Digital signage for church entrance

[johnb]

I'm hoping to tap into the Blue Room wisdom for some suggestions which are slightly out of my knowledge area, but feel like they should be solvable.....

 

At my church we're looking to put 1 or 2 screens in the entrance way to serve a couple of different purposes. We want to be able to use them for local presentations in the entrance space, a relay from the main church but also for digital signage at other times. I'm currently pondering the best way to combine all three uses of the screens in a sensible setup that is both simple and straight-forward to use (I'll avoid the phrase idiot proof for now) but achieves all the aims. I've done some searching back through previous Blue Room posts, but it does look like the last digital signage threads are a while ago, and I had a few different questions as well.

 

So key things I'm looking for advice on are:

 

1 - Suggestions for a low cost digital signage solution for stills and possibly video clips to run in a loop. The ability to manage content and schedule when things are showing remotely would be a bonus at the moment, so that probably would mean including a basic level of cloud hosting. We're not adverse to spending a some money on this, however since this is early days and for a church then keeping the running costs down would be useful. We can see possibilities for at least two more locations for screens in the future so ensuring that costs don't get out of hand as the screen count goes up does matter.

 

2 - I'm thinking that a device separate to the actual screen would be useful - if we go down more than one screen in the space I'm inclined to run a single device and then use the same distribution to the screen as we use for the other purposes (4 in 1 out switch into DA style setup).

 

3 - How to schedule when the screens come on and off with a minimum of a 7 day timer window and multiple slots per day. This really needs to be be able to be done without having to visit each screen, so I started looking at the smart switches and smart fused spur items as an option, but wondering if there is a better way to achieve this.

 

4 - With multiple possible inputs we need a way to ensure that when the screens come on they default to the digital signage setup, but then provide a simple way for a user to override and select other inputs. Even better would be a way of scheduling the input as we know every Sunday morning it should be on the relay feed, however I think this would break the simple video routing setup as well as adding a lot more cost/complexity somewhere along the line!

 

 

As I said, this all feels possible, however I'm interested in how other people cope with this style of challenge and ideally for proven solutions rather than having to experiment here.

 

Cheers

John

[Dave m]

People know more than me about digital signage but my last place used two.Pretty sure they were modified Samsung.

Proper signage TVs have built in programming that allow on/off periodsOurs generally just ran PowerPoint on a loop

[Stuart91]

Small media players are dirt cheap and relatively simple to set up and use. They can take a USB stick or SD card, and simply play everything in the folder out of an HDMI output. You could have one player, in a central position, with the HDMI distributed to each screen. Either make sure the screens you choose have multiple HDMI inputs, or put a simple switch beside each to choose between signage, relay feed, and local input.

 

That's the simplest way of making it happen. It's easier than updated one stick for each screen, but involves minimal spend on kit and no ongoing costs.

 

There is lots more that you can get into, some open-source signage systems use a Raspberry PI or similar at each screen. The main advantage of this is that you can run any material on any screen, and schedule different things to be shown at different times.

 

I think for the screen timing, smart sockets are as good as anything. I use the Hive system for a lot of things that it wasn't really intended for and it's been perfect. Other cheaper options are available though, especially if all you need is sockets and no heating control etc.

 

Switching the inputs is probably best done manually, you'd have to spend a lot of money to eliminate one button push. (Plus there are other complications - will it track when the clocks change etc. etc.)

[timsabre]

Look up Brightsign for commercial products to do this. I've tried to do it with a little media player box and found them to quite often need manual intervention. Same with raspberry pi. Both of those a lot cheaper options than Brightsign units though.

[ninjadingle]

We do pretty much this exactly in a number of spaces. We use OneLAN as our solution but this is quite an expensive product.

 

Don't skimp on the screens. Professional Samsung is our standard (QM43R) and offers the calendar flexibility you're after. Multiple on/off options, ability to set inputs and volume on startup, even DST settings. Set and forget, they just work.

 

Another thing to factor in is security, these screens are likely to be in public places? We use TopTec secure mounts, again worth the money to protect your investment. Also stops tampering!

 

For local content we use a local priority HDMI switcher, hidden behind the screen and fed by a faceplate at low level under the screen. As long as the screen is on all you have to do is plug a device in and the screen displays it, the switcher does the work not the screen so multiple inputs isn't an issue, and means it defaults to signage once the device is removed.

 

For a player solution have a look at Xibo. It's open source and should do what you need it to. I think it might run on a Pi as well.

 

If you want any more info feel free to get in touch.

 

I think for the screen timing, smart sockets are as good as anything. I use the Hive system for a lot of things that it wasn't really intended for and it's been perfect. Other cheaper options are available though, especially if all you need is sockets and no heating control etc.

 

Problem with using smart sockets for screens is when you power them on at the socket they only go into Standby mode, so while this is good for turning them off you still need to visit each screen to turn it on. A professional screen that can take itself in and out of standby is a much better solution for digital signage.

[J Pearce]

Xibo can handle receiving rtsp or HLS streams (OS dependent), so you could run your relay as an IP stream scheduled through Xibo rather than having to switch HDMI, if you already have some sort of streaming setup running. You'd need to ascertain your requirements on latency though.

