Symon Netbrite

[Reprobate2]

I recently came into possession of 3 Symon NetBrite signs. They are 24x200 tri-color led signs. The problem is that Symon wants close to $4k for the software for these thing. Requires a server and client apparently. I have connected to the sign via Telnet and was able to make some minor changes, IP addy, Subnet mask, default gateway etc... but cannot make any changes to what the sign displays. I ran nmap against it and found the only open ports are 23 and 700. I have grabbed every bit of free and trial LED sign software I can find and nothing seems to want to interface with the sign. I Even tried a 1gb word list worth of custom commands sent via port 700 and 23 to see if I got any response. Nada..

I am about to buy a PIC board and see if I can just replace the controller, but I thought I'd see if anyone has successfully hacked one of these signs, or any sign from Symon for that matter.

[mreish]

Me too. Me too.

I recently came into possession of 3 Symon NetBrite signs. They are 24x200 tri-color led signs. The problem is that Symon wants close to $4k for the software for these thing. Requires a server and client apparently. I have connected to the sign via Telnet and was able to make some minor changes, IP addy, Subnet mask, default gateway etc... but cannot make any changes to what the sign displays. I ran nmap against it and found the only open ports are 23 and 700. I have grabbed every bit of free and trial LED sign software I can find and nothing seems to want to interface with the sign. I Even tried a 1gb word list worth of custom commands sent via port 700 and 23 to see if I got any response. Nada..

[bigtxnutz]

I have a little experience. I too came into possession of a Netbrite display & after poking at it for a bit it has sat in my garage for about a year.

A couple of days ago I decided to have another go at it & was quite successful.

First of, don't bother poking at it. It won't work. What is required is Symon Enterprise Server (SES) & it's associated software apps, specifically, Symon Says for simple one-time messages. As you note, a call to Symon is worthless. They will only help you if you have a contract. I was fortunate that I had proper & necessary info (customer ID) to get the pieces. There were several. The software bundle. You can't just download it, they have to give you access to it. A license file which they must provide derived from the MAC of the server the software is or is to be installed on. The was also a registry key required but I believe that just told the server to quit trying to call home since I didn't have a current account.

OK, so now I have mine working. It too, is an older display & it funtionality is limited (colors & effects) but it does work. The SES package allows for collecting data from various sources to display. All rather complicated.

Unfortunately, you may be out of luck altogether unless you spend a ton.

[revbradl]

I recently came into possession of 3 Symon NetBrite signs. They are 24x200 tri-color led signs. The problem is that Symon wants close to $4k for the software for these thing. Requires a server and client apparently. I have connected to the sign via Telnet and was able to make some minor changes, IP addy, Subnet mask, default gateway etc... but cannot make any changes to what the sign displays. I ran nmap against it and found the only open ports are 23 and 700. I have grabbed every bit of free and trial LED sign software I can find and nothing seems to want to interface with the sign. I Even tried a 1gb word list worth of custom commands sent via port 700 and 23 to see if I got any response. Nada..

I am about to buy a PIC board and see if I can just replace the controller, but I thought I'd see if anyone has successfully hacked one of these signs, or any sign from Symon for that matter.

Hi, I know this is an old post, but do you still own the NetBrite boards and would you be interested in selling them? I run a small IT Help Desk for a company in the Boise Idaho area, and we could really use a board to display our incoming calls/available agents on. We're willing to invest in the Symon software, but need to pick up the hardware at a deep discount. Please reply to me at the following email address: [revbradl at hotmail.com] - Thanks!

[OldHacker666]

Has anyone just tried to yank the existing controller interface and replace it with say a raspberry pi zero?

[Irukandji]

You just Necro a dead topic Form 9 years ago.

Alot of things have changed in in the 9 years.

Edited July 21, 2021 by Jtyle6

[Evidlo]

I know this is a really old post, but seeing as this is a top result on Google I figured I'd post a solution:

 

Some guys wrote a nice Perl library that implements the proprietary protocol these signs use: https://github.com/blackthornedk/Net-Symon-Netbrite

I wasn't terribly familiar with Perl, so I created a fork that includes some basic instructions for getting this working on Debian: https://github.com/Evidlo/Net-Symon-Netbrite

[Evidlo]

Also here is another fork that hooks into XMPP and provides a bit of documentation on the directives for marking up text sent to the sign: https://github.com/skullspace/Net-Symon-Netbrite

[Irukandji]

Woot a new bump..