Xibo accomplishments!

[stiggy77]

Hi all

I've managed to do the following and it's all working very well! If anyone wants advice please PM me.

1. Linked MS Word to Xibo allowing users to 'post' pictures and text.

2. Linked MS Excel to Xibo via embedded links so that allows Xibo pulls cell data, displays it and updates it automatically every time the spreadsheet is saved.

3. Placed Sky Player onto our reception display (I also figured out how to get rid of all borders and how to get the player to stretch to the region)

4. I have found and used a flash player creator called powerbullet; http://www.powerbullet.com/Powerbullet.html

If there is anything you've managed to accomplish with this excellent software that you're proud of please let me know! I'm always looking for ways to improve our displays.

Cheers!

Lawro

[nephilim]

Or....you could always post up a how-to guide and it gets stickied

[nadeem]

Or....you could always post up a how-to guide and it gets stickied

+1 (please)

[ChrisH]

I would definitely be interested in 1 and 2. Where are you at if you don't mind me asking as we are local!

[AlexB]

+1 for 1 and 2!

[glennda]

an easy way I have do number one is setup a share on the xibo webserver which staff can drop pictures into and then have a PHP file which cycles through the images.

not sure what kind of data you are after but I have a similar system for a Sims export for birthdays which is imported into MySQL and then displayed via a PHP page.

[RobFuller]

I just wished Xibo would download the template and images on my Win7 clients, ahh! The file downloads them instantly disappears! Might have to go back to XP at this rate!

[glennda]

I just wished Xibo would download the template and images on my Win7 clients, ahh! The file downloads them instantly disappears! Might have to go back to XP at this rate!

I'm going to be trialling both the Perl client and the client on windows 7 this week. Will post back results?

[3s-gtech]

I have a Windows 7 Xibo client - it's good, but stopping Office 2010 from saving discarded presentations in Powerpoint is rather tricky, even with autosave turned off. If you don't use Powerpoint it shouldn't matter though (this is on the newest stable).

[stiggy77]

Or....you could always post up a how-to guide and it gets stickied

Hi all, I've put something together for Excel, I'll get the word one up as soon as I can! I'm a bit nooby with forums so I hope this comes out clearly enough for you all to understand! I also better point out that i'm not a programmer like Glennda, I've just done the best I can with what I had available. If you can suggest improvements please let me know.

Trick to setting up Digital Signage from Excel 2003 with auto updating

screenshot.JPG

Excel 2003 can create html pages or images which in turn Xibo can pick up, so the trick to making this work is the creation of these file types.

I found that image creation was a more accurate way to display and manipulate cell data on Xibo.

To create the required image from cell data within excel you need to use WordArt. Simply create a separate sheet for the digital display images, link the cell data to that sheet (example below shows data linked to cells A1, A2 and A3) then link the WordArt to the linked cell(s).

WordArt.JPG

To link WordArt to a cell simply select it and use a function (example=$A$1)

Once you’ve set this up youre ready to link it to Xibo. To do this you will first need to ‘publish’ the images to a destination folder (preferably on a server so that it can be accessed by all the machines you’re using to display)

To publish within Excel you will need to ‘save as webpage’ (make sure you use web page and not single file web page or the folder you need will not be created).
You will then see the following screen, choose ‘selection:sheet’ and change your file name then click on the ‘publish’ icon.

publish1.JPG

On the next screen use ‘range of cells’ in the first drop down box and choose your range then check your file name and tick the ‘auto republish every time this workbook is saved’ option. Finally click on the ‘publish’ icon.

publish2.JPG

Once you’ve done this go to the area where you saved this file, you should see the file and a folder with a similar name. In that folder you will find some .gif files, these .gif files will auto update everytime the workbook is saved.

publish3.JPG

All we need to do now is link this image to Xibo and we can do this via HTML script. Open up Xibo, place a region in the window and add the embedded HTML option. Once you’ve done this use the img src function to point at the .gif. You can display several of the .gifs on screen and postion them using the <center>, align, hspace and vspace commands. (please see example HTML)

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body> <body style="color: rgb(124, 112, 218); background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">
<center>
<br>
<img src="s:\digital signage\health and safety_files\KPI Master Sheet_19632_image001.gif">
<br>
</center>
<img src="S:\Digital Signage\Riddor Accident title_files\KPI Master Sheet_28752_image001.gif" align="left" hspace="40">
</center>
</body>
</html>

I hope this helps!

