DisplaySync

Core concepts

Before you set anything up, it helps to know how DisplaySync nests its pieces and the words it uses for them. This page covers just enough of the mental model to make the rest of the getting-started flow feel grounded.

Throughout this section we'll use a running example: Lakeshore AV, a small AV outfit putting up vendor-booth signage for the Spring Vendor Showcase 2026 — a three-day conference with 40 booths and a single welcome wall in the lobby. The same example shows up in each of the next four pages so you can follow one story end to end.

How DisplaySync nests

Four nested concepts cover almost everything:

  • Organization — the top-level container. Lakeshore AV is one org; everything they do in DisplaySync lives under it.
  • Events — a specific gathering with dates, a venue, and a roster. Spring Vendor Showcase 2026 is one event under Lakeshore AV's org.
  • Signs — the physical kiosks displaying content at the event. Lakeshore brings 40 signs to the showcase: one per booth, plus the lobby welcome wall.
  • Content — what each sign is showing. In V1, this is a webpage URL the sign loads in a Chromium-based kiosk.

Every Sign belongs to exactly one Event. Every Event belongs to exactly one Organization. Users belong to one or more Organizations (one user, many orgs is fine — see Roles, simplified below).

A practical consequence: when you sign in, you pick an org. Everything you see — events, signs, content — is scoped to that org. If you contract with two AV companies, you'll have two org memberships and switch between them.

Roles, simplified

DisplaySync has roles at two levels, and the relationship between them is the one thing worth being precise about.

Organization-level roles (you have one, on each org you belong to):

  • owner — full control, billing, can delete the org
  • admin — almost everything except billing and deletion
  • member — read-only access to org-level stuff, plus whatever event-level role you've been given

Event-level roles (you have one per event, on the events you're explicitly added to):

  • manager — can edit the event, send remote commands, manage the team
  • technician — can claim signs, send remote commands, but can't edit the event itself
  • viewer — implicit; every org member sees every event in their org as a viewer without needing to be added

A subtle but important rule: org owners and admins are automatically event manager on every event in the org. They don't need to be added to each event's team — the system grants them implicit manager rights everywhere.

For the full matrix of who can do what, see Roles & permissions.

These are the two ways a physical kiosk gets paired to a Sign record in the dashboard.

Claim is the on-the-fly path. A new kiosk boots, displays a QR code, and someone with the mobile app scans it. Scanning creates a brand-new Sign record in the event, named whatever you type in. This is what Lakeshore AV's techs will do for most of the Spring Vendor Showcase setup — walk the lobby, scan, name as they go.

Link is the pre-planned path. The event manager (a Lakeshore AV staffer, in our example) creates 40 Sign records ahead of time in the dashboard — one per booth — with names, locations, and content URLs already filled in. On the day of the show, techs scan the kiosk QRs and the app links each physical kiosk to a pre-existing Sign record instead of creating a new one.

You pick the path by who's doing the work and when. Pre-create when you know the venue layout in advance and want to set everything up at a desk; claim on-the-fly when you're improvising. Either path can be used freely within the same event.

Full walkthroughs of both paths: Claiming signs.

Sign states at a glance

A Sign is in exactly one of five states at any moment:

  • online — connected, sending heartbeats, displaying content as expected
  • offline — no heartbeat received recently (typically venue network issue)
  • error — the sign reported a problem loading its content
  • maintenance — operator-set; the sign is intentionally taken out of service
  • unlinked — a Sign record exists in the dashboard but no physical kiosk is paired to it yet (pre-created records start here)

The dashboard shows each state as a color — green / gray / red / orange / yellow respectively. See Sign states for the full definitions and the rules for how each state is reached.

Content (V1 = webpage URL)

In V1, "content" is whatever webpage URL you assign to a sign. The kiosk loads it in a Chromium-based runtime and displays it full-screen. That's the entire content model for now — you bring the URL, DisplaySync displays it.

For Spring Vendor Showcase, Lakeshore AV's content is going to be:

  • 40 booth signs, each pointing at a vendor-specific page hosted on the showcase's website
  • 1 lobby welcome wall pointing at a rotating welcome page

In future releases, content will expand to include uploaded images, video, and playlists. For now: a sign displays one URL at a time, and you can change that URL anytime from the dashboard.

What's next

You've got the mental model — now set up your account: Account setup.

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