Inexpensive Digital Signage

 
      Ah,  digital signage.  A vertical market if there ever was one.  I have researched many systems and all have struck me as either very complicated or expensive or both.  I hate to spend money when you don't have to.  So the challenge was to create an inexpensive (but not cheap) digital signage system.

   So I assembled these tools to create a digital signage system:

• Firefox (free)
• Tab Mix Plus Firefox Add-on (free)
• Tab Slideshow Firefox Add-on (free)
• Google Drive (free)
• Google Calendar (free) 
• Wix website creation site unlimited package ($149/year)
• Feeder Ninja - Wix App ($3.99/month)
• Tint - Wix App
• Older Mac Laptop 
• Flatscreen TV

    Here were the challenges in creating this system and the tools I used to overcome them:

• Make the pages have a nice, consistent, clean and professional look :  Wix was the secret to getting a nice looking (and hosted) set of pages to display.  Wix has some nice layouts and playing around with the site on your own you should be able to figure out the look and feel you want. 
• Make Firefox behave like a display kiosk: the Tab Mix Plus Firefox add-on hide the windows tabs (Window > Extensions > Tab Mix Plus > Preferences > Display > Hide the tab bar > Always) and Tab Slideshow (allows you to open multiple windows and cycle through them), hide your navigation, bookmark and add-on bar in Firefox (after you setup your pages)(View > Toolbars > uncheck all) and Tab Mix Plus allows you to set Reloads on the pages you choose to keep the content fresh (right click on the page and choose "Reload Tab Every" > choose your time frame and also make sure you check "Enable: x minutes" on the top right.  I choose 30 minutes for my news feed and twitter/facebook pages.
  
• Have updated content that pulls from your existing social media:  Wix again has some great Apps from their App market that help deliver this content:
• RSS News Feeds: Feeder Ninja:  this Wix app allows you to pull in news feeds directly into your website.
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• Twitter and Facebook: Tint: this Wix app allows you to pull in Facebook and Twitter Feeds in an attractive display.

• Allow users to easily contribute content: this is where Google Drive comes into play.  I created  a shared folder of Google documents.  I used the word processing document type, set the page to be in landscape (File > Page Setup) and paper size to "Statement .5." x 8.5" (File > Page Setup).  So now the users simply edit the Google doc which in turn I publish to the web (File > Publish to Web) and then I copy the "Embed code" go back to my Wix page editor and (Add > Apps > HTML  > double click on the added item > settings and choose Mode > HTML code and paste my embed code from my Google doc in the "HTML/ embed code" field.  Resize the added element and bam you have a page that users can add content by merely editing a Google doc. 
• Add a weather widget: Oh boy.  This one was tougher than I thought.  Again,  the challenge is you are pulling your content through a web browser and sometimes weather pages have alot of adds (weather.com) or widgets you add use java and time out or quit fetching data.  As of the writing of this entry I found that widget from from forcast.io works the best.  It is clean and if you use your reload page options (see above) you can keep the content up-to-date.  This blog post describes how to create the widget.   This will create an embeddable HTML and using the Google doc method described above you can easily add  nice, clean ad-free weather information to your digital signage. 
  
• Calendars:  Google Calendar allows you subscribe to iCal feeds.  Our school website has calendars that can publish iCal feeds.  I created two calendars: one that pulls from our all school feed and another that pulls from our athletic calendar.   Just like creating embed HTML code with our Google doc above you can create very customized embed code for your Google calendar.  Select your calendar > preferences > go to the "Embed This Calendar"  and click on the "Customize the color, size, and other options" link.  You can then make your calendar view in an agenda format and you can take away the title, print icon, etc.  Just like we did with the Google Doc above we copy this embed code, go to our Wix site and create an embedded HTML code element into our site. Note: you do not have to set this page to reload as it automatically pulls the data by itself. 
• Final Notes:  Turn off updating on Firefox > Preferences > Advanced > Update > "Never check for updates . . ." and turn off OS updating on your laptops.  I had a great time creating this signage and I hope this post will be helpful if you want to try to create your own dynamic, inexpensive but great-looking digital signage.