Icelandic Software Firm Launches “Hardware-Free” Digital Signage Solution
November 27, 2024 by Dave Haynes
An Icelandic software services company called Dacoda has wrapped up two years of development work and launched a new SaaS digital signage product that borrows on streaming TV technology – with a service that runs purely off a connected smart display’s browser.
Called Signital – and I haven’t sorted our how to pronounce that … like sign, or like digital? – the service is positioned as a hardware-free solution. But poking around the FAQ suggests it will also work with BrightSign boxes and Amazon HDMI sticks, and more hardware device support is on the way.
“Our goal was to make digital signage accessible and efficient for any business, large or small,” says Júlíus Freyr Guðmundsson, Founder of Dacoda. “We believe Signital’s innovative approach will resonate with businesses globally, just as it has in Iceland.”
The company says the platform is already being used by one of Iceland’s largest businesses, and the announcement is intended as a way to launch beyond the island country into global markets.
Using browsers as digital signage players is an approach thats been around for 20+ years, and there is much more stability in doing that than there was back in the day. Several companies have web players as an option to their “native” to the devices software play-out code.
I’m no coder or CTO, but suspect the main question and concern here would be device management and monitoring. When it is just a browser at the endpoint, how do you know it is on and working, and how do you resolve any issues?
There may well be a way, for all I know, but I didn’t see it in the documentation.
There is always a device. A browser has to run on hardware.
Yup. Good point. More like external hardware-free.