Remotely administered "days since last accident" digital sign?
May 28, 2019 4:02 PM Subscribe
I'm trying to help our safety manager get a remotely administered system going. It is proving MUCH more difficult than I would have thought.
The only one I've found is this, which is absurdly expensive and kind of ugly.
I've thought about using an Android tablet or iPad pointed at an easily updated webpage. About using Chromecasts with some sort of custom app. A chromebox?
Honestly, this seems like it should be a solved problem, but I'm losing my mind.
We'd prefer something which doesn't involve IT very often.
The only one I've found is this, which is absurdly expensive and kind of ugly.
I've thought about using an Android tablet or iPad pointed at an easily updated webpage. About using Chromecasts with some sort of custom app. A chromebox?
Honestly, this seems like it should be a solved problem, but I'm losing my mind.
We'd prefer something which doesn't involve IT very often.
Response by poster: @Dr. Twist:
That's a cool product, but it doesn't have an automatic ticker (as far as I can tell) and it doesn't have a web-based updater. We have locations in 5 states, so we need to be able to update remotely.
posted by lattiboy at 4:13 PM on May 28, 2019
That's a cool product, but it doesn't have an automatic ticker (as far as I can tell) and it doesn't have a web-based updater. We have locations in 5 states, so we need to be able to update remotely.
posted by lattiboy at 4:13 PM on May 28, 2019
Rather than Chromecasts, you might want to look at a "kiosk" solution. These are software systems that boot right into a web UI.
A Raspberry Pi and one of the kiosk projects would be relatively inexpensive. This particular one reboots nightly, which could help keep the code very simple. Find a suitable monitor or cheap TV set to display it on.
Tie this in to a simple web server and a PHP script. The script reads the time of the last accident from a file, subtracts that from the current time, and divides by 86400 to get the number of days.
Have the web guy also create a little PHP script to "reset" the counter by writing the current time to the file, so that an authorized party can just log in and hit the "We had an accident" button.
posted by jgreco at 4:27 PM on May 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
A Raspberry Pi and one of the kiosk projects would be relatively inexpensive. This particular one reboots nightly, which could help keep the code very simple. Find a suitable monitor or cheap TV set to display it on.
Tie this in to a simple web server and a PHP script. The script reads the time of the last accident from a file, subtracts that from the current time, and divides by 86400 to get the number of days.
Have the web guy also create a little PHP script to "reset" the counter by writing the current time to the file, so that an authorized party can just log in and hit the "We had an accident" button.
posted by jgreco at 4:27 PM on May 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
I looked for a similar thing a while back (except it was a count up timer) and came to the conclusion that you did: I was astonished at how expensive it was. The DIY path is much cheaper (probably coming in under $100 each), but will take some doing.
Building it yourself is an interesting option - using a Raspberry Pi connected to a seven segment display hooked up to a i2c backpack is what I would do (although that specific 7-seg I link to is probably too small for a sign). On the other hand, that would also involve a fair amount of programming and, unless you're already familiar with i2c and how to read data sheets, that could be more time than you want to spend.
posted by Betelgeuse at 4:50 PM on May 28, 2019
Building it yourself is an interesting option - using a Raspberry Pi connected to a seven segment display hooked up to a i2c backpack is what I would do (although that specific 7-seg I link to is probably too small for a sign). On the other hand, that would also involve a fair amount of programming and, unless you're already familiar with i2c and how to read data sheets, that could be more time than you want to spend.
posted by Betelgeuse at 4:50 PM on May 28, 2019
Keep in mind that the reason a lot of electronics are cheap is because of economies of scale. Producing things on a production line with large-scale output is a lot cheaper than units that are hand-assembled and/or bespoke (as is very likely the case with the sign you linked). So if you want to save money, I think you'd have more success turning your design into one that can be served more by off-the-shelf parts, like using the rasbperry-pi+video display solution jgreco recommends.
posted by Aleyn at 5:32 PM on May 28, 2019
posted by Aleyn at 5:32 PM on May 28, 2019
Raspberry Pis are great if you're a techie, and jgreco's idea would certainly work. But setting it up would require someone from IT to do some custom programming, and you said you wanted to minimize the involvement of IT.
