ML
    • Register
    • Login
    • Search
    • Recent
    • Categories
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Groups

    Digital sign boards

    IT Discussion
    dashrender digital signage
    8
    27
    700
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • Dashrender
      Dashrender last edited by Dashrender

      My office wanted to setup a digital sign board.

      With Scott's help we found Thanks For Holding, a vendor that makes Music on Hold and digital sign videos at a very reasonable price.

      With the content handled I needed a way to display the video in our office. Of course the vendor want to push us toward some pricey player and professional display for $1000's or more, but for now we are trying a much less expensive solution, basically to dip our toe in.

      I found Pisignage.com They have an image($25 one time fee) that runs on R-Pi's that will pull from either their hosted solution (which requires a subscription - $20/yr per player) or you can download the open source server and host it yourself.
      Even better, they give you two players/hosting licenses free (currently claim forever free).

      I'm sure I spent way more than I needed to on a R-Pi 4, but it's what I could find in stock easily. Assembled the kit, downloaded the imz file, burned it to the flash card, booted. it came right up, I had to join it to the WIFI, then add it to my pisignage account. Adding the WiFi account is a bit of a pain, you have to spell the SSID cap sensitive, it won't search for available SSIDs.

      Once it was added, I was able to upload content to the service, add it to the default group, which the new player was already a member of, then tell it to deploy. All in all, probably took less than an hour from the time I opened the R-Pi box to a video playing on my TV.

      The solution has the ability to turn off the TV if the TV supports CEC, mine claims to, and I have set a schedule, but haven't passed the schedule threshold yet.

      The first set of sample videos I uploaded seemed to work fine - then I made some changes, pushed some new videos out... and when I was watching the player play, I noticed the sound was super choppy. it eventually cleared up - I can only assume at this point that the upload taxed the system to the point it couldn't smoothly play the video and audio (the video seemed flawless by the way).

      The transitions between uploaded videos goes to a black screen for about 1/2 second. I'm not a huge fan of that transition, so I had to order my video from the above vendor as a single file instead of each individual component (which would have allowed me to mix and match as I wanted).

      I'll report more after a few more days of playing with it.

      JaredBusch scottalanmiller 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • JaredBusch
        JaredBusch @Dashrender last edited by

        @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

        My office wanted to setup a digital sign board.

        I built a RPi for a tradeshow display.

        It only had one video that was to play on a loop so.

        I used a standard Pi install, copied the file to the system, then created a script to launch it in VLC or whatever media player in full screen mode on endless loop and set the script to start on boot.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
        • JaredBusch
          JaredBusch @Dashrender last edited by JaredBusch

          @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

          I had to join it to the domain

          Why the fuck would you do that?

          DustinB3403 Dashrender 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Pete.S
            Pete.S last edited by

            Real signage displays have embedded media players and remote management.
            Problem solved.

            They are also designed for 16/24 or continuous operation.

            Dashrender 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • DustinB3403
              DustinB3403 @JaredBusch last edited by

              @jaredbusch said in Digital sign boards:

              @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

              I had to join it to the domain

              Why the fuck would you do that?

              Yeah... This makes no sense. Also screenly.io/ose

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • scottalanmiller
                scottalanmiller @Dashrender last edited by

                @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                Adding the WiFi account is a bit of a pain, you have to spell the SSID cap sensitive, it won't search for available SSIDs

                My RP does. Must be the PiSignage image.

                Dashrender 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Dashrender
                  Dashrender @JaredBusch last edited by

                  @jaredbusch said in Digital sign boards:

                  @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                  I had to join it to the domain

                  Why the fuck would you do that?

                  WoW - that was totally the wrong word.

                  I joined it to WiFi.

                  scottalanmiller 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Dashrender
                    Dashrender @Pete.S last edited by

                    @pete-s said in Digital sign boards:

                    Real signage displays have embedded media players and remote management.
                    Problem solved.

                    They are also designed for 16/24 or continuous operation.

                    Considering the cost of those displays and the fact that we've had 3 standard off the shelf TVs running constantly for 5 years with no issues, I think I'll save some money.

                    If - If this becomes a problem... we'll invest in better tools.

                    Pete.S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • scottalanmiller
                      scottalanmiller @Dashrender last edited by

                      @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                      @jaredbusch said in Digital sign boards:

                      @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                      I had to join it to the domain

                      Why the fuck would you do that?

                      WoW - that was totally the wrong word.

                      I joined it to WiFi.

                      OOOHHHHHH

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Dashrender
                        Dashrender @scottalanmiller last edited by

                        @scottalanmiller said in Digital sign boards:

                        @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                        Adding the WiFi account is a bit of a pain, you have to spell the SSID cap sensitive, it won't search for available SSIDs

                        My RP does. Must be the PiSignage image.

                        probably is.

                        scottalanmiller 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • scottalanmiller
                          scottalanmiller @Dashrender last edited by

                          @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                          @scottalanmiller said in Digital sign boards:

                          @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                          Adding the WiFi account is a bit of a pain, you have to spell the SSID cap sensitive, it won't search for available SSIDs

                          My RP does. Must be the PiSignage image.

