Today we are rolling out a suite of new features leveraging AI specifically for the content creation side of the digital signage equation. Sourcing content for digital signage can be a challenge and often involves a combination of stock media, pre-defined template layouts, and design tools such as Canva. It can be difficult to craft an effective message especially when not having much experience in the design world. These new tools will go along ways towards overcoming those challenges by essentially building an entire layout based solely on your description of what you want. This includes not only the content zones such as weather, news, slideshow, etc. - but also the background graphics and color scheme matching the requested theme.

Describe your template and let AI handle the design work

There are three main functional elements of this feature release:

• AI-Powered Template Generation - Complete multi-zone layouts from simple descriptions
• AI-Based Image Generation - Custom visuals created on demand
• AI-Assisted Template Script Creation - Coding assistance for those utilizing template scripting

 Today we are rolling out Acquaint, a unique addition to the Revel Digital ecosystem which leverages agentic AI on the edge to provide a truly interactive experience for your users. AI has seen dramatic, exponential growth recently and for good reason. The latest AI models have reached a point to where interacting with an AI agent is largely indistinguishable from a human. While AI, or something akin to AI, has been utilized in some form or another for a number of years in the digital signage space, it has mostly been for object/face detection, people counting, or more recently image generation. The next gen AI models have much more capability in the agent space where AI is used as a tool for interpreting user requests, analyzing various forms for data, potentially acting on that data, and generating a response in a human friendly format. The general term for this is agentic AI and is commonly utilized alongside LLMs, or large language models, and various tools for retrieving and acting on data.

So what is it?

Essentially Acquaint is a side-kick for digital signage which can provide a human like interface to your kiosks, signage, or even in a headless environment. Acquaint is able to listen for and interpret a question, infer a response based on scheduled content, and provide a concise, human friendly response either to a display, or audibly. While there is no strict requirement for an actual display component (e.g. kiosk), the Acquaint bot is able to trigger content or perform other actions on your signage based on the context of the user interaction. 

Use cases

Food lockers

An example use case for Acquaint are self-service food lockers which are gaining popularity as a way to provide hot food options in corporate break rooms or for restaurant take-out. These are fully automated with a kiosk for food selection and purchase. In this instance Acquaint has been integrated as an agent for answering questions not only on the available food items, but also on any other aspect of the interaction including questions on how to make a purchase. When someone approaches the locker, Acquaint will initiate a conversation. The user has the ability to simply ask questions with Acquaint both answering audibly and triggering specific actions on the kiosk such as presenting the purchase screen for a specific food item.

Hotel concierge

Another example is a hotel kiosk which acts as a concierge. Hotel operators would schedule content for Acquaint which might include local entertainment and food options, shuttle schedules, available hotel amenities, etc. When paired with digital signage, Acquaint would be able to present on the display information related to the users query such as a website or a video managed by the Revel CMS. As with the food locker use case, the convenience is the ability to simply ask a question without having to navigate the traditional menu systems that would found on traditional touch screen kiosks.

How does it work?

Acquaint has been integrated into the Revel Digital ecosystem as a first class device with manageability similar to any other device in the CMS. Content is scheduled to the Acquaint bot similar to a traditional signage player, which the bot then uses as reference material for it's intelligence. For example, let's say you have a number of PDF's with marketing material you wish to associate with the bot. Simply upload those PDF's to your Revel Digital account, add those items to a playlist, and schedule the playlist to Acquaint. This scheduling allows for fine grained control over what the bot 'knows' based on your scheduling conditions such as date and time. Say for example you have a restaurant kiosk with separate menus for lunch and dinner. It would make sense to schedule the two menus based on time of day in order to limit Acquaints knowledge to only the relevant menu items.

The technology

Acquaint is using the latest hardware from Nvidia to power AI on the edge with the ability to run 100% offline - no internet connection required. Edge based AI provides faster response times than cloud based solutions by eliminating the latency and sometimes intermittent nature internet connections. Acquaint is also utilizing the very latest AI models to ensure not only quality inferencing, but also high quality text-to-speech audio.

Specialized AI hardware from Nvidia

The future?

It has become clear that AI is here to stay, the question becomes where does it actually have utility and long-term value. We think these conversational AI agents certainly have a place, especially with the recent advancements in AI which are remarkable in their ability to understand and communicate in ways that feel surprisingly natural.

Revel Digital is happy to announce availability as an out-of-the-box CMS option on the new Amazon Signage Stick. This new hardware from Amazon is derived from the Fire TV stick, but with a singular focus on digital signage applications. This new hardware has a number of important features critical for a successful digital signage deployment.

Designed specifically for digital signage

Easy Set up

 Just a notice that the phone number associated with our SMS based functionality has changed. This number is associated with messages you may receive related to our automated alerts as well as the number used to send commands to your devices.

Old number: +1 702-872-2887

New number: +1 269-468-0908

Note that no action is required regarding this change other than possibly whitelisting the number on your mobile devices.

For more information on how SMS can be leveraged see our articles here:

Triggering content via SMS:

https://support.reveldigital.com/hc/en-us/articles/360056401931-Sending-commands-via-SMS-text-messaging

Managing automated alerts:

https://support.reveldigital.com/hc/en-us/articles/28241962376461-Alerts-and-Network-Monitoring

A number of new social networking platforms are gaining traction, emphasizing free and open architecture.

With the launch of our new social feed gadget, we now support several of these platforms, including Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and others that utilize federated social protocols, collectively known as the Fediverse. These protocols provide users with greater control over their content, empowering creators and offering an alternative for those seeking a fresh social networking experience.

Logos of newly supported social networks left to right: Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, & the Fediverse

Sharing posts on your digital signage is as easy as adding the user ID, feed link, or social address from your platform of choice and that’s it! Your gadget is now configured to showcase all the latest posts from your favorite curator, organization, or online personality.

 Our latest platform release includes some great features to improve the quality of life for developers as well as a new core feature of the CMS related to network monitoring and alerts. We are also happy to report our latest ISO 27001 audit has been successfully completed, reaffirming our commitment to best in class security standards.

New tools for development and publishing of Webapps

Modern HTML5 based application frameworks are a great option for advanced UX designs. The flexibility offered by the wealth of libraries and tools available make it possible to achieve design goals without compromise.

New tools to streamline web app development and deployment on the Revel Digital platform

While it's always been possible to utilize web based applications within the Revel Digital platform, we have expanded on this aspect in order to streamline the development and deployment process.

Enterprise Workflows with GitHub Actions

We have published a new GitHub Action to support deployment of Webapps directly from within your CI/CD workflow. This Action automates the process of packaging and uploading your Webapp to your Revel Digital account. Tags are automatically applied for build version and release type for simplified management of your Webapp assets with the Revel Digital CMS.

With Workflows you are able to maintain a clear separation of concerns between the UX development team and the network management team. Whenever a new build is published it is immediately available for deployment within the CMS.

For more on this please see our developer documentation here:
https://developer.reveldigital.com/webapps/

New Player Client Javascript Library

New top-level section of the CMS for alert monitoring

Our new Alerts feature section of the CMS provides instant insight into the current health of your network. Fully customizable alert rules allow you to target specific metrics such as network usage or time offline. Our existing network monitoring will continue to provide our standard set of alerts for offline, hardware utilization, and 'no content'.

Thanks again for using Revel Digital!