NokiX Posted December 1, 2015 Posted December 1, 2015 Hi All, I know this topic has been mentioned before but I didn't want to hijack other threads about this issue! We currently have a very old signage system in place (pupils.tv) which no longer exist and after one of our tv player PC's failed a few weeks ago we have been looking for replacements. As with most schools our budget is pretty much non existent so with 13 screens to put content on we are looking to go down the raspberry pi route so that rather than having the handful of windows PC's we have currently running the system we would have each TV with it's own raspberry pi. The problem is that we are unable to find suitable signage software that works out of the box with the raspberry pi and unfortunately the only solution we have found that does work with them (concerto) has a number of crippling bugs making it impossible to setup correctly. Our question is how does everyone else handle their signage and has anyone used raspberry pi's for signage and if so what server/client solution do you use. Regards, Chris.
dry Posted December 1, 2015 Posted December 1, 2015 We use the open source Xibo on nano sized £99 Windows clients. Don't get me wrong, it took a while to get set up to how I liked it, and for admin staff it may be a little difficult to get used to (in terms of uploading new content), but there's loads of info on Edugeek and the web to help you along. I'm fairly sure you can get Xibo working with Linux. Worth double-checking though.
caffrey Posted December 1, 2015 Posted December 1, 2015 Could try some variant of the intel compute stick and use the windows client, although I've not tried these personally. Our xibo runs on old acer revo's stuck in the roof void
Jamoire Posted December 1, 2015 Posted December 1, 2015 We also use XIBO and have them running on the Atom Intel Compute Sticks which you can pick up for ~£70 ex VAT. Seems to work pretty well.
NokiX Posted December 1, 2015 Author Posted December 1, 2015 We use the open source Xibo on nano sized £99 Windows clients. Don't get me wrong, it took a while to get set up to how I liked it, and for admin staff it may be a little difficult to get used to (in terms of uploading new content), but there's loads of info on Edugeek and the web to help you along. I'm fairly sure you can get Xibo working with Linux. Worth double-checking though. We looked into xibo however we found that support for xibo on the raspberry pi was limited at best so although we do have an xibo server installed it's pretty much been left as a stock installation for the time being. I will be looking into it further however my manager won't be that happy about having to pay £99 each for machines to handle the client especially when the TV's displaying the content are probably worth less than that now since they are so old!
pcstru Posted December 1, 2015 Posted December 1, 2015 We use Xibo with cheap android dongles to run the client software. There is a client licence needed for the app which brings the price of each unit (sans TV) to (ISTR) ~£80.
dry Posted December 1, 2015 Posted December 1, 2015 We looked into xibo however we found that support for xibo on the raspberry pi was limited at best so although we do have an xibo server installed it's pretty much been left as a stock installation for the time being. I will be looking into it further however my manager won't be that happy about having to pay £99 each for machines to handle the client especially when the TV's displaying the content are probably worth less than that now since they are so old! How is your old digital signage set up? The Life Channel at my old place had gone to the effort of running Cat5 over the entire school and using VGA to Cat5 baluns at either end- meaning all the TVs were supplied with a video signal from one Dell PC in our office. If your school is a similar setup you could install the Xibo server + client on that one PC and job done. No outlay other than your time in setting it up.
NokiX Posted December 1, 2015 Author Posted December 1, 2015 How is your old digital signage set up? The Life Channel at my old place had gone to the effort of running Cat5 over the entire school and using VGA to Cat5 baluns at either end- meaning all the TVs were supplied with a video signal from one Dell PC in our office. If your school is a similar setup you could install the Xibo server + client on that one PC and job done. No outlay other than your time in setting it up. That is pretty much what we have setup however we found it caused a few issues with the TV's since they are so old and having a local device allowed for a better resolution to be supported and also means that we wouldn't have 5 TV's fail when once PC stopped working. That said since I had the xibo server setup I've configured it with a client which seems to be working fine so I've reimaged the previously broken host machine and I'm working on installing xibo on that as well. I'm hoping that this will work out fine for now and over time we can look into new TV's and possibly a NUC type of machine behind each TV.
