate ESL's.
Place the ESL tags nearby the connected Base Station. Select the Base Station and select all types in the drop down. Press ‘Start’ to begin the reactivation process. After pressing Start, the number of ESLs that have been reactivated so far will be shown.

Since the ESLs will only wake-up for a split second every few minutes, it can take more than 15 minutes before all ESLs have been successfully reactivated.
You can verify this by checking whether the ‘DEACTIVATED’ message has disappeared from the screen.

Active ESLs will be periodically search for a Base Station, so as soon as a Base Station is within range, they will associate with it and start sending data requests and status information to it.

When a Base Station is turned off or an ESL is moved out of range, an ESL will time out after a couple of minutes and starts seeking for another Base Station in range.
See chapter 6.1.3 Action dropdown for more information about configuring ESLs.

It might be possible that even though the ESLs are working properly, they still don’t connect to the Base Station. This might be caused by strong interference on the default RF-channel of the Base Station.
To resolve this problem, see chapter 5.4 Energy scan.

Dashboard

The dashboard is the main page of the ESL Web Server, which gives you a quick impression on the status of the ESL system. If everything is fine, all tiles are GREEN. If there is a warning a tile turns ORANGE. If there’s an error, then a tile turns RED. In total there are 4 groups that can change status: ESLs, Base Stations, Database and Links.

ESL

When pressing on the ESL tile, the dashboard will expand show 4 pie charts with different status information:

Link status

Shows how many ESLs have been linked and how many active ESLs are not linked.

Connection status

Shows the connection status of all ESLs that have been linked, which can be good, poor and disconnected.

Image status

Shows how many ESLs are showing the latest image, how many are still busy updating the image and how many failed to update (i.e. due to being disconnected or due to a hardware failure).

Battery status

Shows the battery status of the linked ESL's:

LOW

EMPTY / DISCONNECTED.

Base stations

The Base Station tile shows whether or not all Base Station are connected. When pressing on the Base Station tile it shows the amount of connected Base Stations, which can then be viewed by clicking on it.

Database

The database tile shows whether your database is currently connected, how many products are present in the product table and when the next synchronization will take place.

Link

The link tile shows how many links are present in the link table, which can be viewed by clicking on it. It also offers a shortcut to the Quick Link tool (see chapter 7.2 Quick Link for more information).

Dashboard settings

Dashboard settings can be found under ‘Advanced > Dashboard settings’ When there is an issue with your ESLs, these are grouped into errors and warnings. Examples of errors: Linked ESL's that are not online anymore. ESL's that failed to update their image. Examples of warnings: ESL's with bad wireless connections. ESL's with low batteries. If you have 100 ESLs, you may want to be warned immediately if even a single ESL is showing an error. If you have 1500 ESLs, you may be okay with a dozen ESLs giving an issue before spending the time on maintenance. The ESL status sensitivity screen allows you to set a percentage of ESLs reporting an error and ESLs reporting a warning that you find acceptable.

Finding and Adding Base Stations

EBS-50

The EBS-50 is an unremovable Base Station that is permanently added to your ESL Web Server setup hosted on the device. You will not need to take any further steps.

EBS-40

The EBS-40 can most easily be found through the discovery function. If you cannot locate it, then it can be manually added using the manual option.

Discovery Function

Click on the Base Stations tab at the top. Click on “Search Base Stations”. A window will appear that will start to list all of the Base Stations discovered on the network. Click on the button “Add” to add a Base Station to your list.

Manual Option

Click on the Base Stations tab at the top. Click on the button “Manually add Base Station”. In the pop up window: Enter the IP address of the Base Station you want to add. Enter the port number. (default 1002* for the EBS-40*) Select the type of Base Station. Press “Add” to add this manually added Base Station to the list.

Energy Scan

Energy scanning is a tool that helps you to find out how busy the radio space is. The e-paper ESLs communicate wirelessly with the Base Station on the 2.4GHz band, which may also be used by, for instance, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Although these protocols will not interfere with the protocol used by our labels, their transmissions may limit the reliability of the connections of your ESLs and Base Stations. In order to assess the amount of energy present in each channel, the Base Station can perform an energy scan that will show you how much energy is present at that specific Base Station. For best results, it is recommended that you perform energy scan at each Base Station. This way, you know which wireless channels are experiencing the least interference. To change the channel that your Base Station uses, you can edit the settings.
See chapter 5.6.1 Channel for more information.

REST API

The ESL Web Server software has a REST API that communicates over a set of HTTP endpoints.
Using the correct verbs:

GET to receive information.
PUT for new information.
POST for changes to information.
DELETE for removal of information.

This API allows you to manage the ESL Web Server software programmatically without use of the web interface that you would use for manual operation.
All of the actions that you can perform on the API and the way you specify that action are listed in the user manual section 12.1 REST API.

Linking

Linking of ESLs is the process of telling the system which product should be shown on which ESL. This is done by connecting the MAC Address of the ESL tag with the Unique ID in the database.
In a store environment this is usually done by inputting the MAC address bar code on the ESL label followed by inputting the unique ID of the product. The unique ID can be anything: an EAN code, article number, location, room number, etc. As long as it’s a unique identifier in the database, it can be linked to an ESL. In the field “Unique ID” you can supply a UID, barcode or description. You can open a product selector by pressing the pencil and paper icon to the right of the input box.

Documents

Name	Details	Type	Version	Download Link
User Manual	Contains information on how to setup and use the ESL web server.	PDF	0.1.11.12	Download
Sample Tables	Sample table insert statements (CSV, MS-SQL and MySQL) that uses North America based decimal system.	CSV,MS-SQL,MySQL	v1.0	Download

Software

Name	Details	Type	Version	Download Link
ESL Web Server Software	Windows Installer compressed in zip format.	Exe	N/A	Download
Toolkit	Template Editor Latest Firmware Files Base Station Finder + More	Zip	N/A	Download