Buses in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Back to 2015, ASSA Tech, one of Betvis’s partners in Malaysia got a bus digital display project from Kuala Lumpur and decided to do the job together with Betvis. A few months earlier than that, Betvis just completed a similar project for Azerbaijan on-bus display system, so what ASSA did was basically copy the success to another Asia city.

Although it might sound easy to copy a proven system to a new place, the actual process was still pretty complicated from planning to operation. For starter, electric power on bus is not always stable enough for normal digital display devices. Especially when a bus engine just starts off or shuts down, instant electric current varies really quickly in a few minutes and could put both LCD panel and motherboard into risk. To avoid this threat, a dedicated bus power on/off delay regulator was connected with the screen power. When the bus starts off, the regulator will delay the screen boot time for 3 minutes until the electric gets stable. Similarly, when the bus engine just shuts down, the regulator will continue to supply stable electric power long enough for the screen to safely shutdown.

Another issue ASSA came across was the installation method, for ceiling mounting need to ensure 100% security under intense bump and jolt during the driving. What Betvis provided was a shake-proof mounting bracket adhering to the screen rear. The bracket allows the screen orientation to be adjusted while at the same time guarantees the stability of the screen under any strong shock happening during driving.

Apart from the hardware design, the most important thing for the bus display project was about the content distribution. The local media company wanted to broadcast their ads clips while the local government wanted to display some propaganda films for the city. The combination of the two was perfectly solved by Betvis DSM80 software. All sorts of videos, images, local TV news and other materials were scheduled to play in pre-defined order and priority. When some particular content needs to be changed, all they have to do is simply delete it and upload the new content to the campaign, without the need to rewrite the schedule or remake the whole campaign. After the campaign being upload to DSM80 server, it will be downloaded by all the 800 on-bus screens according to self-defined timing. The network connection is through both Wi-Fi and 3G, which means the bus screen will choose Wi-Fi as its top priority, and will only use 3G to download the campaign when no Wi-Fi is available. Both the Wi-Fi and 3G are built-in module integrated with DSM80, so no need for any extra devices or wires.