How to digital display

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Yorkshirekid

193 posts

Master Geek

#277051 23-Sep-2020 16:16

I've just Googled this, but if you don't enter the exact key words then you get a lot of rubbish. So, hopefully the LAN forum will help me figure out the best way to link two computers onto which I can display daily notices. I have two Optiplex 9010's I want to place right next to each other and above a door. I can provide power and ethernet. I want to display notices that would show either on one screen (so two separate notices - one on each screen), or one notice that extends across both screens.

I want to be able to control these from elsewhere on the local network, so the display PC's don't need mice/keyboard.

Can members please advise me of the software and hardware I would need to do this please, preferably open source. Thank you

CokemonZ

1051 posts

Uber Geek

#2572921 23-Sep-2020 16:20

put up a super basic website (too many options to list here - hosted, or local many free options and many open source ones) and run a browser full screen on both machines?

gehenna

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#2572966 23-Sep-2020 16:25

Better off using Raspberry Pi's. Cheap, low power, flexible. We use them for our wall display boards at work. Then just browse them to a webpage that we update centrally with the info we want displayed.

wellygary

8312 posts

Uber Geek

#2572968 23-Sep-2020 16:29

Set the background as an image file somewhere on the network?

extending the notice across the two machine is a bit tricker but should be able to done by cutting the image in half with a rudimentary graphics programme, (paint etc)

Dynamic

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#2572993 23-Sep-2020 19:04

You could use a screensaver to do it.... have the PCs display a 'photo slideshow' screensaver.

Create your daily notices in any format you like so it looks the way you want on screen. Do a PRINT SCREEN and save the screen capture to a folder which the PCs will read their photo slideshow images from. It could be a slideshow of 1 image that changes/updates every 60 minutes. You could swap colourful funny images in and out as well, which might make people more inclined to glance up at them?

AIO machines are heavy-ish. Please them very securely, or consider something lighter.

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Dynamic

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#2572996 23-Sep-2020 19:07

Also... think about ease of use. Who is going to do this when you are away on leave?

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SirHumphreyAppleby

2844 posts

Uber Geek

#2573006 23-Sep-2020 19:20

I have something similar setup for a small museum.

In the current iteration, I use OpenKiosk (Firefox) on a ComputeStick clone and a simple jQuery script to request information from a Web server. The Web server used to run a CGI application, but it's now a standalone service. All it does (at least when it comes to serving text - it handles video and formatted information as well) is read lines from a file and return JSON containing a duration and text to display. The text is formatted using a third party jQuery add-on called bigtext which automatically resizes text to fit on the screen. When the duration is up, it simply passes a parameter in the URL indicating the position it is upto, and the Web server returns the next line.

As the data comes from a file, anyone with access to the host can simply double click a link on the desktop and edit the file.