Digital Signage Clients - What are you using?

[dry]

Got a sales email from ebuyer earlier and in the 4 seconds between the email being visible in Outlook and me leaning to press Delete on my keyboard I saw this Asus Vivo for £129.98: Asus VivoPC VM42 Nettop

 

Celeron 2957U

2GB RAM

32GB SSD

802.11ac

Bluetooth 4.0

1GBPS LAN

Win10 Home

 

4x USB 3.0 & 2x USB 2.0, SDHC Reader

HDMI + DisplayPort

 

 

Got me wondering what everyone is using as clients in your Digital Signage setup? We went for MeLe PCG03s originally, at £139.99 each in 2015. Quite impressed at the price of this Asus!

[pete]

Of late, we've been using USFF HP 8000/8200 series with a new SSD as we had a load after refreshing hardware.

[hardtailstar]

We use HP Compute sticks along with MS PowerPoint

[dhicks]

Got me wondering what everyone is using as clients in your Digital Signage setup? We went for MeLe PCG03s originally, at £139.99 each in 2015.

 

We bought a bunch of 2009-era Acer Aspire Revo RT3090 "Nettop" machines, originally for use in the staffroom, but they've now mostly migrated off to be digital signage machines. Not, actually, a dissimilar specification to that given above - 2GB of RAM, we've upgraded them to SSD at some point, and the processor is probably an older version, but not bad for 8-year-old machines. They work very well as ChromeOS machine via CloudReady - we have some in our Reception classrooms for the very small children to use. We haven't yet moved over to ChromeOS for digital signage, but it's something that's probably worth our doing as having a Windows machine load up a Powerpoint file from a shared folder is getting a bit clunky.

 

I have tried one of VeryPCs new OPS PCs with CloudReady, but no luck so far. That would be ideal, if possibly a little pricy, as you could then get a display with a proper OPS slot and have the computer powered by the screen.

Edited February 21, 2017 by dhicks

[Mjstone1]

We use an Acer Chromebox which is set to load a web page full screen when started up. We use Google Web Designer to keep the page up to date which meets the needs of the screens

[Oaktech]

Of late, we've been using USFF HP 8000/8200 series with a new SSD as we had a load after refreshing hardware.

 

Same here...

[cooper]

Yo Deck and a Pi.

First screen is free

[dry]

Thanks, interesting that a few of you are recycling old USFF desktops. The PCG03s we originally bought are so small and light, they slot into the gap between the VESA mounts and the displays themselves.

 

They've been fairly reliable over the almost 2 years that we've had them, but sadly seem to be lacking in things like BIOS options to start the PC on power resume after a power loss, expandable storage space etc. Guess it's the risk you take when buying a no-name Chinese make!

 

Side note: I seriously can't believe it's been 2 years since I installed the digital signage here. Literally feels like a couple of weeks ago....

[PrimaryNetMan]

Asus Chromebits + Chrome Sign Builder

[Chaniel]

We've been using old damaged laptops, usually with hinge/case damage that isn't worth repairing. We're pairing those with Xibo.

 

In the school I recently left we used a mixture of Intel NUCs and things like the Acer Revo, we specced them with 64GB SSDs, Pentium procs and 4GB of RAM, believe they cost about £150 each and again they were paired with Xibo. Worked well for our purposes!

[sarahstacey]

Hi,

I'm looking at getting a Chromebit to use as digital signage with a view to purchasing some more if successful. Are you happy with them? We want to use them for notices and probably some photo displays.

They look great but I just wanted to get someone's opinion that actually uses them.

 

Many thanks

 

Sarah

[Passat1983ICTech]

running VM on server for the software then after this its 4 nuc's on the screens works well

[Brimstone]

I see plenty of screens off in schools due to the over complicated nature of expensive digital signage solutions

 

Use Trilby TV, works with Apple TV, Firestick, Chrome platform agnostic and as simple as it can get...

 

https://www.trilbytv.co.uk

[SamanthaD]

We use OneLAN - more geared towards business but it means that we can have standard slides going out across campus whilst still allowing local departments to customise their own slides. Works for us.

[Al_NetSupport]

I see plenty of screens off in schools due to the over complicated nature of expensive digital signage solutions

 

Use Trilby TV, works with Apple TV, Firestick, Chrome platform agnostic and as simple as it can get...

 

https://www.trilbytv.co.uk

 

Got to say, of all the systems I have seen ( and played with), Trilby looks the easiest to use and provides a really engaging display. I used Xibo and others before too, but often the real barrier to school signage systems is a safe way teachers can be given access and are quickly able to share and broadcast content. Trilby makes that really easy. ( and, no i don't resell it )

 

Al.