FrameBuff

Docs / Home & family

Screens and the couch

FrameBuff can turn any browser on your network into a display, split the TV between several people and play your playlists on it.

Any browser as a display

  1. On a TV, a tablet or an old laptop, open /display on one of your machines' FrameBuff address.
  2. It shows a pair ID. Approve it on that machine.
  3. From then on it shows what you send it: a screen you built, a single file, a project's page, a window, a workspace or the whole FrameBuff desktop.

A display is not a machine in your fleet. It gets no keys, no API access and no files beyond what it is showing.

Build a screen

Build screens from widgets on a 12 by 8 grid: clocks, meters, cameras, slideshows, job lists and web pages on your own network. Watch them in the app, full screen, or on a display.

Several people at one TV

Split a display into tiles, two by two or left and right, then open Users…. Each person gets:

  • Their own tile, showing its own streamed app.
  • Their own input: a machine's mouse and keyboard, a game controller paired to any of your machines, or a phone used as a touchpad.
  • Their own headset: the speakers or Bluetooth headset of any of your machines, or the TV's speakers.

Each tile's input goes only to that tile, and each tile's sound goes only to that person's headset. The TV plays no tile's sound unless someone picked the TV's speakers.

For example, den-tv shows four tiles. The person on pocket plays with a controller and hears the game on their headset, while the person on nova uses nova's mouse.

  • Seating one machine's mouse on a shared display needs a yes on that machine: Let my machines seat me on a shared display, which is off by default.
  • People outside your fleet can join from their own machine. They are asked on your approval bar every time, stay locked to their tile, and cannot type until you turn their keyboard on.

Phones as touchpads

A phone's browser can become a touchpad and keyboard with nothing to install. One finger moves the pointer, a tap clicks and two fingers scroll. The phone gets its own pointer, with its name, next to every other mouse.

Playlists

Build playlists of music, video or both. A playlist can hold files, folders, links, text or other playlists, with steps in between: a timed wait, a pause that waits for you, or any tool. At the end it stops, loops or starts another playlist.

You can start a playlist yourself, at a set time, or when one of your machines comes online. You can also send a playlist to someone as an invitation.