PiVision Debuts Bundled Raspberry Pi-Based Digital Signage Player
December 1, 2014 by Dave Haynes
RiseVision
gets tons and tons of tinkerers using its free, open-source signage CMS to try to make various devices work and drive a display with content. Some efforts never get past the kitchen table “lab” while others get commercialized.
A company called PiVision has taken the low cost Raspberry Pi micro-PC hardware, added an enclosure and the other necessary bits, and released a $199 CAD all-in offer for a payer and software.
Comes with a memory card, power adapter and HDMI cable. The pitch is, it works pretty much out of the box – after you key a display ID code.
While I have seen through Silver Curve’s Aperture very high quality video and motion graphics coming off the Pi devices, this product overtly says it is intended for low-demand set-ups such as menu boards, info boards, conferences, directories, and event signs.
This “offer” is over-priced and under-powered. We can do the same “basic” slideshows that support day parting using open source for the price of a USB key.
Thanks for the mention Dave!
As to the video abilities, this is not a limitation of the Pi hardware itself, but a limitation with the RiseVision Player.
RiseVision uses HTML5 tags in it’s presentations, but the current build of Chromium for the Raspberry Pi (Which is the base of the RiseVision Player software) lags far behind current builds and does not support HTML5 tags. If you add it, video does not even display in the presentation.
While RiseVision has stated that they are not currently working on trying to compile the latest version of Chrome into it’s player, it is something that we are actively looking into.
We would like to offer video in the future if we are able, but it’s just not a possibility with the RiseVision player at this time and we don’t want to mislead users.