Canteen Digital Signage

[Bankesy]

Hiya,

 

Anybody got any thoughts\good suggestions around this please?

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

Don’t?

 

Generally don’t bother with anything linked to menus, as you never get told updates and then get no end of complaints when you’re showing stuff not on offer!

 

We try to keep it more generic/automated, eg upcoming events syncs via school calendar/twitter/Facebook etc or housw points/rewards

 

Steve

[TechMonkey]

Depends on what you want and what you want to spend.

 

You can set up Xibo locally for free and use what ever you have as clients. It isn't what I would call user friendly though, so you could end up having to update it.

Trilby TV is nice and simple and could be extended to give other information. Any HTTPS URL that doesn't need authentication can be displayed.

Uniguest have solutions that can tie into your EPOS (if you have one) to update the menu automatically.

 

Then you have home made systems like using Google Slides and pushing that out as a kiosk to a ChromeStick or Chrome browser.

[HarryMonkey]

Poster Booking is free (for the 1st 10 devices), works from a firestick. Easy to use (or so I've been told).

 

https://posterbooking.com/

Edited May 17, 2023 by HarryMonkey

[Ex-MGSTech]

We use Xibo and trained the chef how to update it. Edited May 17, 2023 by Ex-MGSTech

[Brax]

Xibo is good once you've got it setup and going. To echo Steve's post keep it as generic as you can and sync what you can to it because otherwise you get inundated with "Why aren't we putting this up on the displays?!" constantly.

[dhicks]

Anybody got any thoughts\good suggestions around this please?

 

For hardware, I've found a Raspberry Pi 3 (specifically the 3, not the 4, as the 4 needs more power over USB) powered by the USB port of a modern smart TV to be a pretty simple / affordable solution - you turn the TV on, the Pi turns on and boots and away you go. We have a couple on timers in our front lobby - we switched to mechanical timers in the end as the TVs own built-in timer function didn't seem to be very reliable.

 

For setup, I have a simple script available that can configure a fresh install of Raspberry Pi OS as a kiosk machine, with Chrome loading a supplied URL:

 

https://github.com/dhicks6345789/device-config

 

For content, we use Google Slides, with the publish-to-web option to give us a URL we can point Chrome at - it's nice and simple to give other users edit access as needed.

[Chris_Cook]

I'd recommend basing it around Google Slides if you have it. You can then just let them update it. As others have said, I would try and avoid being involved in the day to day running of it and just provide technical/system support.

 

Chrome sign builder is good if you have something running chrome os you can attach.

[SamanthaD]

We use OneLAN for our digital signage, expensive but quite powerful in that we have it set up so that users are allocated to a group in AD, the OneLAN CMS then uses LDAP to match user to a media folder so they can manage their own content.

 

For the cafe, we also have timed playlists so a breakfast, lunch and afternoon menu can be uploaded, with separate content folders for each.

 

However, ask yourself how useful it will be. The staff wanted the screens behind the servery, meaning a) the text would have to be huge to be readable and b) it was likely to be obscured by staff. So I suggested mounting it in front of the servery, getting it closer and so customers can make their choice before they reached the counter - this is what we did. Now the cafe have decided "it doesnt work with our customer journey" and now only use it for advertising their events and showing where to order or collect food and drink. Kind of pointless!

[JRA]

If I were doing it "properly" I'd use Xibo.

 

Having done it "quick and dirty" semi-recently I've got a Raspberry Pi set up with rpisurv that just plays a .m4v on rotation. When I get 10mins I'll stick a Samba share on the source for the lil movie it plays so users can drag a file with a specific name into a specific folder and then restart the box and have it display the movie over and over. Movie is just an exported Powerpoint, because everyone likes Powerpoint.

[Jaan]

We us Google slides after moving away from Xibo...... Staff has edit access where needed. They get nagged not us if something is out of date. We just check the tech is working!

[NixNerd]

We've a looping powerpoint display showing menu choices for our kitchen signage. Additionally, we've other Xibo based signage displays scattered around the site too. We've found both solutions to be pretty straightforward and problem free.

[dafyddf]

Reading this thread is making me wonder whether our piSignage-based displays are worth it... All we do is show jpgs lol, and the software isn't great to deploy on our thin clients - server-side, it doesn't run in pm2 so it's an eyesore every time I remote into the application server. I might give Slides-based signage a go. Edited May 24, 2023 by dafyddf