Your options once it is deployed

So you've been through all the steps so far. You have chosen a system which best suits your needs and your content strategy is in the bag. Now you need to think about how you are going to support the system.There are a few aspects to this but what you are trying to achieve is a system with maximum uptime. After all if the system is not operating, it is your important message which is not being conveyed to your audience.

Supporting a digital signage solution can be a little like our own health. Preventative measures will be more effective than a treatment. Choosing commercial grade equipment is a good start. Companies like Samsung offer 3 year warranties on their commercial range of screens and will pick up from your site which can be very time saving. Advantech computers have a 2 year warranty extendable if you wish. 

Many digital signage software packages now have great tools which allow you to monitor what is happening with your digital signage network. Signagelive has what they call "Dashboard" This great feature allows you to see a visual representation of what is happening with your system using simple pie charts, green is good, red is bad. DC Media network manager software goes the next step whereby it can SMS you if there is a problem with a variety aspects of the system. Being notified of problems is a very effective way of supporting the system, better to be told by the system that there is a problem than by a customer, or worse; by no one.

Third party software such as LogMeIn also allows support staff to remotely access and control digital signage systems. The vast majority of problems which may occur will be able to be addressed by remotely logging into the computer.

You will need to either have the in-house skills to support your system or choose a digital signage company that can provide this support for you. We've all seen screens out there with the windows proverbial "blue screen of death", Linux errors or simply blank for unknown reasons. Don't let this happen to you. Make sure your system has the best chance of doing what it was designed for showing dynamic content where it has the greatest impact. Supporting the system is a combination of choosing the right equipment in the first place and having the measurements in place to make sure that if something does go wrong it can be corrected quickly by the right people using the right tools.

Raphael Owen

For more information contact Aeris Solutions on 03 9544 6902 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

From the Technical Department.

When it comes to Digital Signage, it can all seem very daunting.This is part two of breaking the interface barrier, where I’ll be letting you in on a few tips as to how we make it easier for you to run your digital signage system.

Tip 2:

Build on more of what you know. 

As per Part One of breaking the interface barrier, my advice is simple. Build on what you know, last time I mentioned ways where you can setup digital signage from the convenience of your computer desktop, without any specialised applications.This time I’m going to talk about how you can use Microsoft Excel, without doubt the most popular spreadsheeting program. 

Using one of our software solutions DC Media, you can pull data from CSV files or event native Excel documents. What does this mean for you ?

Perhaps your own a cafe and you want to update your menu board. Instead of having to open up some complex authoring software, just open Excel, find the file and edit it right away. The software detects the change and automatically updates the content on the screen.

Or perhaps you are a retailer and you want the store manager to be able to change the current special.. no training necessary, simply open Excel and edit the text.. done !

One more example, we’ve got a client that has a production line, they have a line in an excel spreadsheet they keep updated with the current orders. The production manager simply updates the spreadsheet and all the production line works are across the current order requirements. 

There are many other applications for this type of technology, perhaps there’s a way we can help you make digital signage easy for you too.

Want to discuss this idea further ? Call or email our sales team. Phone Aeris Solutions on 03 9544 6902 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Who is going to be the signage "champion"?

It's all well and good to look at digital signage and think "I can do that".

What looks like a simple template or advertisement may have taken many hours to produce or much longer, if there is any production to be done.

At Aeris Solutions one of the questions we ask our potential customers is, "who is going to create your content?". The question is often responded to by the answer "I hadn't thought about that."

You have a few options, but the one thing which remains the same for all options is that you need a "Content Champion", someone who is ultimately responsible for the overall look, feel and accurate deployment of the system.

When content is made you should be thinking about:

Who is the target audience? 

Why are they where they are when they are watching your screen?

How long do you have their attention for? 

and what do you want them to do?

Your champion must think about these things with each piece of content they deliver.

