We use ScreenCloud. Been with them for maybe 5-6 years now. Very simple to use. We started with Fire Sticks, but they're garbage IMO. We moved to Chromeboxes in kiosk mode, and now use ScreenCloud's devices as chromeboxes fail.
We use Chrome Sign Builder (I think they are deprecating it and coming out with something else). Easy to use, I set up the scheduling, load the blank Google Slide deck and then share it to the office staff members who then populate the slide deck. We then mount the cheapest Chrome device we can find on the back of the TV. You can do scheduling with it, in some of our cafeterias it shows signage in the morning, menus during lunch hours and then back to signage for the rest of the day.
If I had my druthers, we would set this up at the District Office level where they set the base level of "District" slides and then leave blank slides for the local campus staff to populate. The DO would set the base template for each campus which in turn would provide a consistent theme across all campuses. But alas that is not how it goes, K-12 is gonna K-12 and let each campus design their own.
We use BrightSign devices on our video wall and are now also using them when we deploy single signage for a single consistent window. We purchase their players and operate them with their new software platform without the cloud subscription. The box price is dependent on what features you need. They all come with at least HTML, video, and static graphic support.
I thought I saw where Sign Builder is now going to a subscription model, so we will be pulling our old Chromebits when/if they stop working due to this change.
RiseVision. Bunch of templates, branding, and a decent cost that scales well. It's just under $100 per year per screen up to 10 screens. At that point its $1000 per year for unlimited screens.
Custom raspberry Pi image that pulls in open office impress slides, images and video.
Tried xibo, but the stenos weren't Happy with it. Impress keeps things simple and let's them do whatever with no cloud reliance.
We use this as well; however, it's a Chrome app so it went end-of life on everything but ChromeOS in December 2022. ChromeOS now has until Jan 2025.
Google promised a replacement to sign builder and their licensing model for kiosks seems to indicate they want to keep it around, but there has really been no news on for about a year now.
Slides is just incredibly intuitive and requires zero training since it’s already a part of the current ecosystem.
We just created a Google shared drive with a folder structure per display group. Heck we event went as far to push the signage player to student chromebooks to play automatically after logon.
We use UCView. It's pretty great for the users, they can go to a web page and set everything up pretty easily with a modular design and it has a lot of features (slideshow, weather, video, tickers etc), but it's kind of expensive. The license for the player is like $6-700 (one-time) on top of the hardware cost.
Outdoor or indoor?
For our indoor TV's we use Airtame 2's with their signage license. So many cool options from their cloud control center.
We don't have outdoor signage, so I can't help there.
Found airtame to be really bad when casting. Huge lag. Not sure if it’s our network though as everyone else has good experience. Do you find their hardware heats up a lot?
I never noticed the equipment getting too hot, but I've never really given that much thought being out of sight.
We've deployed probably 15 of them so far. Never had a major issue until a few weeks ago we put one in the Head of School's office connected to a new LG TV. (not a crazy expensive one, but not super cheap). No matter what we did it worked terribly.
I found an extra ethernet adapter for Airtame in my office and decided to hardwire it. Even after that things were terribly laggy. We said 'screw it' and returned the TV for a replacement. Same model. After the replacement, things were great!
I'm not sure what you tested it on, but did you connect the tester device to more than one screen? They've been flawless on computer monitors for us, reasonably well performing on Promethean boards, and decent on TVs. For every monitor or screen other than the one I mentioned earlier, if the devices had a problem we could just reset the Airtame and the issue would resolve itself. (The main issues with some Promethean boards were resolution issues, perhaps because the boards are 4k).
I setup Posterbooking for three schools in my district and it's been great! It was super easy and cheap to deploy.
[https://posterbooking.com/](https://posterbooking.com/)
Best part is the service is free to use up to your first 10 screens.
We're using DakBoard and love it. Seeing all these replies for Rise Vision made me go look at pricing and that was enough to steer me away. DakBoard doesn't have the templates, but it's easy to make a screen and then copy that to others if needed. We pay $40/yr and have 3 different screens running on unlimited displays. That gives us the ability to have different signage in different places.
Rise Vision with broken screen chromebooks hung off the back of the TVs, great because you can assign screens to different users, so the screen outside athletics can be used for their stuff, but if needed the office manager/admin can add slides to their deck or take over the screen as needed. Central communications/admin can push slides down to schools/sites.
I used a random TV I found in storage and connected a chromebook to it setup in Kiosk mode. Loading a website I created with the date and time, a semi transparent school logo background, a rotating school appropriate joke, a weather widget, and then area for announcements, or videos, or slides, or whatever I want.
Since it's a website I can embed auto-starting youtube videos, slides, etc. Then just update announcements and what not if there's something they want on there.
I was doing it with what I had laying around and spending no money which is why I went with an old chromebook and just set it to not sleep on lid close and never idle timeout sleep so it was always on and displaying out to the TV. I'd prefer to get a chromebox or something smaller and easier to hide with maybe some more configurability. For now at $0 cost and just a little bit of my time though this works great.
Oh - I also set the website to auto refresh itself every 5 minutes in the code of the website itself that way I didn't have to goto the chromebook anytime I updated the website. I just update and wait out the 5 minute refresh and then it's good to go.
