Using an LCD TV as an electronic noticeboard

[techman]

Hello,

 

Going to use an LCD TV as an electronic noticeboard and connect it to a Windows XP PC on the network.

 

I want to update this noticeboard from other computers on the network. Will be using Powerpoint for this on the PC attached to the LCD TV.

 

Will Remote Desktop in Windows XP work for updating the noticeboard from other PC's on the network?

 

Or is there a better way e.g., other software etc.?

 

Thanks,

 

techman.

[Guest TheLibrarian]

Remote Desktop should be fine, you'd need to make sure that there is an auto-logon though because after rebooting from the RDP session you'd end up having to visit the box to log in and start the presentation / message software.

[3s-gtech]

We do this with a mapped network drive, and a piece of software called ShowPoint (free). ShowPoint is set to run the newest presentation in the mapped drive, so when we update and save the file, it automatically starts the Powerpoint presentation that is most recent. It's set to auto-login and auto-start ShowPoint, so it's a seamless run from turning on the PC. We can also run multiple PCs from the one network file.

[techman]

@thelibrarian

 

Thanks for the reply. How do I set up the auto-logon?

[3s-gtech]

You can do this very easily with the free MS tool TweakUI available here

[plexer]

setup a share on the pc then run powerpoint viewer on it. You could schedule a kill and restart every hour or so on the process.

[techman]

Used Showpoint to set up the presentation.

 

Great piece of software.

 

Thanks to all for the replies.

[BTCC_Fan]

We use showpoint on our reception screen too.

[AngryTechnician]

How do I set up the auto-logon?

 

1. Start -> Run (or Win+R)
   
2. Type control userpasswords2 and press Enter.
   
3. Untick the "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer" box and click Apply.
   
4. Enter logon username and password as required.
   

 

Works on XP, Vista, and 7.

[john]

We also use Showpoint and it works well As part of it we use TweakUI on XP machines and they auto-logon fine with that as you can also set it as part of that.

[pritchardavid]

For our screens (3 at the moment) soon to have about another three running when the building work is done

 

We have a netbook attached to each screen

 

I made a webpage for the screens, custom dimensions so it fits the screen perfect

 

We have a 2 pages, it redirect from each page after so long think it was 90 seconds, one it goes the the second page, it then goes back to the first page after the 90 seconds again, so it does that in a loop

 

We have a flash text box, with an external xml file that we can write into when we needed to, so it get the new updated text when it refreshes the screen.

 

I think that is quite a good system I made there.

 

We did use to use a net top box from OneLan, through it was pretty rubbish. Only good thing about it was anyone that had a login, could update the screen (All screen were connected just to that one box) I could give staff shortcuts to the the xml file, but I think they will make an error in it and stop it working fully

[Marci]

We just parse an RSS feed via webpage on each screen... so some screens show main news feed from our website... others show posts made into ICT Support section of forums etc. Pages refresh every 5 minutes.

 

Can log onto our website from anywhere (literally) and post updates to either relevant forum sections or main site news, and the screens will reflect the update within 5 mins.

[Bev]

We do this with a mapped network drive, and a piece of software called ShowPoint (free). ShowPoint is set to run the newest presentation in the mapped drive, so when we update and save the file, it automatically starts the Powerpoint presentation that is most recent. It's set to auto-login and auto-start ShowPoint, so it's a seamless run from turning on the PC. We can also run multiple PCs from the one network file.

 

 

This has just solved my noticeboard problem in about half an hour! Thank you so much!

[laputa01]

VNC or Logmein free as an alternative for remote access.

[ICT_GUY]

We use powerpoint and real vnc, powerpoint will happily run on it continually and only has an issue on patch Tuesday when it reboots automatically. It has no keyboard or mouse and runs on an old celeron 600 with half a gig of ram.

[penfold]

It has been mentioned other times on EG too, but I've just looked at using this Xibo and it seems quite good. I think it does everything you need.

[venture]

Yes I am gonna give it a whirl looks awsome:o