So, how do they do this? We will assume that you are not able to outsource content creation for the sake of this blog. You can create your own content with software such as Photoshop, Premier, Adobe Flash if you are lucky enough to be able to use these creatively. If you are like me, I can use them a little but when it comes to being creative, well I kinda suck.

Many digital software packages have built in content creation software. This can be simple or very complicated. Signagelive software has customisable templates. These are essentially a still image which is used as a background and then people can add text boxes on top of this image to create great templates for schools, menu boards, notices etc.  In this example you can outsource your background image to a creative person and simply drop in the text boxes to suit. Updates to the text are done quickly and simply using a cool feature called Message Manager. This allows people to log in an only have access to one or more of these templates which they can update. Once they change the text they click save and the screens with automatically update themselves. VERY simple.

If you can't use Flash but want the results. Flypaper is a great alternative. Touted as being as simple to use as Power Point but with all the motion graphics of Flash in 1/6th of the time. Software like Flypaper makes is simple for people to create some excellent content. It contains lots of templates people can use to help them get started.

A content champion should ensure that the message is on brand and suitable to deploy. Whilst it is a great idea to share the workload and have many people contribute to digital signage. Without a content champion, the messages can look messy and unfinished. 

Make sure you know how often to refresh content and have a strategy over a period of time. Don't do it ad hoc. Chances are it won't work as well as it could. Follow these simple steps to ensure you have relevant content sending the right message to your audience. 

Written by Raphael Owen

For more information contact Aeris Solutions on 03 9544 6902 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A word from our Technical Department

I was in the middle of writing part two to “breaking the interface barrier”  when I stumbled across an interesting article on a business website. This particular business is not a digital signage company, they are a large printing signage franchise and they may “do” digital signage but it’s not “what they do”.  Their article brings up a few interesting points... lets have a look at this.

The article suggested under no circumstances should a computer be used for digital signage. They backed it up with the following reasons

a. Computers can overheat: whilst true, is certainly no reason not to use a computer for digital signage. Simple measures like ensuring there is adequate ventilation and the the computer is of an industrial grade designed for use in demanding conditions will ensure the longevity of your digital signage system.

b. Computers have moving parts that may fail: Computers for digital signage are available fan-less and with solid state hard drives (no moving parts at all). 

c. Computers use lots of energy: with expert advice from our sales team they’ll help pick a computer adequately powerful enough for your needs, but not over-spec'd to avoid excessive power use.  Modern processors like the Intel Atom & VIA processors are very power efficient, typically the major concern with power is not the  computer but the screen choice. 

d. Computers are expensive to setup on a network: A good digital signage system will not require complex networking, in fact some of our systems are plug and play, such as signagelive. The benefit of a computer based system with remote access for support will far our-weigh the initial outlay for the system.

e. Computers have poor resolution: (without expensive upgrades) clearly the author at this point is clutching at straws. This is simply not true, even the most modest of pc’s these days are capable of full 1920x1080 high definition resolution. 

f. Computers are large and hard to hide: This also is simply not true, computers are available with a very small form factor like our DS303 for example, measuring approx 18cm x 11cm x 4cm.

g. Using a computer is a bad idea because IT costs are expensive: this sound a bit like a scare tactic to me. Setting up a computer does not have to be costly at all. Companies like ourselves have developed efficient methods to setup and deploy PC based digital signage systems. Software is so simple to setup now this isn’t even a consideration when picking a system usually.  

The company that wrote this article are certainly not IT professionals and are probably not aware of how a computer based system actually works in the real world. The reality is that computer based system are the most popular, and most of the successful deployments today are done with computers. They offer unsurpassed reliability, features and ease of updating when setup and deployed by a knowledgeable company... (and that’s exactly what we do !).This article is a very dramatic showcase of how digital signage can be misrepresented to the community. It concerns me that customers might be mislead by articles like this, even investing in technology based on this advice. 

Aeris Solutions is a dedicated digital signage company, thats all we do. We offer expert digital signage advise and solutions. Contact our sales team on 03 9544 6902 for further information or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  
Take care
Alex