What it is
Pixelsuite is a multi-tenant digital signage platform for hospitality and retail businesses. It manages content libraries, playlist scheduling, channel assignment, and real-time delivery to connected hardware. The system generates live-rendered menu boards synchronized with backend data. I designed and built the platform and have maintained it for five years.
Why I built it
Designed to provide centralized control over distributed display networks. The architecture uses isolated client environments and automated device communication. It includes an access control system for multi-site groups and admin tools for remote operation. The platform is in production and handles live client workloads.
Technical Highlights
Core Architecture & Multi-Tenancy
•Custom PHP MVC framework for routing, entity layer, and permission lifecycle.
•Multi-tenant MySQL architecture with a master database for configuration and isolated per-client databases for data separation.
•Supports multi-venue accounts with independent access controls.
Real-Time Device Communication
•MQTT (Mosquitto, TLS on port 8883) for device messaging including content updates and state changes.
•Distributed interrupt processing using Redis leader election to ensure single-worker execution.
•Headless browser pipeline (Playwright) for generating menu board renders from live data.
Background Workers & Infrastructure
•PHP and Python workers deployed as systemd services with Redis heartbeat monitoring and SIGTERM/SIGINT handling.
•AWS S3 for content storage, SES for email, and SNS for notifications.
•Redis for job queues and distributed locking.
Permission & Access Control System
•Role-based access control across page-level and action-level namespaces.
•Two-factor authentication for admin accounts with per-permission enforcement.
What I solved
Implemented worker coordination including leader election and heartbeat monitoring without a dedicated queue server. Developed graceful shutdown patterns to prevent job loss and handled silent failures in long-running processes.
By the numbers
•5 years of continuous production development and operation.
•Multiple live clients across hospitality, retail, and entertainment.
•5 background worker processes running concurrently in production.
•60+ dynamic UI modal views across the platform.
•Multi-tenant architecture spanning dozens of isolated per-client databases.
•1 developer — every line of PHP, Python, SQL, SCSS, and JavaScript.