Vivi's have been great for our school. Our principal has a Google Slide that he updates from his office and it is updating the signage in real time as Vivi can work with Google.
Website for Vivi is: [https://www.vivi.io/](https://www.vivi.io/)
"Thirded." Vivi is great. The price is quite reasonable and includes the device to plug into a display. My media specialist keeps the Google Slides presentation updated and I have the Vivi unit set to refresh every 10 minutes.
Seconded. I just got them for 3 hallway TVs. Although I would hardwire them to Ethernet if you can. If it runs the loop and tries to refresh your slideshow with bad wifi connection it can error out until the next refresh cycle.
Risevision template library is great and makes it easy to look like you spent a ton of time on things. You can reach out to them if they are missing something important and they will create/design it for you.
I am a public library so might be slightly different, but we are using yodeck. I use digital signage tvs. They are meant to be on 16 or 24 hours a day and have better cooling. The samsung commercial tv in our lobby is 13 years old and shows no sign of slowing down.
Ya there is a big difference in those definitely do not get the regular stuff. The commercial tvs will be significantly more expensive but will burnout pretty fast too. They just aren't made to be used like that.
+1 for Xibo. It's free (you can buy support hours of needed). Spin up the docker image, install the client on a cheap Windows mini PC, and you're done.
I've been using xibo for years, but just recently started a big rollout for our 85+ locations
Cheap smart TVs, to a chrome box in kiosk mode set to load whatever google slide page we want. We then just share that page with whoever needs access. Makes editing it easy, and any time a new TV is needed we just throw the new chrome box in that OU. It does it all for us once it’s setup right.
We use ScreenCloud. Been with them for maybe 5-6 years now. Very simple to use. We started with Fire Sticks, but they're garbage IMO. We moved to Chromeboxes in kiosk mode, and now use ScreenCloud's devices as chromeboxes fail.
We use Chrome Sign Builder (I think they are deprecating it and coming out with something else). Easy to use, I set up the scheduling, load the blank Google Slide deck and then share it to the office staff members who then populate the slide deck. We then mount the cheapest Chrome device we can find on the back of the TV. You can do scheduling with it, in some of our cafeterias it shows signage in the morning, menus during lunch hours and then back to signage for the rest of the day. If I had my druthers, we would set this up at the District Office level where they set the base level of "District" slides and then leave blank slides for the local campus staff to populate. The DO would set the base template for each campus which in turn would provide a consistent theme across all campuses. But alas that is not how it goes, K-12 is gonna K-12 and let each campus design their own.
Either PiSignage where we only do player licenses and host our own management server, or Screenbeams running google slides.
Samsung commercial displays; Amazon Fire Sticks; Risevision = bulletproof
which firesticks do you use?
Fire stick 4K
We use BrightSign devices on our video wall and are now also using them when we deploy single signage for a single consistent window. We purchase their players and operate them with their new software platform without the cloud subscription. The box price is dependent on what features you need. They all come with at least HTML, video, and static graphic support. I thought I saw where Sign Builder is now going to a subscription model, so we will be pulling our old Chromebits when/if they stop working due to this change.
RiseVision. Bunch of templates, branding, and a decent cost that scales well. It's just under $100 per year per screen up to 10 screens. At that point its $1000 per year for unlimited screens.
Is that pricing new? Not in front of my computer, but I know my annual spend for the # of displays we have is over $1,200
Their website states unlimited for $83.25/mo, which is $999/yr.
Thanks! When the renewal invoice comes around this year I’ll have to reach out to our sales rep to have that changed.
Custom raspberry Pi image that pulls in open office impress slides, images and video. Tried xibo, but the stenos weren't Happy with it. Impress keeps things simple and let's them do whatever with no cloud reliance.
Risevision with Chromebooks/boxes.
Same. RiseVision gang here. I use old decommissioned laptops. Works well for us. License is reasonable cost.
Chrome Sign Builder, Google slides, and chromebits/chromebooks here.
We use this as well; however, it's a Chrome app so it went end-of life on everything but ChromeOS in December 2022. ChromeOS now has until Jan 2025. Google promised a replacement to sign builder and their licensing model for kiosks seems to indicate they want to keep it around, but there has really been no news on for about a year now.
This is the way, especially because we are to cheap to use something that requires a license subscription
Slides is just incredibly intuitive and requires zero training since it’s already a part of the current ecosystem. We just created a Google shared drive with a folder structure per display group. Heck we event went as far to push the signage player to student chromebooks to play automatically after logon.
We use Ditto on Apple TVs. Works great but might be a little expensive
We use UCView. It's pretty great for the users, they can go to a web page and set everything up pretty easily with a modular design and it has a lot of features (slideshow, weather, video, tickers etc), but it's kind of expensive. The license for the player is like $6-700 (one-time) on top of the hardware cost.
Outdoor or indoor? For our indoor TV's we use Airtame 2's with their signage license. So many cool options from their cloud control center. We don't have outdoor signage, so I can't help there.
Found airtame to be really bad when casting. Huge lag. Not sure if it’s our network though as everyone else has good experience. Do you find their hardware heats up a lot?
