Tiny Green PC Joins The Digital Signage ARM Race With Touch Player

June 10, 2013 by Dave Haynes

Tiny Green PC, which some of you might have known earlier as Fit PC, has released an Android media player it says can convert any touch screen with Android drivers into a fully functional Android tablet – the idea being that the tablet can be a touch enabled commercial monitor of pretty much any size.

The company says its iDISPLAY Touch Player is particularly effective with Baanto’s Shadowsense touch screen technology.

Says a release:

The device plays media, content and applications on any screen size from any location in 1080p full HD. Operators can play videos, slideshows, apps and other interactive content on hardware which is optimised for constant use in commercial environments. Full management control is retained, with remote updating, tracking of performance, capturing of data and creation of analytics.

Multiple Touch Players can be configured for a digital signage network managed from a central or remote location. The devices are equipped with embedded WiFi, optional 3G and, where available, 4G LTE. Communication across an Ethernet LAN is also possible. Security is assured, with password-protected access to content management and settings changes.

The Players’ aptitude for commercial environments is evident in their software as well as hardware. Their integrated Pulse technology features include Auto-Power, Auto-Play, Password Protection, Data Analytics and compatibility with a range of industry-standard CMS solutions. The devices can reinforce marketing messages and promotions by playing a multitude of applications available to run under open Android OS.

The Touch Player can be configured with either Dual or Quad Core processing power to meet operators’ content needs, ranging from standard operations to complex and image-rich high resolution graphics. As well as Android-supported touch screens, the Player accepts external hardware such as barcode scanners, printers, external mice and an iDISPLAY™ Connect Box. This supports up to 12 pushbuttons or touch sensors to activate different applications as well as a motion sensor which launches content when customer presence is detected.

The company, a division of UK-based Anders Electronics, already has a range of teeny x86 based teeny PCs, but this is running an ARM A9 CPU (which is what most of the Android players now on the market also use).

The units are not as inexpensive as many other Android boxes on the market – $400-ish for the quad core – but they are also purpose-built for digital signage (many of the lowest cost Android units we’ve see are consumer devices) and it comes with scheduling software.