SignageOS Makes Power Consumption Calculator Web Tool Available To Model Energy Costs For Screen Networks

June 4, 2024 by Dave Haynes

The Czech/US firm SignageOS has launched a nice little spin-out website that enables businesses to model the amount of commercial power being consumed by the displays on digital signage or digital out of home ad networks.

The Power Consumption Calculator website is essentially a web form that takes a series of inputs and produces an estimate of consumption and cost based on market rates. There are variable settings like the number of displays, brightness levels, their type (like indoor, semi and full outdoor, and e-paper. It also allows users to input the price per kilowatt and toggles between EU and USD.

The calculator stresses the outputs are estimates, not rock-solid budget numbers. An outdoor LCD might be 2500 nits or 3500nits, for example, which would affect calculations.

The calculator does not get into LED, a market that is still more than a little Wild West-y in terms of how things are characterized, and calculations would also be affected by things like manufacturing type (COB vs SMD, for example) and the pixel pitch (tighter pixel means more lights, which means more power drawn). It also doesn’t get into the nominal costs for powering other devices that might be part of an install, like an external media player and networking gear.

The site, if its gets widely known and used, is a good way for SignageOS to make partners and end-users aware of its device management capabilities for the 50-plus hardware platforms it supports with middleware and remote device management tools. If the model gets run, and the anticipated costs show higher than anticipated or budgeted, signageOS is sitting right there with suggestions on how to lower costs through things like scheduling and remote diagnostics.

The company pushed out a case study a few months back that looked at how a bank in Europe reduced its by 40% by using monitoring and management measures.