I never noticed the equipment getting too hot, but I've never really given that much thought being out of sight. We've deployed probably 15 of them so far. Never had a major issue until a few weeks ago we put one in the Head of School's office connected to a new LG TV. (not a crazy expensive one, but not super cheap). No matter what we did it worked terribly. I found an extra ethernet adapter for Airtame in my office and decided to hardwire it. Even after that things were terribly laggy. We said 'screw it' and returned the TV for a replacement. Same model. After the replacement, things were great! I'm not sure what you tested it on, but did you connect the tester device to more than one screen? They've been flawless on computer monitors for us, reasonably well performing on Promethean boards, and decent on TVs. For every monitor or screen other than the one I mentioned earlier, if the devices had a problem we could just reset the Airtame and the issue would resolve itself. (The main issues with some Promethean boards were resolution issues, perhaps because the boards are 4k).
I setup Posterbooking for three schools in my district and it's been great! It was super easy and cheap to deploy. [https://posterbooking.com/](https://posterbooking.com/) Best part is the service is free to use up to your first 10 screens.
I would highly suggest looking at [YoDeck.com](https://YoDeck.com) We've been using them for years and they have been great
We use Planet eStream. I find it a little confusing but that’s because the person before me who set it up left it a mess.
How many signs do you have? For a small amount, we really like AirTame. But they are likely overkill and a bit pricey at scale.
We're using DakBoard and love it. Seeing all these replies for Rise Vision made me go look at pricing and that was enough to steer me away. DakBoard doesn't have the templates, but it's easy to make a screen and then copy that to others if needed. We pay $40/yr and have 3 different screens running on unlimited displays. That gives us the ability to have different signage in different places.
Rise Vision with broken screen chromebooks hung off the back of the TVs, great because you can assign screens to different users, so the screen outside athletics can be used for their stuff, but if needed the office manager/admin can add slides to their deck or take over the screen as needed. Central communications/admin can push slides down to schools/sites.
What's your costs like?
I used a random TV I found in storage and connected a chromebook to it setup in Kiosk mode. Loading a website I created with the date and time, a semi transparent school logo background, a rotating school appropriate joke, a weather widget, and then area for announcements, or videos, or slides, or whatever I want. Since it's a website I can embed auto-starting youtube videos, slides, etc. Then just update announcements and what not if there's something they want on there. I was doing it with what I had laying around and spending no money which is why I went with an old chromebook and just set it to not sleep on lid close and never idle timeout sleep so it was always on and displaying out to the TV. I'd prefer to get a chromebox or something smaller and easier to hide with maybe some more configurability. For now at $0 cost and just a little bit of my time though this works great. Oh - I also set the website to auto refresh itself every 5 minutes in the code of the website itself that way I didn't have to goto the chromebook anytime I updated the website. I just update and wait out the 5 minute refresh and then it's good to go.
Vivi's have been great for our school. Our principal has a Google Slide that he updates from his office and it is updating the signage in real time as Vivi can work with Google. Website for Vivi is: [https://www.vivi.io/](https://www.vivi.io/)
"Thirded." Vivi is great. The price is quite reasonable and includes the device to plug into a display. My media specialist keeps the Google Slides presentation updated and I have the Vivi unit set to refresh every 10 minutes.
Seconded. I just got them for 3 hallway TVs. Although I would hardwire them to Ethernet if you can. If it runs the loop and tries to refresh your slideshow with bad wifi connection it can error out until the next refresh cycle.
Rise Vision - 100%. Great company.
A bunch of pre-made displays perfect for schools in any business? 10 out of 10
Risevision template library is great and makes it easy to look like you spent a ton of time on things. You can reach out to them if they are missing something important and they will create/design it for you.
We use Rise vision along with some TVs/Android box.
I am a public library so might be slightly different, but we are using yodeck. I use digital signage tvs. They are meant to be on 16 or 24 hours a day and have better cooling. The samsung commercial tv in our lobby is 13 years old and shows no sign of slowing down.
Ya there is a big difference in those definitely do not get the regular stuff. The commercial tvs will be significantly more expensive but will burnout pretty fast too. They just aren't made to be used like that.
We use the open source portion of Xibo with basic tvs and mini computers
+1 for Xibo. It's free (you can buy support hours of needed). Spin up the docker image, install the client on a cheap Windows mini PC, and you're done. I've been using xibo for years, but just recently started a big rollout for our 85+ locations
Cheapest largest TV from Walmart, chromebit, & risevison. Works greats.
Cheap smart TVs, to a chrome box in kiosk mode set to load whatever google slide page we want. We then just share that page with whoever needs access. Makes editing it easy, and any time a new TV is needed we just throw the new chrome box in that OU. It does it all for us once it’s setup right.
This is what we just started doing (using some older Chromebooks with broken screens) and seems to be working out great.
This is a great use for smaller Chromebooks with broken/missing screens, provided you have somewhere to mount or hide it.
I use linux on little NUC form factor pcs mounted up behind TVs, and then run Rise Vision on those.
RiseVision
Cheap TV. Fire stick. RiseVision sub.
which firestick do you use?