Is there electronic alternative to corkboard for posting annoucements?
January 13, 2010 7:48 AM Subscribe
Any suggestions for creating an electronic (e.g. LCD) corkboard, to post the same announcements on three separate boards in different locations?
I work at a high school, and we would like to install three screens through-out the building that relay information for students. Essentially it would be used to post updated sports practice and game times, upcoming events, general reminders/announcements, and so forth.
Is there something that could be setup to wirelessly update all three screens constantly?
Oh, and it needs to be easy to update the information on the screens.
I work at a high school, and we would like to install three screens through-out the building that relay information for students. Essentially it would be used to post updated sports practice and game times, upcoming events, general reminders/announcements, and so forth.
Is there something that could be setup to wirelessly update all three screens constantly?
Oh, and it needs to be easy to update the information on the screens.
If the screens are too far apart to run video cables to all of them, you could also pick up some cheap tablet PCs (like this one), mount them on the wall, and have them all run a Google Documents Presentation slide show. I think they'd all update as you changed the presentation on any other computer. You'll probably want to disable the touchscreen or other buttons, or just cover them up.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 8:19 AM on January 13, 2010
posted by Salvor Hardin at 8:19 AM on January 13, 2010
Run Opera on one machine, display on all three. Use the "Fridge" application.
posted by unixrat at 8:26 AM on January 13, 2010
posted by unixrat at 8:26 AM on January 13, 2010
Best answer: There are commercial solutions for this, but those are probably needlessly expensive and complicated.
Probably the easiest to set up on the receive end would be a small cheap PC with a giant monitor (or flat screen television), set up with a media player that's listening to a video stream. On the control pc, you figure out a way to convert your messages to a video stream and run something like windows media encoder to transmit it in a multicast kind of way across the wireless lan. I'm sure there are open source/freeware/cheap solutions for doing a endless loop sort of thing, like they do on the cable tv local access channels. I even think WME has this sort of capability. This would give you the ability to put anything you want on the video monitors, and for individual PCs to listen in as they desire.
Or design a web page that does an automatic refresh every 30 seconds, and have the server serve up a different page on every refresh in a round robin kind of way from whatever pages are in that pool. On the backend, you just insert or delete pages as necessary and they will get served out.
posted by gjc at 9:28 AM on January 13, 2010
Probably the easiest to set up on the receive end would be a small cheap PC with a giant monitor (or flat screen television), set up with a media player that's listening to a video stream. On the control pc, you figure out a way to convert your messages to a video stream and run something like windows media encoder to transmit it in a multicast kind of way across the wireless lan. I'm sure there are open source/freeware/cheap solutions for doing a endless loop sort of thing, like they do on the cable tv local access channels. I even think WME has this sort of capability. This would give you the ability to put anything you want on the video monitors, and for individual PCs to listen in as they desire.
Or design a web page that does an automatic refresh every 30 seconds, and have the server serve up a different page on every refresh in a round robin kind of way from whatever pages are in that pool. On the backend, you just insert or delete pages as necessary and they will get served out.
posted by gjc at 9:28 AM on January 13, 2010
Response by poster: I think it will end up being a combination of a presentation template connected to via wireless connections attached to the TVs. Tablet PCs are far too small (need around 32" or larger displays), and there is no pre-existing wiring available so a wireless dongle is the only way. Thanks for all the help.
codacorolla: I'm guessing that the connections are all wired rather than wireless, or are they wireless VGA connection?
That Fridge software is pretty cool.
posted by Outis at 11:15 AM on January 13, 2010
codacorolla: I'm guessing that the connections are all wired rather than wireless, or are they wireless VGA connection?
That Fridge software is pretty cool.
posted by Outis at 11:15 AM on January 13, 2010
If you want something reliable:
There are VGA->ethernet-cable->VGA extenders/splitters around . Something like this setup: http://www.networktechinc.com/vga-extender.html
If you are interested I can look what product we are successfully using, but it will probably not be much cheaper.
If you want to go with the cheap computer+screen solution VNC is perfect (and free) for you. Just run the VNC-server on the main computer and the VNC-viewer on the other computers. Now all computers show the same information. You can use it for a powerpoint display, you can show fullscreen PDFs, webpages or anything but video. It's too slow for video (for video see VGA range extender/splitter solution above).
posted by mmkhd at 11:21 AM on January 13, 2010
There are VGA->ethernet-cable->VGA extenders/splitters around . Something like this setup: http://www.networktechinc.com/vga-extender.html
If you are interested I can look what product we are successfully using, but it will probably not be much cheaper.
If you want to go with the cheap computer+screen solution VNC is perfect (and free) for you. Just run the VNC-server on the main computer and the VNC-viewer on the other computers. Now all computers show the same information. You can use it for a powerpoint display, you can show fullscreen PDFs, webpages or anything but video. It's too slow for video (for video see VGA range extender/splitter solution above).
posted by mmkhd at 11:21 AM on January 13, 2010
I tested these wireless VGA range extenders and they work fine, but they have a fan and seem to warm up a bit.
posted by mmkhd at 11:30 AM on January 13, 2010
posted by mmkhd at 11:30 AM on January 13, 2010
Outis: yeah, our building is fairly new and specifically wired for what I described above. We have a server room with the main display server, which feeds into some splitters that take it to the display monitors.
posted by codacorolla at 3:22 PM on January 13, 2010
posted by codacorolla at 3:22 PM on January 13, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by codacorolla at 7:59 AM on January 13, 2010