Skip to main content

Visual City troubleshooting

An unattended exhibition, so faults are usually discovered by a host or a visitor rather than by a technician watching a show. That means two things: you often get a vague report, and you usually have time to fix it properly.

Work through the troubleshooting method first.

TODO verify with senior technician

Symptoms below are derived from the machine inventory and the described setup. Causes and steps are informed reconstructions and should be corrected against real fault history.

Quick triage​

ObservationJump to
One station frozen or showing a desktopStation frozen
Station unreachable on the networkStation unreachable
Level 3 SimStad projection dark or wrongSimStad projection
WATER projectors on Level 2 darkLevel 2 projectors
Content not updating after a changeContent not updating
Digital twin / data not loadingDigital twin service

An exhibition station is frozen or showing the desktop​

  1. Identify the machine: Level 2 stations are L2-EXHIB-01-V … -06-V — see Computers, Level 2.
  2. Connect remotely and restart the content application.
  3. If it will not recover, restart the machine.
  4. A station that freezes repeatedly is not a restart problem — record how often and escalate, because the cause is usually the content or the hardware, not luck.

A station is unreachable on the network​

  1. Try the machine's primary address on 172.19.52.x.
  2. Then try its temporary address. Stations 01–04 have alternate addresses on the 172.19.53.1x1 range recorded in the source documentation. A station that is "down" is sometimes simply on the other address.
  3. If both fail, check the PDU outlet on PDUs, Level 2 and power-cycle with Reset.
  4. If the machine powers up but never appears on the network, suspect the network drop or switch port.
TODO verify with senior technician

Clarify whether the temporary 172.19.53.1x1 addresses are still active or historic. If historic, they should be removed from the reference page.

The SimStad projection on Level 3 is dark or wrong​

Level 3 runs an HP Z workstation with WATCHOUT driving three projectors, currently showing OpenSpace captured through a DisplayPort frame grabber. There are therefore three things that can independently break.

  1. Is OpenSpace running? If OpenSpace has crashed, WATCHOUT will faithfully display nothing. Check this first — it is the most common cause and the least obvious.
  2. Is the frame grabber capturing? A grabber that has lost its input shows black or a frozen last frame while WATCHOUT reports itself perfectly healthy.
  3. Is WATCHOUT running and are its displays online?
  4. Are the three projectors on and on the right input? See Projectors, Level 3.

Machines: LVL3-SIMSTAD-01 (172.19.53.41), LVL3-SIMSTAD-02 (172.19.53.42) — Computers, Level 3.

Restart order: OpenSpace → frame grabber input → WATCHOUT → projectors.

A Level 2 projector is dark​

The Level 2 WATER projectors project down onto a table and are mounted on the cable ladder.

  1. Open the projector's web interface — addresses on Projectors, Level 2. Credentials are in Bitwarden.
  2. Check power, shutter, input and alarms.
  3. If unreachable, check the PDU outlet on PDUs, Level 2.
  4. Work at height on the cable ladder is an escalation, not a quick fix.

Content is not updating​

  1. Confirm the update reached the specific machine — stations are individually managed.
  2. If content is delivered via Pixilab Blocks, check the Blocks player and server for that station — see Pixilab Blocks.
  3. Restart the content application, then the machine.

The digital twin or data service is not responding​

Visual City depends on data services behind the exhibition, not just on the station PCs.

TODO verify with senior technician

This section needs real content: which server hosts the digital twin and city data, how a technician checks that it is healthy, who maintains it, and what the exhibition falls back to when it is unavailable.

Until then: establish whether all stations show missing data (shared service) or only one (local fault), and escalate if it is the former.

Restart order for a station​

  1. Content application
  2. Station computer
  3. Display or projector
  4. PDU Reset

When to swap hardware​

DeviceSwappable?
Station PCYes, with a prepared spare — machine name, IP and content role must be reapplied
Display / touch deviceYes
PDUYes — see spare units
Ceiling / cable-ladder mounted projectorEscalate — work at height