Digital signage refers to using screens to display content like advertisements, announcements, or menus.
Think of screens in malls, airports, or cafes showing dynamic content.
Current Solution
This is a non-exhaustive list of possible solutions for digital signage, there seems to be an endless amount of close source options.
DAKboard
https://dakboard.com/site
DAKboard is a connected display for your photos, calendar, news, to-do and weather.
Notes
They sell the displays and also give the option to run it on your own hardware.
The software itself is close source, and likely runs on their servers. (you can’t self host)
They have a github but only for submitting issues, no actually code to be found.
It has A LOT of integrations and features
Seems to be quite flexible with what you could do with it, but focused on home/office use as oppose to corporate advertisement.
Features
- Agenda view with sync
- Digital photo frame with sync
- Smart Home Devices
- Weather
- Traffic
- To-do Lists
- News Feeds
- Stock Quotes
- Welcome board
- Lobby display
- Conference room schedules
- Building directory
Pricing
- Free version with limited functionality
- 4/screen (still limited)
- 5/screen
ScreenlyOSE/Anthias
https://anthias.screenly.io/
The world’s most popular open source digital signage solution. Turn any TV into a powerful digital sign.
Previously ScreenlyOSE this blog explains
Notes
Seems to be the strongest contestant for self hosting, it’s backed by the Screenly company and it is actively developed.
They insist that this is not the best solution if you have multiple screens that you want to manage.
Possible conflict of interest with their paid software
Features
- Display images, web pages, and video content in 1080p HD
- Easily add, remove, and schedule content on local network screens.
Screenly
https://www.screenly.io/
Screenly provides the hardware and software you need to manage digital signs at scale. Update and schedule content, monitor screen health, and show content from your existing tech stack.
Notes
Although it started as an open source project, it was fully rewritten and shares no code with ScreenlyOSE/Anthias
Features
- Display images, web pages, and video content in 1080p HD or 4K
- Playlist feature
- Dashboard for checking status and location of screens
- Label feature to manage big groups of screens
- Ecosystem of apps for muliple features (Edge Apps)
- iframe display
- messge display
- weather
- rss feed
- countdown for events, deadlines or launches
- clock
- Power BI dashboard
- public transport schedule (bus)
Pricing
https://www.screenly.io/pricing/
- Starter $11/screen monthly (up to 2 users, 1080p only)
- Business $17/screen monthly (unlimited users, custom user permission, 4k)
- ENterprise $25/screen monthly (priority and better support)
LibreSignage
https://github.com/eerotal/LibreSignage
A free and open source digital signage solution. UNMAINTAINED
Notes
Archived since 2021, unmaintained since 2020, all the images are lost
The codebase is mostly PHP and JavaScript
BSD 3-clause license
From what I see the bulk of the project is the slide system.
Features
- Web interface for editing slides and managing the LibreSignage instance.
- Many per slide settings like durations, transitions, etc.
- Special markup syntax for easily formatting slides.
- Live preview of the slide markup in the slide editor.
- Support for embedding remote or uploaded image and video files.
- Support for scheduling specific slides for a specific time-frame.
- Collaboration features with other users on the network.
- Separate slide queues for different sets of signage clients.
- Multi user support with configurable access control.
- User management features for admin users in the web interface.
- Configurable quota for the amount of slides a user can create.
- Rate limited API for reducing server load.
- Extensive documentation of features including docs for developers.
- Extensive configuration possibilities.
Obscreen
https://www.obscreen.io/
Obscreen organizes and broadcasts media to your screens through any web browser. It uses a simple approach that avoids bulky hardware or complicated configurations.
Notes
They have a demo!
Close source, they offer a self hosted option as well as a cloud edition
Their github is only for documentation and issues
Features
- Simple architecture using browsers
- Fancy GUI (Organize your media files into playlists and compose your own presentations by dragging and dropping files around)
- Screen fleet management
- Flashdrive offline mode
- Plugins & APIs
- Multilanguage support
Pricing
- Basic Desktop €30 one time + €2 screen/month (personal use only, limited functionality)
- Premium Desktop €120 one time + €2 screen/month
- On-demand (special pricing for big clients)
Xibo
https://xibosignage.com/
A cost effective, reliable digital signage solution that adapts to your business needs
Notes
It’s open source AGPLv3 hosted on github, is in active development.
They offer a hosted service
The project is divided in a Content Management System (CMS) and a serie of players for different systems (mainly the Windows one)
It’s written in PHP
It looks quite complex, not all the players support all features
Features
https://xibosignage.com/features
Their list is way too long and detailed.