Lawro

[stiggy77]

Hi again!

I've finally managed to put together the word 2003 setup, again if anything is unclear or I need to elaborate please let me know!

Using MS Word 2003 to show pictures and images on Xibo

Word can be used to place images and text onto Xibo. You can do this by converting the .doc file into a .html one.

First create a blank document (I resized the page to match the size of the region within Xibo) and save into your chosen location. (server location is best so that all displays can access the document)

Now choose the ‘save as’ option then ‘tools’ and ‘security’ to set the document to read only recommended and add a password (this stops the template word document from being changed permanently by the user)

Once you’ve created the template and secured the document you’re ready to create a macro, the macro is required to change the .doc to a .html file. Use the following code to create the macro:

Sub Macro1()
'
' Macro1 Macro
' Macro created 20/10/2011 by Stephen Lawrence
'
ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:="S:\Digital Signage\LW shop floor.htm", FileFormat:=wdFormatHTML, _
LockComments:=False, Password:="", AddToRecentFiles:=True, WritePassword _
:="", ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _
SaveNativePictureFormat:=False, SaveFormsData:=False, SaveAsAOCELetter:= _
False
End Sub

Save the Macro and close the VB screen, you will now need to create an icon on the toolbar to allow the user to run the macro. To do this right click on the toolbar, select ‘customise’, enter the ‘commands’ tab then scroll down and select ‘macros’ in the menu. On the right you will see an icon with your chosen macro name against it, simply drag this icon to the toolbar.

untitled.JPG

Once the icon is on the toolbar you can amend it to say and look the way you want.

Now that you’ve completed this and saved the document, you’re ready to set up Xibo.

Create an embedded html region within Xibo and place the following code into it (change to spec):

<iframe src="s:\digital signage\LW shop floor.htm" width="100%" height="100%"
scrolling="no" frameborder="0"> </iframe >

Cheers!

[cromertech]

I've been working on getting a photo gallery into xibo and have finally cracked it.

My setup is below.

Xibo server has wordpress installed. RSS feeds are categorised in wordpress and each department has a user that can only post into their category. A small modification was needed to the rss feed php file to display the whole feed all the time not an except. This mean teacher can send messages direct to the screen and their department has a few minutes of scheduled time every hour for this. These messages expire after 1 week but can be extended if necessary.

The wordpress front end is designed with custom menus to link into the different systems to make it as easy as possible for staff to add the content they want without actually accessing the xibo interface that they found a little complex.

Gallery 3 also installed on the xibo server with minislideshow add-on. This allows any slideshows to generate embed code to put directly into xibo. This is not currently automatic so each gallery has to be embedded as required.

The newsletters are sent to issuu.com which generates a flip-book style flash page that can also be embed into a xibo template.

This setup took quite a while to complete but it make the running of the screens much less taxing for me.

Would be happy to write a full how to with plugins used etc if anyone is interested.

@ mods is this something that could go on the wiki?

[stiggy77]

I would definitely be interested in 1 and 2. Where are you at if you don't mind me asking as we are local!

I work in Clitheroe, Lancashire

[stiggy77]

I've been working on getting a photo gallery into xibo and have finally cracked it.

My setup is below.

Xibo server has wordpress installed. RSS feeds are categorised in wordpress and each department has a user that can only post into their category. A small modification was needed to the rss feed php file to display the whole feed all the time not an except. This mean teacher can send messages direct to the screen and their department has a few minutes of scheduled time every hour for this. These messages expire after 1 week but can be extended if necessary.

The wordpress front end is designed with custom menus to link into the different systems to make it as easy as possible for staff to add the content they want without actually accessing the xibo interface that they found a little complex.

Gallery 3 also installed on the xibo server with minislideshow add-on. This allows any slideshows to generate embed code to put directly into xibo. This is not currently automatic so each gallery has to be embedded as required.

The newsletters are sent to issuu.com which generates a flip-book style flash page that can also be embed into a xibo template.

This setup took quite a while to complete but it make the running of the screens much less taxing for me.

Would be happy to write a full how to with plugins used etc if anyone is interested.

@ mods is this something that could go on the wiki?

I would be really interested in seeing some screenshots of your work Matt, a full how to would be awesome!

[nephilim]

Many thanks!