bossman Posted December 2, 2015 Posted December 2, 2015 Hi all, Don't want to hijack this thread but also didn't want to duplicate with another digital signage thread! Question? Has anyone had experience of this free digital signage Thinking of moving forward with this as an inexpensive cloud solution for our digital signage, would also like to ask what 32" display screen have people used or if not that size what make and model for reliability and cost? Would value any input on this, thank you all in advance
Cablers_Arron Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 Hi there We have just released a new affordable digital signage solution that could be of interest. It is a Raspberry Pi solution that works straight out of the box and is very simple to set up and manage. More details can be found here or give us a call for a more detailed chat: onBoarder Digital Signage in Education, Schools | Cablers Regards Arron Cleverdon
gshaw Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 We also use XIBO and have them running on the Atom Intel Compute Sticks which you can pick up for ~£70 ex VAT. Seems to work pretty well. Yup we use the Compute Sticks as signage players now as well, although I run them with a USB NIC as the built-in Wi-Fi is a bit ropey https://gshaw0.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/intel-compute-stick-digital-signage-on-a-stick/
dry Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 Yup we use the Compute Sticks as signage players now as well, although I run them with a USB NIC as the built-in Wi-Fi is a bit ropey https://gshaw0.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/intel-compute-stick-digital-signage-on-a-stick/ Do they have an auto-on feature in BIOS for when power returns from a power loss? My main frustration with our current clients is they require physically switching on in the event of power loss.
DalekSec Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 We use Planet eStream - Video on demand, Live Streaming, TV & Radio Recording, Digital Signage and More..., which I am very happy with. Does everything I need it to do and nice and easy to use.
Ant Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 Another Xibo user here. Originally had a couple of Raspberry Pis as clients, but as I wanted to use the updated features of the newer versions of Xibo, I upgraded them to Minix X5 Mini Android units and have expanded our quantity since. These have worked really well with all I have thrown at them. Have also managed to get the Xibo client running nicely on an Amazon Fire TV Stick. Although we do have data points in a couple of our TV locations, all of our clients have wifi, so makes expanding to new locations very easy.
ModeratelyGruntled Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 For those looking to embed bbc news... TVCatchup is your friend!
mrbios Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 Has anyone had experience of this free digital signage I use that, found it to be really good. Been using it for about 3-4 years now and only using the free solution...none of the paid for features, in fact apart from knowing that there are paid for features i haven't even bothered to look them up as it seems to do everything we want!
mdrabble Posted December 7, 2015 Posted December 7, 2015 Slightly off topic.... Xibo and noodle RSS feeds, how do you change the font size on the text? I can change the title and author but not the actual feed text.
bossman Posted December 8, 2015 Posted December 8, 2015 @mrbios What units do you run it on if I may be so bold? Looking for a decent coupling of micro atx and a good 32" display monitor for our reception area which is small hence the 32" but with a vision to have more 50" displays around the school for the different subjects to display their offerings. Cheers
TechMonkey Posted December 8, 2015 Posted December 8, 2015 Slightly off topic.... Xibo and noodle RSS feeds, how do you change the font size on the text? I can change the title and author but not the actual feed text. If I understand correctly you want Xibo to display the text bigger? Under "Appearance" tab of the RSS feed tick the "Override the template" check box. You will then have a WISYWIG edit box where you can adjust font face, size, colour, etc. I find it easier to click the "Source" button and edit the HTML as sometimes I have found it gets confused. There are 2 tags for the text, one is [Title] and the other is [Description], depending on what you are displaying. HTH
mrbios Posted December 8, 2015 Posted December 8, 2015 @mrbios What units do you run it on if I may be so bold? Looking for a decent coupling of micro atx and a good 32" display monitor for our reception area which is small hence the 32" but with a vision to have more 50" displays around the school for the different subjects to display their offerings. Cheers We've got some little celeron based gigabyte brix PCs that sit behind the TVs mounted on walls, used to run it on some 5 year old atom based PCs too but they died of exhaustion Seems to run on almost anything! Had the Intel compute sticks existed when we purchased the brix i'd have probably gone for those though. Worth noting that it caches any content though so make sure you have enough storage space if you start streaming large videos. In our main reception we just have a 42" TV mounted high up on a wall with the PC nicely tucked away behind it out of sight. 1
gshaw Posted December 8, 2015 Posted December 8, 2015 Do they have an auto-on feature in BIOS for when power returns from a power loss? My main frustration with our current clients is they require physically switching on in the event of power loss. @dry just checked the BIOS on one and there is an auto-on when USB connected. Ours seem to always come back on even if I flick the socket switch off so I'd say yes to your question above 1
Kineas Posted December 10, 2015 Posted December 10, 2015 Rise Vision! Free if you avoid their file storage and use your own. Uses a Chrome plugin, so it works on any device that can install Google Chrome. 1
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now