ICTNUT Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 Hey all, Ihave been asked to look into setting up a number of screens around the school to display daily info. Just wondering how you guys do it, if you do that is !
indie Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 We've got a Net Top Box from OneLAN and it's ace. It's a Linux Small Form Factor PC with some cool software that you hook up to a plasma or monitor. It's also got a Digital tuner in it so you can have say news 24 on the screen. It supports RSS feeds, links to external web pages, etc.
Netman Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 @Indie - how much dosh for one of them there boxes...? if you don't mind sayin' of course...
indie Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 Off the top of my head it was bout £1200, sounds expensive but that covers the cost of the hardware and their software that runs it all very well. It's a web based interface, you design your screen by splitting it up into areas, then apply content to each area. It'll display movies, graphics, html, loads of stuff. What i've done with ours is write some PHP to grab today's room bookings out of our MRBS database, looks pretty sweet!
ICTNUT Posted July 4, 2006 Author Posted July 4, 2006 £1395 For a Net top Box (Digital Ready) Just spoke to them, transmitts VGA over cat5e too ;-)
edie209 Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 Indie do yo have to have one box per monitor ? or can you feed the signal down cat5 to to lots of monitors. Funny enough I have just been asked the same thing. ICT nut you must have posted as I asked indie
indie Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 I've not read anything about inbuilt VGA over Cat5, our box is a little old now though so it may have been added into it lately. Impressive it has been though! You could just use a VGA splitter or buy a VGA over Cat5 solution.
ICTNUT Posted July 4, 2006 Author Posted July 4, 2006 I stand corrected, Smart-e (the poeple that do vga over cat5e) did do an internal 6 port card for the Net Top Box but have pulled that due to "Issues" So here goes, If I want to run 6 screens around the school it would cost: £1395 for the net top box £499 for the 5 port vga to cat5e transmitter (i want to run six screens so I need 2 of them) £279 for the single port receiver (I need six of these) £4043 is the total plus screens and mounts. Seems a little pricey to me.
plexer Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 http://www.infralink.co.uk http://www.linkcast.co.uk Infralink do a school information system. There's more infomation about it on the second link. Ben
MkII Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 Gotta do the same here, except I've been given a coule of caseless k6/2/500s to do it with! MattPant does it at his place on a couple of screens - well one 3500 lumens projector in their foyer [good for drying off wet kids too! ] and a TFT in reception. He uses a laptop one end with a dead screen, and a converter to Cat5 which cost him <£100. He then bought an add-in to powerpoint from http://www.presentationpoint.com that seems to do what you've said indie, plus you update the presentation silently so it looks slick [also around £100]. That's one cheap way of doing it.
MkII Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 http://www.infralink.co.uk http://www.linkcast.co.uk Infralink do a school information system. There's more infomation about it on the second link. Ben Requested a quote - a standard quote is shown after the request:- Description UnitCost Supply of, initial setup and initial training of the Lincast Digital Information Software £1,500.00 Supply and installation of 8 port Broadcast unit £251.00 Ssupply and installation of remote VGA converter (one required per screen) £68.00 19†LCD Monitor complete with wall mount brackets £227.00 30†LCD Monitor with Wall Mount £784.00
john Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 I have a small piece of software thats is DirectX based, you modify some code and then it runs on an old PC. I think that it may have been written by a member of staff a while ago or a students as I cannot find anything on Google about it. It displays text over pictures, you put it all in one file and modify two text files, one for the text and one for pictures and font colour, works well. Updates smoothly as well, just copy the text file to the machine and it does it all itself. I will find its name and then let you know and see if it was a commercial package. Will be perfect for your old K6/2/500's
MkII Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 Well thanks for that John I recon that they really want something very flash looking and will spend a pile of dosh on it anyway, so i#m struggling to motivate myself on this one. Also found this recently [insert web pages into powerpoint slides]: LiveWeb : http://skp.mvps.org/liveweb.htm
sahmeepee Posted July 4, 2006 Posted July 4, 2006 We've had demos of a few systems and we're soon going to have a demo from a company called Wireless Fidelity: http://www.wireless-fidelity.co.uk I've seen a Powerpoint about their system and it looks quite good. It uses a server (or beefy workstation) connected to your existing network and a load of tiny WinCE devices attached to your plasma screens. There's a scheduling app which lets you push out different stuff to different screens. The formats it supports are surprisingly varied: HTML / Flash / MPEG 1/2 / DivX4/5 / JPEG / MP3 / AC3 / Word / Excel.... From the blurb it suggests that the WinCE devices are actually reading the files rather than a streaming video of what the files look like, so unless you're chucking loads of MPEG at it your network shouldn't choke. Governors seem to be pushing the idea, but I couldn't see much point for the cost. But then there's the advertising revenue...
