Digital Signage Solution

[talksr]

Hi there,

I have a digital screen in our foyer, we are using a signage solution from Atomwide. It works well, but it was quite expensive.

 

In our staff room, I have a Samsung TV and I would quite like to use it to display staff info - different info to the one above.

I have a teacher who is happy to update it and put on new info, but I am not sure what the best solution would be for this.

I have an intel compute stick, but I have found that often, it drops the wifi, even though the AP is literally 50cms on the wall away.

Sadly, the compute stick does not have an ethernet slot.

 

Can anyone recommend to me a good solution? I need it to be easy to use so even a teacher with very little understanding can get onto it. My idea with the compute stick was just to run VNC and install the viewer on the teacher's computer so she could remotely connect to the screen.

 

I have also seen a Google Chrombox in use. Are they any good?

[dhicks]

I have also seen a Google Chrombox in use. Are they any good?

 

We have three Chromebox-style PCs (actually older small PCs running CloudReady) set up to show a Google Slides presentation on loop. Works okay, and having staff edit content is simply a case of giving them edit access to the appropriate Slides document. Slides is a bit limited compared to, say, PowerPoint - there doesn't seem to be a sensible way of embedding video in a slide and having it transition at the correct time, for instance.

[pete]

What're they putting on? Powerpoint, video, still images, mix of all of that?

 

You could look at something like Screenly that runs on a Raspberry Pi. Demo here: Screenly OSE

 

You'd need to export powerpoints as video, but apart from that.....

 

(There's also Xibo, which probably has too much of a learning curve if they're doing it).

[qwerty94]

Intel stick, with usb to ethernet adaptor, then Xibo is our setup. VNC to screen if need be, but xibo is managed from a web interface.

[DrBeaker]

If you've got the time and inclination Xibo is good. It's free. I enjoyed using it for the most part, it was reliable but it's not particularly intuitive. Our admin teams struggled with it. I got some pretty impressive stuff to work on it by just playing around with it however.

 

In one role we just used old PCs that were no longer fit for production use. If one failed, I had loads of them spare anyway. I was particularly chuffed when I'd set it up, tweaked various settings etc and as a result got one of those old PCs to over a year of uptime - whereas a colleague had replaced a working PC with a firestick solution that crashed at least twice a week. Comparing his solution to mine - I just set it and forget it. It did make me chuckle when his constantly crashed and my response was "well, mine's fine" . That was all to prove a point anyway to be honest.

 

But as it's not really a mission-critical service for me now in another role, it's on the back burner for me.

[FishCustard]

We have three Chromebox-style PCs (actually older small PCs running CloudReady) set up to show a Google Slides presentation on loop. Works okay, and having staff edit content is simply a case of giving them edit access to the appropriate Slides document. Slides is a bit limited compared to, say, PowerPoint - there doesn't seem to be a sensible way of embedding video in a slide and having it transition at the correct time, for instance.

We do this with Chromebits, and for simple "what's happening this week" type displays it works wonderfully.

[meakjoe]

I've found Xibo to be pretty good. As people say the web interface can be a bit confusing and not the easiest to work around for most people.

 

A way round this that I found on the internet is to set up a webpage on a server with IIS, and then put the content on there. Put a shortcut on the Editors desktop and give them permission, then just open the html file within Word to edit easily. Embed the same webpage within the layout in Xibo and there you go.

[MarkSixsmith]

I'd be using chromebox type pc for that also, we use planet estream with chrome players.

[Chris_Cook]

Xibo is great if you want full on digital signage with schedules etc.

 

We use google slides for some of ours where we just want a simple slide show. This can be shown on a Chromebox or raspberry pi for relatively little cost and effort.

[DrBeaker]

Update on this is that Xibo now uses Docker as part of the installation, which does seem to complicate matters somewhat.

[fredbayker]

I found that docker stops working if you log out, I tried to install it as a service but didn’t go well if memory serves my right

[DrBeaker]

I found that docker stops working if you log out, I tried to install it as a service but didn’t go well if memory serves my right

https://xibo.org.uk/docs/setup/xibo-for-docker-on-windows-10-64-bit

 

"At the time of writing, there is a bug with Docker for Windows which means that when your Windows computer is restarted, the CMS will appear to lose all your Media, Layouts and Configuration.Your content is safe! Until this issue is resolved, after a reboot, you will need to manually restart the CMS containers to restore the content. To do so, you would run the following from the PowerShell command prompt:cd c:\Xibodocker-compose stopdocker-compose startwhere \Xibo-docker is the directory you’ve installed the CMS in."

 

Is that any help?

 

There does seem to be a lot of confusion regarding docker and Xibo etc. To be fair, it doesn't exactly seem straightforward to get setup.

Edited May 26, 2019 by DrBeaker

[3s-gtech]

We run a pre-Docker version of Xibo. It’s pretty good - occasional crashes and failed video feedback - I think a regular scheduled restart of the program sorts both.

[mavhc]

Seems like it's way easier to run docker on linux, doesn't have to reboot every month then either

[Danp]

I use yodeck on a Raspberry Pi for a couple of screens, very easy to use.

[Silica]

Amazon Firesticks with ScreenCloud. Not the cheapest, but works damn well.