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No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft (or IBM) :) A lot of professional grade display screens also come with a built in computer running embedded Windows.

No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft (or IBM) :) A lot of professional grade display screens also come with a built in computer running embedded Windows. Although for web based signs a Raspberry Pi works really well: https://shutdownscanner.com/Blog/Posts/Raspberry-Pi-Digital-Sign https://shutdownscanner.com/Blog/Posts/Raspberry-Pi-Digital-...

terhechte 13y ago
I found that there's a great gap or schism between common digital signage projects. On the one hand you have solutions that just want to display 5 pictures or a simple website (current dish of the day, bus tables, train schedules, current news) and on the other hand you have high profile vendors that want (multiple) absolutely stutter free HD content (with huge bitrates because so much is going on in their animations), animate this in 3D, dynamic content (i.e. current weather, time, stocks, etc), and integration with other external technologies / systems (light control, sound control, etc). Thankfully, nowadays most of this can be achieved with a fullscreen chromium or webkit, but you need serious hardware for that. The problem arises if people buy the lightweight hardware like a Pi and then try to run the complex stuff. Also, most people seem to ignore just how important the backend / cms system for these installations is. The content that is deployed on systems is already out of sync as soon as you plug the systems in :) I still remember fondly how I watched one of our competitors distribute content (on a digital signage fair) to his systems using WS FTP for Windows. That's not a solution you should sell to a demanding customer, he'll simply call you whenever he wants a new image on there.
- jsingleton 13y ago
  We built a custom web page that auto detects and scales to different resolutions. We also made a self service admin interface but it was just text and a few images. The Pi has a surprisingly powerful GPU but I've not tried HW acceleration from the browser. Something to look into maybe.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    I haven't looked into the Pi yet, we used Mac Minis and frequently ran into its limits, so I just thought that it should be even more problematic on the Pi. I do think that the market for small and simple solutions (webpage with a bit of text, images, etc) is far more interesting and bigger than trying to sell to the Fortune 500 like my former company does, because these have really difficult requirements, and they're prone to simply rolling their own solution. So in short I think doing Digital Signage on the Pi is a great idea :)
- w0rd-driven 13y ago
  We've had someone put a graphically intensive Flash application on Atom processors. Their reasoning was lower heat output and very small footprint. There are newer i5's that are maybe twice as big that absolutely blow these things away. Customers want cheap and I don't blame them but it took a second iteration of the shitty Atom line, one with a proper GFX card from Nvidia to have this display in any usable capacity. Atom/Netbook is absolutely not the way to go for Flash content. I would wager the Pi would be roughly identical unless you could leverage a beefy GFX card. If you weren't using Flash, you could practically use anything. HTML5/CSS3 animations have come quite a distance but its definitely not 1:1 still.

terhechte 13y ago

I found that there's a great gap or schism between common digital signage projects. On the one hand you have solutions that just want to display 5 pictures or a simple website (current dish of the day, bus tables, train schedules, current news) and on the other hand you have high profile vendors that want (multiple) absolutely stutter free HD content (with huge bitrates because so much is going on in their animations), animate this in 3D, dynamic content (i.e. current weather, time, stocks, etc), and integration with other external technologies / systems (light control, sound control, etc). Thankfully, nowadays most of this can be achieved with a fullscreen chromium or webkit, but you need serious hardware for that. The problem arises if people buy the lightweight hardware like a Pi and then try to run the complex stuff. Also, most people seem to ignore just how important the backend / cms system for these installations is. The content that is deployed on systems is already out of sync as soon as you plug the systems in :) I still remember fondly how I watched one of our competitors distribute content (on a digital signage fair) to his systems using WS FTP for Windows. That's not a solution you should sell to a demanding customer, he'll simply call you whenever he wants a new image on there.

jsingleton 13y ago
We built a custom web page that auto detects and scales to different resolutions. We also made a self service admin interface but it was just text and a few images. The Pi has a surprisingly powerful GPU but I've not tried HW acceleration from the browser. Something to look into maybe.
- terhechte 13y ago
  I haven't looked into the Pi yet, we used Mac Minis and frequently ran into its limits, so I just thought that it should be even more problematic on the Pi. I do think that the market for small and simple solutions (webpage with a bit of text, images, etc) is far more interesting and bigger than trying to sell to the Fortune 500 like my former company does, because these have really difficult requirements, and they're prone to simply rolling their own solution. So in short I think doing Digital Signage on the Pi is a great idea :)
w0rd-driven 13y ago
We've had someone put a graphically intensive Flash application on Atom processors. Their reasoning was lower heat output and very small footprint. There are newer i5's that are maybe twice as big that absolutely blow these things away. Customers want cheap and I don't blame them but it took a second iteration of the shitty Atom line, one with a proper GFX card from Nvidia to have this display in any usable capacity. Atom/Netbook is absolutely not the way to go for Flash content. I would wager the Pi would be roughly identical unless you could leverage a beefy GFX card. If you weren't using Flash, you could practically use anything. HTML5/CSS3 animations have come quite a distance but its definitely not 1:1 still.