Ric_ Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 There's a product called the MediaCat too that does this job. Speak to Ian at Qual (0117 373 0010).
plexer Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 It's really finding/writing the software to display the information where you want it. Some sort of webpage reading from a database of content I suppose. Then vga over cat5 modules are abundant and you can stick a lcd monitor on a wall. To duplicate the setup in other locations where you say have fibre linking your cabinets and not cat5 that you can directly tap into you just put another host machine reading from the same database in that location. Ben
Guest Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Or if you want to be really flash try something like this http://www.nodrm.com/index.php?p=104 Could use mini itx rather that a mac. Have them display some sort of CMS based intranet.
mattpant Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 Hi Guys, Like Mark mentioned before, we are running a similar setup using an old laptop running XP and PowerPoint, a 3,500 Lumen projector to get a nice big 8ft screen size on a big white wall in the schools foyer, a 17" TFT Screen further down the coridor, and a RJ45 VGA Extender to display the same image on the screens. Here's the link for the RJ45 Extender - Cheapest place I found was Maplins http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=45472&criteria=VGA%20Rj45&doy=7m7 Using the software from http://www.presentationpoint.com I create slides in PowerPoint, and can dynamically insert text/data from a Database.Excel Spreadsheet or Text File. Using their NewsPoint software I can pull in RSS news feeds to display on the screens. They also have some free software which can be used to insert slide timings for start and stop displaying certain slides at certain times or days of the week. They have another free program that you can set to automatically start playing a new slide when you drop it into a certain folder, or when a certain file has been modified it will automatically refresh and show the latest infomation. They also have a free program that you can install to Desktops and run the same slide/infomation as screensavers on unused computers in IT rooms. Hope this information helps, Regards, Matt
iking Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 "They have another free program that you can set to automatically start playing a new slide when you drop it into a certain folder, or when a certain file has been modified it will automatically refresh and show the latest infomation." I'd like to get hold of this - do you know what they are using to do this?
plexer Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 I just found some reasonably price multi point vga over cat5 extenders: http://www.pixels.uk.com/products/DataBay/AVE300.html Ben
mattpant Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 @iking The program we use to do this is called "Show Point" and can be downloaded from this link... http://www.presentationpoint.com/software/free_addons/index.htm I have created a folder on the network and set this up in the "Show Point" software as being the folder to look for changes. I then have this running on the "Digital Signage" machine. Then from any other machine on the network I can modify the PowerPoint slides or add new content to them and as soon as I press save, the screens are refreshed. It looks far better then having the screens displaying your every mouse move to modify details from the output of the Digital Signage machine! If you need anymore info then give us a shout. Regards, Matt
plexer Posted July 9, 2006 Posted July 9, 2006 Show Point looks very good does it work with Open Office though as I'd rather not have to pay for the licence on every screen pc I wanted to use. Ben
webman Posted July 9, 2006 Posted July 9, 2006 It shouldn't be too difficult to rig a linux box with a web interface to run an openoffice presentation or fullscreen firefox; it should just be a matter of permissions & telling it to run it on the local X display.
GrumbleDook Posted July 9, 2006 Posted July 9, 2006 It is the dynamic updating that is the pain in the neck. I have a .asp and access based one that has been knocked together if anyone wants to build it further. Anyone want me to upload it?
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