Jun 15

Report from New England: A Retail Solution for University Kiosks

By John Curran DOOH Trends, Fanless Computers, Interactive Digital Signage, Kiosk Software, Retail Kiosks Comments Off

John Curran of mCosm

This week we have a guest blogger: John Curran, CEO of mCosm, our affiliate company.

PCs today are commodities with little differences between brands except for logos and prices. When it comes to interactive kiosks, however, product selection is both complicated and critical to project success. For a good example of how to choose the right kiosk, check outside the meeting rooms at a large New England university. (I can’t name it here, but you know the school.)

Unattended kiosks should be sturdy, easy to install, and have consistent BIOS for the life of a project. For this project, a software company supplied the university with an event-management system. This involved installing small custom kiosks to serve as automated “room card” displays outside each of the meeting rooms in a conference area of the university’s student center. Thanks to the EMS, students walking down the hallways could tell at a glance what meetings were in progress.

university conference room digital signage

Micro Industries Touch&Go Pricechecker used as Conference Room Digital Signage

The original kiosks were the only units available with the application programming interface (API) needed to integrate with the EMS. But they also had a drawback—they used 5V DC power and had to be within eight feet of an electrical outlet. The prohibitively high cost of installing additional outlets meant that most of the kiosks were situated beyond eight feet. Not surprisingly, this led to continual hard-drive failures. Worse, performance was very slow and the kiosks were prone to overheating. The kiosk vendor didn’t offer repair services, either.

Looking around for an alternative to these troubled room-card kiosks, the university settled on the Pricechecker unit from Micro Industries. Our retail kiosk might sound like an odd solution for an academic setting, but it worked extremely well. The Pricechecker is a hardened kiosk with a patented passive cooling system to keep it from overheating. Power Over Ethernet Plus means it can be placed as much as 300 feet away from an outlet. The Pricechecker also has consistent BIOS to ensure that the applications won’t be affected when new units are added.

The university developed a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to replace the first application. (It helped that the EMS had a well-documented API.) Today, the university says, its Pricechecker kiosks not only provide rock-solid performance, they’re also less expensive and have larger, brighter displays than the original units.
Clearly, not all kiosks are created equal. A kiosk that combines ruggedness, performance, style and price come only from a company that designs, manufactures and sells it directly to the user—a company like Micro Industries. Give us a call sometime.

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May 24

Report from NYC: The SGH Launch Party

By Michael Curran Creative Content for Digital Signage and Kiosks, DOOH Trends, Digital Signage, Digital Signage Content Management, In-store Social Networking, Interactive Digital Signage, Retail Kiosks, Technology Comments Off

With all the glitz and glamour of a Hollywood premier, Sunglass Hut opened its flagship store on Fifth Avenue late last month. SGH then hopped the Atlantic to open its London flagship store with just as much fanfare on Oxford Street the very next night!

A steady stream of celebrities, dignitaries and SGH execs talking with the press caused chaos on the New York sidewalks, where passersby strained for glimpses of Rachel Bilson, Coco Rocha, Zoe Kravitz and many others. Inside, we were greeted by an exquisitely choreographed show, with sleek models snapping pictures of other models posing in chic sunglasses. Everyone was encouraged to try on shades and pose for SHG’s innovative Social Sun system.

What exactly did Big Apple glitterati have to do with digital signage? We were invited to Fifth Avenue because Micro Industries Touch&Go Paige® is a key component of the fun. Our mCosm team developed the software named “Social Sun” by Sunglass Hut. Social Sun lets customers try on sunglasses, digitally capture and compare their looks, and share the images with family and friends. You can email the pictures, post them to Facebook or even upload them to the Social Sun page on Sunglass Hut’s website. In-store, you can also post pictures to our fantastic Touch&Go Messenger 65—in New York, our pictures joined the photos of the partiers who packed the event.

Micro Industries Mike and Mandy Curran

Sunglass Hut CEO Fabio d’Angelantonio said he wanted to make the Fifth Avenue store a better showcase for the company’s products than the simple glass counters for the shades Luxottica makes for such fashion houses as Prada, Chanel and Polo Ralph Lauren. “The New York and London flagships provide an opportunity to make the brand a consumer destination that showcases sunglasses like no other retailer in the world,” d’Angelantonio said later in London. Consumers own far fewer sunglasses than shoes, which he believes leaves significant potential for the category to expand if sunglasses are seen as essential fashion accessories.

To mark the NYC flagship launch, many of the fashion houses that work with Luxottica provided original artwork, which hung in a private showing room in the rear of the store. Such big fashion names as Dolce & Gabbana, Tiffany, Burberry, Gucci and many more expressed their best wishes in their trademark style.