                          probably is.

                          I have four RPs here!

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • scottalanmiller
                            scottalanmiller last edited by

                            We run the hotel on RPs. I should look at digital signage here! But the salt water is brutal.

                            Dashrender 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Dashrender
                              Dashrender @scottalanmiller last edited by

                              @scottalanmiller said in Digital sign boards:

                              We run the hotel on RPs. I should look at digital signage here! But the salt water is brutal.

                              now there is a case to spend the good money on better/best equipment.

                              scottalanmiller 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • scottalanmiller
                                scottalanmiller @Dashrender last edited by

                                @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                                @scottalanmiller said in Digital sign boards:

                                We run the hotel on RPs. I should look at digital signage here! But the salt water is brutal.

                                now there is a case to spend the good money on better/best equipment.

                                But no warranty support here, so cheap might make sense.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Pete.S
                                  Pete.S @Dashrender last edited by Pete.S

                                  @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                                  @pete-s said in Digital sign boards:

                                  Real signage displays have embedded media players and remote management.
                                  Problem solved.

                                  They are also designed for 16/24 or continuous operation.

                                  Considering the cost of those displays and the fact that we've had 3 standard off the shelf TVs running constantly for 5 years with no issues, I think I'll save some money.

                                  If - If this becomes a problem... we'll invest in better tools.

                                  You only think you saved money. You looked at the initial cost but forgot to account for all the other costs.

                                  A signage display is only a couple of hundred bucks more than a similar TV from the same brand. For that money you have to spend of lot of hours researching, installing and configuring before you end up in the exact same spot with a comparable solution. You also need to buy and install an RPI/PC and software for that. But the hardware you have cobbled together is still inferior to the real thing.

                                  If you're doing it because it's fun then that's one thing, but from a business perspective my guess is that your solution is way more expensive for the business in the long run. Especially when you quit your job and the next guy have no idea how it works.

                                  scottalanmiller 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • scottalanmiller
                                    scottalanmiller @Pete.S last edited by

                                    @pete-s said in Digital sign boards:

                                    @dashrender said in Digital sign boards:

                                    @pete-s said in Digital sign boards:

                                    Real signage displays have embedded media players and remote management.
                                    Problem solved.

                                    They are also designed for 16/24 or continuous operation.

                                    Considering the cost of those displays and the fact that we've had 3 standard off the shelf TVs running constantly for 5 years with no issues, I think I'll save some money.

                                    If - If this becomes a problem... we'll invest in better tools.

                                    You only think you saved money. You looked at the initial cost but forgot to account for all the other costs.

                                    A signage display is only a couple of hundred bucks more than a similar TV from the same brand. For that money you have to spend of lot of hours researching, installing and configuring before you end up in the exact same spot with a comparable solution. You also need to buy and install an RPI/PC and software for that. But the hardware you have cobbled together is still inferior to the real thing.

                                    If you're doing it because it's fun then that's one thing, but from a business perspective my guess is that your solution is way more expensive for the business in the long run.

                                    In many cases, I'd agree. But in this case, I'd think that researching and setting up an RP to do signage would be as fast or faster than researching a signage company. And having no background in it, the signage vendors would have you at their mercy with you having no idea who is good or bad.

                                    If you were going to make a career of it, sure. But I bed I can set up and do an RP based sign faster and cheaper long term, even if I had to pay the same for the hardware, just because it would take so much less work.

                                    Now it depends on what you want the sign to do, of course. But I have customers doing it on RP and Chromeboxes and it is hard to imagine how a signage vendor could compete. Even discussing it would take almost as much effort as the final product.

                                    And where do you even start to research signage brands, features, support, history, etc.? And what signage vendor has the support infrastructure of RP?

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • DustinB3403
                                      DustinB3403 last edited by

                                      Again, RP and screenly.io/ose

                                      Literally 15 minutes and done for a single screen.

                                      scottalanmiller JaredBusch 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • J
                                        JasGot last edited by

                                        We use these for one and done setups. We like it.
                                        https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B008NO9RRM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • scottalanmiller
                                          scottalanmiller @DustinB3403 last edited by

                                          @dustinb3403 said in Digital sign boards:

                                          Again, RP and screenly.io/ose

                                          Literally 15 minutes and done for a single screen.

                                          Nice

                                          JaredBusch 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • JaredBusch
                                            JaredBusch @scottalanmiller last edited by

                                            @scottalanmiller said in Digital sign boards:

                                            @dustinb3403 said in Digital sign boards:

                                            Again, RP and screenly.io/ose

                                            Literally 15 minutes and done for a single screen.

                                            Nice

                                            Not really. no offline functionality on the free version.

                                            You have to make multiple accounts if you have more than one screen, and @Dashrender has already mentioned that they have multiple.

                                            scottalanmiller Dashrender 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • First post
                                              Last post