A simpler way to accomplish this is to mount a monitor on a wall and use a Windows stick computer, like this one. It has an Ethernet port for a wired Internet connection (wired connections are typically more reliable than wireless), and would connect to the monitor's HDMI port. Then you could set it up with a web browser running in full-screen or kiosk mode, and point it at a web page that you maintain somewhere in the cloud. It could be a dedicated page on your company's website. You'd have to update the page daily, or maybe someone can help you with a script that automatically updates the number of days every day. You'd have to set the web browser to start automatically at boot time, and set the system to reboot automatically every morning, in order to force the browser to display the updated page.
posted by alex1965 at 5:55 PM on May 28, 2019
A simpler way to accomplish this is to mount a monitor on a wall and use a Windows stick computer, like this one. It has an Ethernet port for a wired Internet connection (wired connections are typically more reliable than wireless), and would connect to the monitor's HDMI port. Then you could set it up with a web browser running in full-screen or kiosk mode, and point it at a web page that you maintain somewhere in the cloud. It could be a dedicated page on your company's website. You'd have to update the page daily, or maybe someone can help you with a script that automatically updates the number of days every day. You'd have to set the web browser to start automatically at boot time, and set the system to reboot automatically every morning, in order to force the browser to display the updated page.
posted by alex1965 at 5:55 PM on May 28, 2019
Best answer: The lowest end model from BrightSign is $250, and comes with full networking. In this support thread for them, someone says they just set up a counter at https://www.tickcounter.com, and had that displayed on all their displays.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 6:24 PM on May 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by the agents of KAOS at 6:24 PM on May 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
If you can find someone to do (or adapt) a DAYS SINCE LAST ACCIDENT graphic to get printed on a poster, you could wrap that around something like this this wifi-enabled LED scrolling sign.
posted by dws at 6:57 PM on May 28, 2019
posted by dws at 6:57 PM on May 28, 2019
I've thought about using an Android tablet or iPad pointed at an easily updated webpage. About using Chromecasts with some sort of custom app. A chromebox?
A smart TV? If you can find one whose menu options let you make it display its inbuilt web browser on startup, and configure the home page address, that should work.
Basing your design solution on a completely general purpose display device fed from a known web page (perhaps one page per site) would also let you use it for occasional display of announcements other than your accident record.
posted by flabdablet at 8:04 PM on May 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
A smart TV? If you can find one whose menu options let you make it display its inbuilt web browser on startup, and configure the home page address, that should work.
Basing your design solution on a completely general purpose display device fed from a known web page (perhaps one page per site) would also let you use it for occasional display of announcements other than your accident record.
posted by flabdablet at 8:04 PM on May 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
FWIW those Windows PC sticks come with Windows 10 Home edition which does not have a kiosk mode, so they would certainly be more of a techie hassle than a raspberry pi running something like FullPageOS.
posted by Poldo at 5:13 AM on May 29, 2019
posted by Poldo at 5:13 AM on May 29, 2019
Does it have to be a technological solution? Could you just have a sign made with a whiteboard where the number of days go and have someone update it with a dry erase marker every day as part of their daily routine? Seems like you're going through a ton of trouble and expense to save someone 15 seconds/ day by automating this.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:24 PM on May 29, 2019
posted by Jacqueline at 4:24 PM on May 29, 2019
> have someone update it with a dry erase marker every day as part of their daily routine?
Maybe you have an internal web page where you update the number centrally, and then you have a person at each site whose job it is to check the central web page & update the local white board daily. Even though this requires local intervention daily at each site, perhaps the advantage is you are getting someone who is in charge of safety locally to actually pay attention to this important bit of safety information for at least 2 minutes daily.
Another approach, if you don't want/need the board actually updated daily, would be to--instead of listing the days since last incident--list the DATE of the last incident. So the sign says something like "No safety incidents company-wide since 24 AUGUST 2017" or whatever.
That way someone can just update the whiteboard once and--hopefully!--it stays unchanged for a long time.
When you do need to update that date you send a message to your contact at each site and they respond to confirm they have updated their local whiteboard. Maybe once a month or so you send a message to that same person and ask them to confirm their whiteboard is still in place & still displays the proper date.
Low tech, but sometimes that is most reliable. And it requires having some people in the loop but maybe that can be made into a positive instead of a negative.
posted by flug at 11:27 AM on May 30, 2019
Maybe you have an internal web page where you update the number centrally, and then you have a person at each site whose job it is to check the central web page & update the local white board daily. Even though this requires local intervention daily at each site, perhaps the advantage is you are getting someone who is in charge of safety locally to actually pay attention to this important bit of safety information for at least 2 minutes daily.
Another approach, if you don't want/need the board actually updated daily, would be to--instead of listing the days since last incident--list the DATE of the last incident. So the sign says something like "No safety incidents company-wide since 24 AUGUST 2017" or whatever.
That way someone can just update the whiteboard once and--hopefully!--it stays unchanged for a long time.
When you do need to update that date you send a message to your contact at each site and they respond to confirm they have updated their local whiteboard. Maybe once a month or so you send a message to that same person and ask them to confirm their whiteboard is still in place & still displays the proper date.
Low tech, but sometimes that is most reliable. And it requires having some people in the loop but maybe that can be made into a positive instead of a negative.
posted by flug at 11:27 AM on May 30, 2019
« Older Share your favorite sugary pop songs with me... | Which cheap seats? Chicago Cubs edition Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
perhaps put on an in-house designed sign board?
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:09 PM on May 28, 2019