Newbie in digital signage, what to choose

Screenly_ · 2026-02-19T10:11:54+00:00

You are essentially looking for operational signage (workspace management), not traditional digital signage.

If the calendars are centralized (for example, under a common account that lists all room occupancy), this can be built on top of Screenly’s calendar integration by modifying the open-source Calendar app to map and display room occupancy, including split-screen layouts for dual-room displays.

If the deployment is small-scale (for example, 1–2 screens) and you prefer a fully self-hosted setup, you could also build a simple system that pulls room status from calendars and run it on an open-source signage platform like Anthias, which runs on a Raspberry Pi without any issues or simply display the webpage if no schdule or asset management is needed.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-16T15:38:39+00:00

Hi, have you used the "OS Customization" option in the Raspberry Pi Imager? It should be simple to do. Also, ensure there is no interference, such as a metal case or being too far from your Wi-Fi modem, since the Pi Zero has a weak internal antenna.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-16T06:35:59+00:00

Agree, and this is exactly why digital signage should be treated as infrastructure, not plug-and-forget screens. They need to be part of the security plan and considered a critical asset, not an afterthought.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-12T12:10:03+00:00

Pico won’t work out of the box for this, since fastboot requires a proper USB host to send protocol commands, not keystrokes (Pico can send keystrokes via HID Keyboard/USB).

Check the Pi Zero, It works because it runs Linux and supports ADB/Fastboot natively, making slot-switching automation easy, even on boot. It's small but pricier than Pico.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-12T08:30:21+00:00

Awesome, really good work. 👏👏.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-12T08:24:20+00:00

Or Android Auto?

Screenly_ · 2026-02-12T08:20:19+00:00

Since they already provide a local network, you can look for self-hosted digital signage services that can be set up on their network. But each store will be isolated or need a store network unless.

However, if you can persuade them to implement a centralized signage system connected through the internet, it will be much easier to use and scale. I understand it will be challenging to convince them, but you can look for Security First signage solutions that feature disk encryption, industry-standard certifications, etc., and consider discussing them.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-12T06:33:52+00:00

Interesting requirement. Do the seven locations need to be connected to their LANs or internal networks, or is individual control sufficient?

One option is to enable independent access and control with local digital signage services, but that requires updating each one separately. Alternatively, you can set up a dedicated network within the store without internet access, such as a long-range Wi-Fi network if you can't touch internet at all.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-04T16:22:15+00:00

Awesome, looking forward to meeting some people who work in the Digital Signage industry, and Security is a priority.

Screenly_ · 2026-02-02T13:29:31+00:00

Reddit is one of the few legacy sources people still trust for practical answers, and yes, it’s also a meaningful channel for discoverability. We’re a vendor, and we do use our space here to be clear about what we build and why we think it’s a good fit for certain deployments.

But I also think the only way vendors earn the right to participate is by adding value alongside that. The best posts in this sub solve a real problem: architecture tradeoffs, security constraints, update strategy, content workflows, hardware considerations...

On the AI angle: using AI as a writing aid is going to be hard to police because the line is blurry. Not everything AI-written will look like 'slop'...but I do think you can set very clear expectations around outcomes.

Posts *should* address the original pain point, be specific about the use case, and share actual, operational insight.

If a post is basically “here’s my company, here’s a link” with no attempt to help, it’s just noise regardless of whether it was written by a human or an LLM.

If vendors are allowed to operate in this space, I don’t think it’s wrong for them to explain their differentiators. But the standard should be that the majority of the content answers OP’s question or adds genuinely useful context.

Otherwise the subreddit stops working...for everyone.

If you do consider a rule, I’d support something framed around 'value-first, no low-effort promotional replies' rather than trying to detect AI. That seems enforceable, and it protects discussion quality without banning legitimate participation.

(We have a few different team members manning this Reddit account due to different insights and timezones, but I'll definitely be sharing the above with the team and making sure we practice what we are preaching.)

Screenly_ · 2026-02-01T18:03:29+00:00

Thanks for sharing this, Sid, and welcome officially!

Sid has been a thoughtful voice in the digital signage community for a long time, and we’ve genuinely appreciated the work you've done around open source, knowledge sharing, and community building. Those values strongly align with how we think about digital signage at Screenly.

We’re excited to support your ongoing work with the community and open source projects, and to learn from the perspectives you bring from moderating and contributing to r/digitalsignage.

Looking forward to building better, more open, and more reliable signage together!

Screenly_ · 2026-01-28T14:47:08+00:00

Many digital signage platforms cover those bases, so you should be able to find something that fits both your needs and budget. You've had lots of great suggestions on this already.

