Beacon

A modern digital signage application for displaying church events, built with Rust, Iced, and the shared church-core library.

Features

• Real-time event display with automatic updates
• Smooth image loading and transitions with intelligent caching
• Modern, clean interface design with modular components
• Automatic event filtering based on date/time
• Support for high-resolution displays
• Efficient memory management for images
• Built on shared church-core library for consistency and reliability
• Graceful error handling with comprehensive logging

Requirements

• Rust 1.70 or higher
• Access to the church-core crate (located at ../church-core)
• A running church API instance with events endpoint

Configuration

You can configure Beacon in three ways (in order of precedence):

1. Environment Variables

Configure Beacon using environment variables:

export BEACON_API_URL="https://your-api-url.com"
export BEACON_WINDOW_WIDTH="1920"
export BEACON_WINDOW_HEIGHT="1080"
./beacon

2. .env File

Create a .env file in the application directory:

# Copy the example file
cp .env.example .env
# Edit with your settings
nano .env

Example .env file:

BEACON_API_URL=https://your-api-endpoint.com
BEACON_WINDOW_WIDTH=1920
BEACON_WINDOW_HEIGHT=1080
RUST_LOG=beacon=info

Available environment variables:

• BEACON_API_URL - API endpoint URL
• BEACON_WINDOW_WIDTH - Window width in pixels
• BEACON_WINDOW_HEIGHT - Window height in pixels

3. Config File

Create a config.toml file in the application directory:

api_url = "https://your-api-url.com"
window_width = 1920
window_height = 1080
slide_interval_seconds = 10
refresh_interval_minutes = 5

Configuration Precedence:

1. Environment variables (highest priority)
2. .env file
3. config.toml file (lowest priority)

Building

cargo build --release

Running

./target/release/beacon

Development

The application is built using:

• church-core - Shared library for API integration, event models, and utilities
• Iced - Modern UI framework for Rust
• Tokio - Async runtime
• Reqwest - HTTP client for image loading
• Modular architecture with dedicated UI components and caching system

Architecture

Beacon leverages the shared church-core library to:

• Use standardized Event models with built-in helper methods
• Share API client functionality across church projects
• Eliminate code duplication and ensure consistency
• Benefit from shared testing and improvements

Key Modules

• src/main.rs - Application entry point and state management
• src/ui.rs - Modular UI components for event display
• src/cache.rs - Intelligent image caching system
• src/config.rs - Configuration management with validation
• src/api.rs - Simplified API integration using church-core

License

MIT License