Low power consumption -Economical and “green” digital signage & kiosks

In a pilot system involving a limited number of media players and monitors at a handful of sites, the power consumption of each unit is perhaps not the first thing you think about. But in a fully operational system with perhaps hundreds of media players it should to be taken into consideration.

A successful digital signage or self-service kiosk system will grow. By numbers the total power consumption of such a system can be significant. Therefore the power consumption of media players and media monitors used as kiosks are an important part of the total cost of ownership. Unfortunately many people forget to calculate the total energy costs for a system during its depreciation period. Both from an economical and environmental point of view, this should be taken into account.

Conventional PCs may have power consumption up to 150W depending on various factors. Industrial PCs with passive cooling may have a power consumption of 35 watts and more. Sometimes you may get better performance from a computer with higher power consumption but it comes with a cost. 

Each 50 W of power consumption means 432 kWH/per year. With an electricity cost at 0,1 Euro/kWh (which is only applicable in European countries with a very low price tag on the electricity) this means 43,2 Euro/year. During a 5 year period this corresponds to 216 Euro which is a considerable part of the initial cost for the individual media player.

To make more calculations on power consumption you can use the “MultiQ Kiosk Cost and Environmental Impact Estimation calculator”:

http://multiq.com/doc/developers/cost_saving_using_multiq_media_monitors.xlsx

The MultiQ media players consume less than 10 W and the media monitor with integrated media player consumes less than 50 W.

The power consumption is decreased further by scheduling the display hours. This means not only saving energy but also increase the lifetime of the monitors since the panels are preserved when the monitor is set to standby mode.

Also, electronic equipment that consumes less power emits less heat. In most cases less power dissipation means longer lifetime expectancy. Calculating the total energy consumption during the entire lifetime of the system is good both for the wallet and the environment.

Using media players and monitors with low power consumption (media player <10W and media monitor with integrated media player <50W) combined with scheduled display hours (outside which the monitors are set in standby mode) assures for low total power consumption.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström
Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

 

Reliable digital signage -Never a black or a blue screen

Black or blue screens, messages about failed security updates; those are most certainly among the nightmares of any digital signage- or self-service kiosk system operator. How to avoid this happening to you?

Today’s digital signage technology makes use of all advances that have been made during the last decade to ensure flexible and adaptable computer solutions. However, digital signs are used for 24/7 operation which is quite different from home appliances or computers and equipment used in an office. Therefore conventional PCs are not suitable for this task. Just as you have professional demands on kitchen stoves and other machines used in a restaurant kitchen compared to appliances in a home kitchen, there are special demands on computers used for digital signage and kiosks in stores and in other public environments.

There are a number of things that may cause problems in a digital signage system.

There are several reasons for avoiding fans in media players. Apart from being noisy, dust is dragged into the media players and is accumulated there which eventually calls for vacuum cleaning to avoid fan failure and overheating. In most cases the fans need to be replaced after about three years more or less. This causes a lot of maintenance. Due to low power consumption, the MultiQ products only use passive cooling resulting in noiseless operation without maintenance for many years.

All moving parts result in noise and maintenance. To completely avoid this, the hard drive can be replaced by a flash memory. Today these memories are inexpensive and have large capacity. The MultiQ media players and media monitors make use of these advances. With a system based on an economic distribution of Linux, which fits into less than one GB, the remaining flash memory is enough to house even commercials shot in full HD format. If needed, the internal memory can easily be expanded using an external flash memory.

Security update messages and security updates that fail are common in Windows based systems. When using Linux, you do not have these kinds of problems.

Computers tend to hang themselves sooner or later. A corrupted file gets downloaded to a media player and gets stuck, power transients affect the computer or something never tested before may occur in the software. We all know that PC users are very patient people that accept to do some maintenance work almost every day such as taking care of error messages or restarting the computer now and then. In a public environment the local staff should not and do not want to restart the media players now and then. To solve this, the media players or kiosks must be able to reboot themselves autonomously. In the MultiQ media players and media monitors there are two watchdogs monitoring each other and rebooting if there has not been any signs of life from the other watchdog for a certain amount of time. The watchdogs see to that the media player or media monitor reboots before anyone grabs the phone to call for assistance.

The MultiQ media players and media monitors are based on hardware and software specifically designed for digital signage. They are based on Linux, and do not use any moving parts for cooling or storing the content. This assures for a long and lifetime with no worries and no or limited maintenance. The units have 3 years standard warranty and 5 years as an option. This is similar to the lifetime expectancy for cash register systems which are 5-7 years.

In the long run, reliable hardware and software that require a minimum of service is the key to successful digital signage and kiosk systems. As the number of units in the system increases, these aspects become more and more crucial.

Things that assure for long-time operation free form maintenance and worries.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström
Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Start off simple when it comes to content

To create content to be used in a digital signage or self-service kiosk system is not as hard as you might think. You probably have much of the content already.

Digital signage and kiosk systems have both been around for some time but still people often feel a bit confused when it comes to producing the content. Perhaps one of the reasons is that there is a multitude of possibilities. However you do not need to embrace everything at once.  In principle, you can start off with a screen that displays a simple slideshow and then move on from there.

Lots of people ask themselves:  -How can I obtain content to use and who is going to make and support the content? Do I need a special department in my company handling all this?

Actually, introducing digital signage or kiosks in your operations is quite comparable to introduction of web sites. Today, the website is a natural part of the sales and information systems of all companies. With a digital signage system that supports web content you can basically let your own staff or your web bureau use their existing tools to make content. A typical slideshow can either be images, such as photos or a sequence of web pages. Your existing printed signs almost certainly exist in an electronic format and you can say that what you do is to replace the printing process by electronic display. The quality requirements when it comes to image resolution is in most cases less in digital signage than in print but higher than is the case for web production.

Yes, you will need to produce more content than for print (since you can show several signs in sequence on the screen), but on the other hand you will not have the printing costs. Also, if there is a mistake done during the production you do not need to throw away the printed material and it only takes seconds to correct the problem.

Set your ambitions according to your actual needs

Some years ago, qualified advertising bureaus where needed to produce content. This meant that small businesses could not afford qualified advertising. Today however there is something for everyone. If you have a small business with just one store you can regard digital signage the same way as you do with your website. Simple signs and even HD video clips can be produced using a simple video camera and easily accessible software such as Photoshop or Pinnacle Studio. On the other hand, in large companies or retail chains, the best choice can be to let the same people as is handling the website to be in charge of the digital signage content as well.

Producing video clips is not as complicated and expensive as it used to be. Online video distribution, such as YouTube, has paved the way.

Since content basically consists of images, video clips and web pages, conventional content creation tools can be used. Therefore existing knowledge in these areas can be reused.

Try to check what kind of content is already available in your organization; probably there is a lot that can be reused.

Digital signage content consists of conventional media files such as images, video clips, Flash animations and web pages.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