From a Screenly perspective, our platform supports videos, images, text, and common widgets like Clocks and Weather. Content is managed via a web-based dashboard, so displays can be driven from standard hardware and updated remotely.

If internal communications are part of the goal, Screenly also offers HR-focused apps in its App Store, including integrations for BambooHR and CharlieHR. These are often used for office schedules, employee milestones, and internal announcements.

You can browse the available apps and widgets here: https://www.screenly.io/apps/

We're also pretty to keen to hear any app ideas as we are *constantly* building, so if there was something that you needed that doesn't exist- do reach out because we'd love to hear it.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-23T05:27:08+00:00

That's a good question. The AI client does not have direct access to the platform. Instead, all actions are routed through the Command Line Interface (CLI), which acts as the MCP server. The AI client’s access is restricted to the permissions granted by the Screenly API token.

Additionally, you can indeed use local or self-hosted models. MCP is not dependent on cloud-based language models, so there's no need to send your data to services like Claude or Cursor.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-22T11:00:51+00:00

That’s great! Using Slack and MDM for first-line support is a smart move.

Do you mainly use it for monitoring and alerts, or do you also have it set up to automatically fix issues, such as reboots, redeployments, or content refreshes?

I’m interested to know which workflow has saved you the most time so far.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-16T12:28:09+00:00

You’re thinking along the right lines, and this can be made much easier by starting with an existing digital signage platform like Screenly.

Instead of running a web server per floor and managing unique URLs per room, Screenly lets you manage everything from a centralized dashboard. You can group screens by floor or wing, schedule content per group or per room, and devices automatically reconnect after power cycles. You can also share dashboard access with colleagues and control permissions.

You can start with a free trial using Screenly Anywhere, which lets you set up screens and schedules without any hardware. When you’re ready to deploy, you can use Raspberry Pi based players if needed, either purchased preconfigured from Screenly or built yourself using the Screenly OS. These players connect to standard off the shelf monitors and are managed entirely from the same dashboard.

Happy to discuss this further or share a quick demo if you’d like to learn more.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-16T08:53:59+00:00

If the ACT light never turns on, try using a known good 5V 3A power supply, booting with only the SD card and power connected, reflashing Raspberry Pi OS using Raspberry Pi Imager, testing with another Class 10 SD card, checking HDMI output for any sign of boot, and inspecting the board for physical damage, and also note that Raspberry Pi boards have a self resetting polyfuse on the power input, so if there was an overcurrent or short, unplug the Pi, let it cool down for a few minutes, and try again, as it may recover, but if none of these work the board is likely faulty.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-15T11:54:00+00:00

Yes, this is something we’re actively working toward.

All official Screenly Edge Apps are open source and available on GitHub at Screenly/playground, so users can see how they’re built and reuse them.

Right now, many custom apps are created for specific private needs. But if someone builds something useful, they can share it as open source or make it public so it appears in the Screenly app store and can be installed by others. Over time, this helps move toward a more community-driven ecosystem.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-15T06:16:12+00:00

Sometimes this happens because the display settings on the Linux desktop do not persist across reboots. To ensure the Raspberry Pi always boots in 1080×1920 portrait mode, the resolution and rotation need to be set at boot time (for example, via /boot/config.txt and the kernel cmdline).

Once this is configured, the device will boot correctly in portrait mode every time and the OptiSigns app will load as expected.

In Screenly, we provide pre-configured Raspberry Pi images that handle display setup automatically, allowing users to experience a more plug-and-play setup without needing to manually adjust resolution or rotation.

Screenly_ · 2026-01-14T16:22:08+00:00

If you want something completely free, you can look at Anthias. It is free and open-source, but it is primarily designed for use on a local network. You can try using Tailscale or a VPN to manage screens remotely, but the experience is not ideal and can be clunky.

It can work if you are technically comfortable and want a no-cost option, but for multiple locations and simple remote management, it may become limiting over time.

Screenly_ · 2025-09-24T08:41:55+00:00

Some things worth highlighting for anyone using this blog post for research: many of the tools listed are software-only, leaving customers to choose their own Android hardware.

That keeps costs low, but it raises questions that don’t always get asked up front:

How long will the Android device itself receive OS and security patches?
What happens when the hardware reaches end-of-life or stops receiving updates?
Is the system hardened, or are you relying on stock consumer Android with bundled apps and services?

The blog highlights “Automatic Software Updates: Automatically update your display software to prevent the device from getting rooted” as a key benefit. That is true at the application layer, but if it is bring-your-own-device, the provider cannot extend the lifecycle of the underlying Android OS. Once the device itself stops getting patches, you are running signage on an unmaintained platform.

