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My higher education institution has bought every generation of these for Digital Signage since 2014. We use an open-source (abandonware?) Ruby project called Co
by xd1936 3y ago
My higher education institution has bought every generation of these for Digital Signage since 2014. We use an open-source (abandonware?) Ruby project called Concerto[1] to generate webpages, and the Chrome OS Kiosk Mode[2] feature to boot these things straight to chrome-less full-screen web browsers that load Concerto webpages. It's a nice setup, but I do worry about the future support of both of those pillars.
1. https://github.com/concerto/concerto https://github.com/concerto/concerto
2. https://chromeenterprise.google/os/kiosk-and-digital-signage/ https://chromeenterprise.google/os/kiosk-and-digital-signage...
- soylentcola 3y agoWe used AOpen Chromeboxes for a while, but they stopped getting updates after several years. That part is somewhat understandable, but given that they were full ChromeOS devices, it was less than ideal. Ended up replacing them with Brightsign (which I believe is just Roku for signage) boxes and the campus started subscribing to Appspace for hosting content. It's been...ok.
- binkHN 3y agoI think I have an AOpen Chromebox 2; still getting updates.
- soylentcola 3y agoOurs were purchased before that second gen was available. They're perfectly capable of connecting to a remote service to download and display slides, but without security and other updates, they were no longer reliable for our uses. A simpler (and cheaper) device made more sense for as little as we needed them for. I kept one of them to fiddle with at home though.
- xd1936 3y agoYup. We're just now (as in the last year) starting to see bugs with our first-generation Chromeboxes (Asus CN60) that reached end-of-life in 2019 and stopped getting updates. Some server-side change has been intermittently causing them to fail to boot into the Kiosk Mode Chrome app lately. It sucks that we're looking at replacing perfectly good hardware just because of Google's unwillingness to continue providing updates.
- tootie 3y agoAre these cheaper than Beightsign players?
- xd1936 3y agoI don't know? How much are Brightsign Players? These are around $300–$350 with the hardware itself plus one-time management license cost. We liked that there was no ongoing subscription cost.