
Technical Success Story: Digital Signage Life Cycle Management
Digital signage is a critical way of conveying information for a business or an essential task. Consistency in displays is crucial for maintaining a professional brand image, keeping travelers informed, or signaling traffic alerts. When a digital sign fails due to a flash storage card reaching the end of its lifespan, this malfunction is highly visible and reflects poorly for the application at hand or could even pose a danger. In some cases, the proper functioning of digital signage can be a safety concern, as with transportation applications, such as traffic signs. Recently, when a digital signage company experienced problems with the life cycles of its flash storage cards, they turned to Delkin for help.
The Customer’s Challenge
The digital signage company had decided to use industrial grade flash storage cards in their signage because they are known to have longer lifespans compared to consumer-grade cards. However, even cards designed for industrial applications may not necessarily outlast the life of the hardware in the signage. The company needed a way to accurately predict when the end of life was near so that the cards could be replaced before they stopped functioning.
Our Technical Process
When troubleshooting any technical problem, the team at Delkin first works to better understand the needs of the customer. Our flash storage specialists closely examined the usage model that the customer was following. They identified the objective of the customer, which was to embrace an aggressively proactive strategy involving replacing the cards when 15% of their lifespan remained.
Our Innovative Solution
The team at Delkin used Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) to assess the health of the data storage device. With SMART capabilities, a drive is able to evaluate its own status and report on it in order to better inform the user of imminent device failures. The team at Delkin helped the digital signage company program its applications based on five criteria that indicated the threshold for replacement had been reached. This allowed the company to proactively replace cards when they reached the point of having 15% of their lifespan remaining.
Is your company challenged by host storage failures? The use of Delkin’s SMART technology can allow OEMs and engineers to keep careful track of spare blocks remaining, P/E cycles per block, and the number of normal and abnormal startups in order to better predict the end of life for a flash storage device. Connect with Delkin’s Customer Applications team today, and we will develop customized solutions that fit your industrial applications.
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