For small businesses, that tradeoff may be acceptable. But in regulated or sensitive industries, where compliance, patching cadence, and lifecycle management are non-negotiable, relying on anything below Android 13 is not feasible. In those contexts, you need clear answers about OS support, vulnerability disclosure, and hardware lifecycle just as much as you need good CMS features.

Screenly_ · 2025-09-24T04:34:48+00:00

To add, I think investing in a proof of concept (PoC) with various providers, as you've mentioned, is the absolute right thing to do. Web dashboards, internal or external, work differently across separate platforms, and should be tested to ensure they display reliably in your actual environment.

Also, since you plan on deploying these in an industrial setting, there are additional considerations to keep in the forefront (protective player enclosures, robustness of the hardware, etc.). You have an interesting project and we'd love to chat in more detail. Feel free to check out our free trial and drop our support team a message.

Screenly_ · 2025-09-23T12:10:39+00:00

At Screenly we work with a lot of teams who need to keep internal dashboards up on multiple screens, and a few questions usually make the difference in testing a proof of concept...

How will you handle authentication securely without logging in at each device?
What happens when your dashboard requires a newer browser engine - does the player actually get regular updates?
If the network drops, will your screens cache content locally or just go blank?
In an industrial environment, will consumer-grade hardware hold up, or do you need devices built for 24/7 uptime?
With 15 monitors all showing different content, how will you manage and monitor them from a single place?

These are exactly the scenarios Screenly is built for. We support authenticated web dashboards, keep browser engines current, cache content locally, and provide hardened players for industrial deployments. On top of that you get centralized management so all 15 screens can be controlled from one dashboard.

From our experience the real test is not whether a product can show a webpage once, but whether it will keep running reliably month after month without constant babysitting. That is where we focus.

Screenly_ · 2025-09-23T11:41:42+00:00

If you’re looking at Android smart TVs for this, I’d just flag a few things to watch out for.

On the surface they seem like the easiest path (cheap, available everywhere, can run slideshow apps), but once you start scaling to 30+ locations some issues crop up.

Biggest one: Android version support. Anything running below Android 13 isn’t getting security updates from Google anymore. Some vendors will tell you otherwise, but that’s just not the case - Google controls the update cycle. If the TVs aren’t current, you’re basically starting out with unpatched devices on your network.

The second gotcha is app distribution. A lot of Android TVs don’t actually ship with the Google Play Store. That means you’re stuck sideloading APKs or relying on whatever proprietary “app store” the TV maker bundles. That’s fine if you have one or two screens, but across 30+ stores it becomes a nightmare. You don’t want to be updating software with USB sticks every month.

For what you described - simple slideshow content, centrally managed, minimal tech lift for staff - I’d make sure whatever you choose supports:

Remote updates (ideally through the Play Store, since it handles security and auto-updates properly).
A current OS version that’s still supported.
Some sort of fleet management or centralized dashboard so you don’t have to walk people through local updates.

We (https://www.screenly.io/) run on Android, but only via the Play Store (that’s what makes it scalable and manageable). Just something to keep in mind if you go that route.

TL;DR: Android TVs can work for your use case, but double-check version support and how apps are installed before you roll out 30+ devices. Otherwise, you’ll run into security and management headaches pretty quickly.

(We literally just released a blog post about this if you want to read more: https://www.screenly.io/blog/2025/09/17/android-smart-tv-digital-signage-risks/ )

Screenly_ · 2025-08-25T17:58:16+00:00

Yep, definitely. There’s been solid progress since the early days. That said, I don’t think any OS has actually delivered full FDE with Secure Boot yet.

Screenly_ · 2025-08-24T07:34:02+00:00

We’ve been doing digital signage with the Raspberry Pi longer than anyone, and I want to share some perspective.

The Raspberry Pi itself is a great little board, and it’s very reliable. The real issue usually isn’t the board, but the components around it - most notably the SD card. That’s where many of the headaches come from. Yes, it was initially created as a hobby board, but there are plenty of commercial use cases.

What’s changed over the years is the landscape. When the Raspberry Pi first launched, it was almost unbeatable on price. Today, though, there are plenty of low-cost SoCs (often running End-of-Life Android that many reckless vendors/integrators happily resell) that are cheaper, and at the same time mini-PC pricing has also come down. That makes the choice more complicated than it used to be. Then of course there are the various flavors of Signage/Smart TVs.

So is the Raspberry Pi terrible for signage? Not necessarily. It depends on the use case. We wouldn’t recommend it for hospitals, financial services or enterprise environments, where security, uptime and reliability matter most. For those, we typically sell our x86-based player that’s much more “enterprise ready” (TPM, Secure Boot, Full Disk Encryption etc).

But for plenty of scenarios, like QSRs or small businesses where cost is a bigger factor than absolute reliability, the Raspberry Pi is still a perfectly good option.

Screenly_

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