Guest DJs Fab Moretti and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy provided the music, their rock theme adding to the event’s vitality. Jenny Lewis’ live performance was outstanding. It was a fabulous night that left our little Micro Industries contingent feeling energized and a long way from home. Toto, we aren’t in Ohio anymore!

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Apr 05

What’s “HOT” ?

By Michael Curran Digital Signage, Fanless Computers, Retail Kiosks, Technology Comments Off

When it comes to computers “HOT” isn’t necessarily a good thing. Heat is the major contributor to computer system failures whether it’s from a power supply, a CPU fan or hard drive. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures will cause these devices to fail and take down your system. In a retail environment computer systems are subjected to conditions that significantly increase the probability of failures due to heat, therefore when selecting a computer system for an interactive digital signage application there are a few things to consider.

Today’s retail computers, digital signs and retail kiosks are designed to run under a very specific set of conditions. They’re expected to be in operation about 8 hours a day in an office or home environment (with typical temperatures ranging from about 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit) without a significant amount of dust or debris in the air. If you deviate much from these conditions, you can significantly reduce the life of a computer.

In a retail environment computers are expected to run as much as 24 hours a day reducing the life expectancy of a typical retail computer to about 1/3 of its normal life expectancy. Most in-store computer systems are hidden away in cabinetry or fixturing or are hung from ceilings where the temperature could be as much as 20 to 30 degrees above ambient conditions. Retailers are also very susceptible to the impact of dust, from exposure to the outside, from cardboard boxes and even generated from receipt printers. This dust is drawn into the computers by fans and can significantly reduce the efficiency of the computers cooling systems eventually causing critical components to overheat.

To compensate for these issues computer component manufactures like Intel have designed thermal failsafe mechanisms into their chips like the Intel® Core™ i7 processor to protect the CPU in the event that the chip is subjected to temperatures outside its normal operating range. This minimizes the damage to one of the more expensive components in the system but it doesn’t prevent damage to other key components like the power supply, processor fan or even the disk drive where all of the systems application programs and data are stored.

When evaluating computer systems for a retail application the primary criteria for selecting a system should be the ability of the system to deal with the environmental stresses in a store.  A number of vendors like Micro Industries have developed “Retail Hardened” or “Ruggedized” computer systems that can survive in typical store environments. This typically involves using more expensive passive cooling technology, industrial grade components and mobile or solid state disk drives. All of these factors increase the cost of the system compared to standard retail computer systems but it will minimize the amount of downtime that a retailer will experience and downtime in retail translates into lost sales opportunities.

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Feb 25

Answering the Ancient Question: Yes, Bigger Is Better

By Michael Curran DOOH Trends, Interactive Digital Signage, Retail Kiosks, Technology Comments Off

The age-old question about size has real significance in the Digital Signage Market. Historically, if you wanted large digital signage in a retail space, you stacked several smaller displays together. You needed lots of high-performance video cards linked to a powerful computer system that let you color-match all of the displays, and sophisticated software to distribute the image across all of them. Amazingly, some very good vendors can deliver this solution today.

The simpler approach is one large display. Several major manufacturers, such as Sharp and Samsung, offer large LCD panels (65-, 82- and even 108-inch models, measured diagonally) at very attractive prices. The single-display approach has numerous advantages, especially in image quality, computer requirements and power management.
Image quality is critical in a retail environment. For technical reasons, spreading content across multiple screens decreases resolution and makes the image look grainy. Not many retailers can afford to provide clear viewing from 20 to 30 feet away, the normal distance for your eyes to integrate a matrix image. And if one display fails, it’s almost impossible to find a replacement that matches the color and hue of the other displays in the matrix. A single display, however, provides outstanding detail, even if the customer is standing close to the screen.

Power and heat management are also important factors to consider in matrix systems. You need adequate ventilation, since heat rising from the lower displays can affect the service life of the upper displays. This takes up floor space that you no doubt could put to better use. In addition, a matrix of four 42-inch LCDs uses about twice the power of one 82-inch LCD panel, which provides about the same viewing area.
I’ve always believed in keeping things simple when it comes to computer systems. A single large display can be powered with a single motherboard and graphics engine. Content is displayed in native mode, so there’s no need to divide the image and distribute it over multiple displays. One display also reduces the potential for errors at both the hardware and software levels.

So, there’s really no question that bigger is better in retail Digital Signage. But, just to be sure, check out all of your options and determine the best long-term solution for your particular application.

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If you’re attending the Digital Signage Expo (DSE) in Las Vegas this week, please stop by to see us in the Intel Corporation exhibit, booth #1223. We’ll show you our Touch&Go Messenger 82™, an HD LCD display that I’m confident will amaze you. Judge for yourself whether bigger is better.

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