Digital signage with Wunderframe: not only for events

A question we hear a lot: “Do you also have something for digital signage, or is Wunderframe only for events?” It is a fair question. Most of what we show is event day: live speakers, a Q&A wall, a keynote across three screens.

The short answer: yes, Wunderframe is digital signage. Everything an event needs from its screens — the right content at the right time, screens that keep playing on their own, changes from the office — is exactly what a menu board or a reception screen needs every day. The event features are extra; you can leave them off.

A screen somewhere that shows something useful without anyone standing next to it: the menu above the counter, today’s visitors at reception, offers in the shop window, the canteen menu by the lifts, opening hours in a waiting room, the news and a TV channel in the break room. In Wunderframe each of those is a stage: a screen (or a wall of them) with its own program.

Each screen plays what you schedule for it, and something sensible when nothing is scheduled, so it is never black. Rules then switch it by themselves: breakfast until eleven, lunch until three, the evening menu from six; a different loop on Sundays; the holiday notice between two dates. You can name parts of the day once, such as “evening”, and use them everywhere.

Rules can also read your data (“sold out”, “closed today”) and whether someone is standing in front of the screen. See Rules and What plays.

Prices, menus and opening hours change more often than designs. In Wunderframe you design a screen once with blanks and fill it from a collection: typed in, uploaded as a CSV from Excel, or kept up to date from a news feed or a JSON address. Change a price in the list and every screen that shows it changes. See Data and templates.

This is the part that surprises people. A signage screen does not have to be something you only watch. Turn on Visitors can use this screen on a stage and visitors can open a row for its details, swipe to the next one and go back:

• On a touch screen, they tap and swipe.
• On an ordinary TV, a USB webcam is enough. The visitor points at the screen with their hand and pinches, or holds still for a moment, to choose. No touch panel needed.
• When they walk away, the screen goes back to its loop by itself.

The same camera can also notice that someone is standing close and play something for them — a product film, a welcome, the way to the room — then return to the program. The camera picture never leaves the screen: it is not shown, stored or sent, and the screen does not recognize or count anybody. See Interactive screens and People in front of the screen.

Most people have never used a screen with their hands, so the screen shows them. Turn on Show visitors how on the stage and, while someone stands in front of it, a drawn hand appears over the program — lightly tinted, the screen blurred behind it — and raises, points, pinches and swipes, with a little screen that answers each gesture and a caption in German, English and French. The moment they raise a hand it fades away; nobody there, and the program plays clean. The title and every caption are yours to write.

For a design of your own — a corner of the screen, a strip along the bottom, your colours — the same guide is a block you place in a layout. See The gesture guide.

A signage screen hangs where nobody wants to climb. So everything is done from the office: which screens are online and what they play, a screenshot, a setting, a restart, or when it switches off at night. The content is kept on the device, so a screen keeps playing when the network goes down, and a player that crashes starts itself again. See Remote settings and Offline and caching.

A lounge or a bar can play a live TV channel inside your own frame, with the time and your messages around it. A TV hung in portrait is turned in the software, so any box works (Mounting and rotation). And several ordinary TVs can play as one picture: see how to build a video wall.

The screens you already have, and a small player behind each: an Android TV box, a Raspberry Pi, a PC with the desktop app, or a smart display’s browser. Each pairs with a six-letter code. A webcam only where you want gestures or a screen that reacts to people. What it all costs is in our Swiss cost overview, and cheap players are covered in old TV boxes and Raspberry Pis.

And when an event does come to the house, the same screens can run it — that part is optional. The overview for everyday screens is on the digital signage page.