[Stuart91]

I've tried to do it with a little media player box and found them to quite often need manual intervention.

 

One snag I've found with media players (and similarly with onboard USB on the screens themselves) is that if the files have been prepared on a Mac, the player sees the icon files (which are normally hidden) and displays them. It's rather unhelpful when you get a giant, pixellated icon on screen 50% of the time.

 

So far the only way around it seems to be to use a Windows machine, either to prepare things from scratch or to simply delete the icon files that a Mac has left there.

 

I'm hopeful that a more advanced player might be clever enough to get around the problem but haven't found one yet.

[revbobuk]

We use Xibo on an Android N95 box, through an ordinary domestic TV on a timer. The downside is that when power comes on, the TV stays on standby. If you need fully automatic, you will have to go for a proper pro display. We use the hosted Xibo service, as that ensures the software version is up to date. Works well for us.

[pstewart]

Another xibo user here - we have >100 screens running on it.

 

For scheduling & user input selection - I'd look at an Extron button panel - you can get MLC 104 / 226s on ebay frequently which will do the job if your screen has an RS-232 control port.

[DrV]

For screens which need to be taken out of standby after powering on, the hardware and software required to create an infrared button push after a few seconds delay are both pretty trivial. The only variable would be the exact IR code required for a particular model of screen.

[TomHoward]

One snag I've found with media players (and similarly with onboard USB on the screens themselves) is that if the files have been prepared on a Mac, the player sees the icon files (which are normally hidden) and displays them. It's rather unhelpful when you get a giant, pixellated icon on screen 50% of the time.

 

So far the only way around it seems to be to use a Windows machine, either to prepare things from scratch or to simply delete the icon files that a Mac has left there.

 

I'm hopeful that a more advanced player might be clever enough to get around the problem but haven't found one yet.

The Mac App BlueHarvest is what we use to get around this - it cleans .DS and Store files off USB sticks. It isn't free but it's only £13.99 and the trial is free.

I *think* if you show hidden files and delete them manually on a Mac then eject it you may get away with it, I'm not sure how fast they're regenerated.

Also hitting 'repeat one' on the proper file (not the ._Filename thumbnail) works but requires manual intervention and only works if you only have one file you're looping on the device.

[Stuart91]

Thanks, Tom - all very useful.

[richard_cooper]

I use Yodeck which runs on Raspberry Pi which does everything you need, I think. I've never used the function to turn screens on and off, but is has it, and it works over HDMI CEC. One player is free with monthly or annual subscriptions for extra screens. Get an annual subscription and they'll give you a free ready configured Raspberry Pi 4

 

We've also got some BenQ digital signage screens and their in built Android based X-Sign software is pretty terrible. They're 4k screens but the built in player is only just capable of playing 720p videos smoothly...

Edited February 10, 2021 by richard_cooper

[johnb]

Thank you very much to everyone, there's a lot of information here and been trying to take it all in.

 

There are a couple of suggestions around signage software and it's interesting to see what people are using. It looks like many of the digital signage come with some built in platform, however that ties you into their back end and subscriptions and most of them seem to be in the region of $10 per screen per month which is not going to work for the church. It's interesting to see a couple of suggestions for Xibo as that had come up in previous threads and looked interesting and probably at a price point which might be more acceptable. Unfortunately the don't support the Raspberry Pi any more, but their own packaged Android box is about £80 so is a pretty good price. For a single screen the player license and cloud CMS comes in about £25 per year which I think I could get through on the basis of remote working, scheduling and not messing around with memory cards etc. Knowing how fast things change I wasn't sure if there was something better come along more recently.

 

On the screens themselves I was struggling with the justification for going with the proper digital signage screens rather than just going for standard TV's. This was particularly the case with the above when looking at the built in CMS as too expensive. So key things like scheduling the screens directly and more control over them waking up in the right state I think is probably useful. The last thing I want is the screens to come on every day and not show anything. A few years ago I put in some LG TV's but there I got lucky as when powered up they reliably came back to the same state (on and same input) as when de-powered, however not all TV's do that so it becomes a little bit of pot luck. The Extron panels that pstewart mentioned are also interesting for a user to be able to turn them on manually (if not already scheduled), but might possibly be a little overkill.

 

For the distribution and switching I like the suggestion from ninjadingle around an auto HDMI switch. It made me realise I have something similar to thissitting in the lounge switching inputs to my TV. Also looking at priority switches is interesting, however with at least 3 inputs it needs some thinking about how it will react in the different circumstances. I'm thinking it's time to have a play with the one in the lounge in different scenarios!

 

I think the next thing is to probably sign up for the Xibo demo and have a play with it and see if it looks like doing what we need. In the mean time any other thoughts or comments are gratefully recieved.

 

John

[ImagineerTom]

HDMI protocol has coding for turning screens on or off and forcing screens to switch to displaying the particular input the command is coming from so even quite a cheep flatscreen TV should be capable of doing what you want to do provided you've got a controller/replay box that is spitting out proper HDMI