Catalyst

RevelDigital in partnership with MDI Worldwide have developed interactive kiosks for the Norwalk Parking Authority in Norwalk CT. The kiosks, which were installed at the Maritime Garage and the South Norwalk  Train Station, allow visitors to discover local dining, shopping, and entertainment as well as to print coupons. This project utilizes the RevelDigital platform in some unique ways so we thought a post about it might provide some inspiration!

The primary objective of the kiosk is to assist people in finding local establishments. Secondary objectives include a listing of upcoming events and also to provide a section dedicated to featured vendors with the ability to print coupons for each. Since the people at MDI and NPA were already familiar with Google Docs it was decided to leverage both Google Spreadsheets and Google Calendar to provide the data entry and management. This provided an easy way to manage the kiosk data and was already a familiar tool with the staff.

Our job at RevelDigital was to take these requirements and craft a solution that was easy to deploy and manage. It's important to note that anyone with technical know-how could accomplish the same thing as we did in-house. No special software was used for this project other than the stock RevelDigital player and printer drivers.

Kiosk users can search for local establishments by category by selecting from the top row of buttons. A list is provided on the side which they can then select to bring up a Google map providing current location and selected vendor location. A QR code is displayed which can be scanned to provide the vendor website.

When users select the Featured Advertisers they are presented with a number of coupons. Clicking a coupon provides a map of the vendor location as well as the option to print the coupon. Printing is handled with custom scripting in the RevelDigital template and required no special programming on the machine itself. Click here for more information on our template designer.

A few other notable features provided by the RevelDigital platform is the ability to track and report on coupons printed, coupon management utilizing standard playlists, and real-time kiosk health monitoring including screen capture. This was a fun project which exemplifies great use of the platform.

Again this year RevelDigital will be attending the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas Feb 26-28 in partnership with Philips Commercial Signage and GVision USA. DSE is a trade show much like CES but specific to the digital signage industry. We are very thankful to our partners Philips and GVision USA for including us in their exhibits. This year our Android hardware will be powering a number of exhibit displays demonstrating our unique ability to utilize portrait display modes as well as the custom display sizes offered by GVision. The Philips booth will be giving away a number of our Android players so make sure you pay them a visit!

Booth designations are:
Philips Commercial Signage: #1031
GVision USA: #FT3

RevelDigital Android Player $145 with 2 year warranty

We at RevelDigital are proud to announce our very own custom hardware solution for Android. We've taken the rock solid Android 4.1 platform and coupled it with performance proven hardware to guarantee flawless playback of your digital signage. Not only is this device tiny but it's also capable of playing anything you can throw at it including true HD video and Adobe Flash. The compact size makes it both easy to deploy as well as energy efficient. You can also forget about the hassle of running power and network cabling. This player can be powered with a standard USB cable off the back of any modern television and it's internal Wi-Fi provides cable free networking. Just plug it in to your television HDMI video port and your done. From that point on all upgrades are performed automatically and management of the content is 100% controlled via the RevelDigital website. Absolutely the simplest most hassle free digital signage installation you'll find.

Most of the playback features are on par with our Windows 7 software but here are few highlights:

• True HD video supporting all major video formats including MP4/2/1, DIVX, AVI, MPG, FLV
• Support for Adobe Flash in templates and playlists
• Image support for all major formats including BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF
• PowerPoint support
• Scrolling ticker/marquee
• Standard and Media RSS/ATOM feeds with support for videos / images / flash
• Web Pages / Custom HTML / and Google Gadgets
• Full control over content placement / overlapping zones / and transparency
• Integration with NWS (National Weather Service) and NOAA for automated emergency alerts

We are excited to announce support for Android based hardware including tablets, smartphones, PCs, and Google TV. Our Android player software includes many of the same great features found in our Windows player including multi-zone layering and transparency, real-time player status, and reporting. The biggest advantage of the Android hardware is it's low cost. A credit card sized Android PC with WiFi and HDMI can be purchased for less than $80 and can provide 90% of the functionality of our Windows based players. Simple signage scenarios such as menu boards or event calendars can now be implemented with VERY little up front cost while still retaining the ease of use and flexibility of the RevelDigital management platform.

Here's a feature comparison of our Android vs. Windows player software:
The variety of hardware available in the Android ecosystem allows for some simplified signage implementations. Some examples include a point of sale or end cap sign utilizing an Android tablet
, an all-in-one large format display utilizing a Google TV, or converting an existing flat panel TV into a digital sign utilizing an Android Mini PC. These hardware options open up many possibilities generally considered too expensive with traditional Windows PC hardware. Windows 8 may change some of that when it's released, but my guess is not at the Android price points.

You can find the free RevelDigital Player app on Google Play by searching for RevelDigital.

There's a new addition to the RevelDigital gadget collection for embedding Google Spreadsheet data into your templates. Those not familiar with our Google Gadget support may want to check out our knowledge base article here: http://support.reveldigital.com/kb/advanced-topics/google-gadgets-howto. Gadgets are essentially mini web pages that can be used to enhance your signage with things like real-time financial information, event calendars, twitter feeds, etc. The gadgets we've created can be found on our gadget project site here: http://code.google.com/p/reveldigital-gadgets and are free to use or modify.

The new addition is a Google Spreadsheet gadget which displays your spreadsheet data in a tabular format. We've provided a KB article to help you get started: http://support.reveldigital.com/kb/advanced-topics/google-spreadsheets-integration. As with all our Google Docs integrations the data displayed on your digital signage is synced within minutes to any changes made to the original document.

Those of you utilizing touch enabled screens will appreciate our new support for gesture recognition. It's become second nature to swipe and pinch at everything so we felt it couldn't hurt to incorporate the same functionality into our interactive signage.

To preview the new feature just add a slideshow zone to your template and select the 'Touch Scroll' transition option. This will allow smooth scrolling through your playlist by swiping the screen with your finger, similar to a smartphone or tablet.

For advanced users we've also added support for gestures in script allowing for a higher level of interactivity in your templates. You can even create your own customized gestures with multi-touch inputs.