They seem to have widgets for lots of usecases
Not all their players have support for all the features, only the Windows player is fully supported
Pricing
https://xibosignage.com/pricing
Self hosted version has all the features
- Professional €4.40/display monthly
- Business €6.90/display monthly (more bandwidth, priority and 5 concurrent dashboards)
- Enterprise €11.30/display monthly (even more bandwidth, high priority and 15 concurrent dashboards)
DisplayMonkey
https://github.com/fuel9/DisplayMonkey
Display Monkey is an awesome and easy to use browser based digital signage solution that can spread the gospel in stores, hallways, conference rooms and shop floors.
UNMAINTAINED
Notes
The project is unmaintained since 2019
Their webpage is no longer up
Built with ASP.Net
MIT license
Features
- Frame caching
- Location-specific frames
- Custom frame templates
- Multi-culture, multi-language
- Frames supporting the following content:
- SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) reports
- Pictures
- Local videos
- YouTube videos
- Your own HTML
- Simple memos
- MSO Outlook calendar with quick booking
- Text and graphical face clock
- Yahoo weather
- Power BI
- WYSIWYG Editor to design presentation layouts
- Management of Displays
- Management of Media (images and videos)
- Online help
- Dashboard
- UI for Application Settings
concerto
http://www.concerto-signage.org/
Concerto is an open source digital signage system. Users submit graphic, textual, and other content, and moderators approve that content for use in a variety of content feeds which are displayed on screens connected to computers displaying the Concerto frontend.
Notes
Open Source Apache license, on github
Doesn’t have very active development.
Build with Ruby
The documentation is extensive
Features
Doesn’t have a feature list that I can find, but it seems to be designed to allow users to submit content and have a moderator autorize them, as a digital pin board.
Some of the content mentioned that you can show: image, an iframe, video, rss content, etc
It has a plugin system (plugin list)
piSignage
https://pisignage.com/
Digital Signage Player Software for Raspberry Pi (also works in other devices)
Notes
The code for the server public in github but has no license! the player code is closed source
You can self host it, but need to pay for the player license for each display
Features
- Manage Campaigns Centrally with an intuitive UI
- Player built on top of Node.js (not open source)
- Supports HD Video,MP3,Images,HTML repos & links(CORS included), Youtube, Streaming content, media RSS, PDF etc.
- Display independent content in upto 3 zones(6 in custom), insert ticker, logo and clock widgets.
- More than 15 in-built layout templates and support for custom templates upload. Video window also can be customized.
- Works offline, downloads content incrementally with auto-restart and uses websocket for real-time server communication.
- Advanced Scheduling to play content at specific times, days or duration. TV_OFF playlist allows dynamic switching off of the TV.
- Insertion of adverts by creating such playlists (multiple of such playlists can be added). Videos can be paused to insert an advert.
- Extensive RAS features - Remote upgrade with fallback, remote shell, event logging, auto restart & more.
Pricing
- 25$ - player license
- 2020 per player. Hassle free administration of players with many more advantages.)
- 45 - managed (includes both player license and 1 year subscription.)
Raspberry Digital Signage
https://www.binaryemotions.com/digital-signage-systems/raspberry-digital-signage/
Raspberry Digital Signage is an operating system designed for digital signage installations on the Raspberry Pi: it displays a full-screen browser view restricted to a specified resource.
Notes
This is just the OS that you can install in a Raspberry Pi, witha carousel compositor
It would make sense if you just want to display a simple app or picture with no extra features like remote control of multiple screens
DigitalSignage.com
Notes
First result that comes up when searching for digital signage
Close source software, their interfaces looks somewhat outdated
Features
- No-code platform for designing scenes
- Similar to other solutions, they have list of apps with integrations
- They have support for touch devices, scenes can be interactive
Pricing
- mediaCloud Free tier up to 3 screens
- mediaCloud+ $3/screen monthly
- Enterprise (custom price)
- They sell a server with the cloud software for 39/year license
ScreenCloud
Notes
Only option for self hosting is with the device they sell
They sell a minicomputer for running the software too €140
Features
- Support for the major smart TVs, chomeOS, Android, Windows and MacOS
- Integrations with a lot of services (full list)
Pricing
- Core €18/screen monthly
- Pro €27/screen monthly (minimum of 5 screens, remote device manager, microsoft integrations)
- Enterprise (minimum of 25 screens, custom price)
screenfluence
https://www.screenfluence.com/
Notes
Another standard corporate solution
Pricing
1-9 screens 25/screen montly
100+ screens $20/screen montly
Yodeck
Notes
Another standard corporate solution
Features
Novisign
Notes
Another standard corporate solution