The Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy at Duke University has turned to digital signage to better communicate with its students and staff. The Institute recently installed a digital signage system driven by three Aavelin AV 400 units. The LCD displays included with the system are Sampo LME42X8, with a native resolution of 1366 x 768.
The Institute has labs and offices in four locations on campus and the institute felt there was a need to close the physical gap between the buildings with a better communications system as the students and researchers did not feel like they were part of a unified program. The systems are used to advertise seminars and communicate the Institute’s current goals. Prior to installing this system, most communication was handled by email and printed flyers.
Currently there are five displays at entry points to three buildings. Two Aavelin units are driving two displays each, and the third Aavelin is driving a single display. All content creation occurs on a single PC at a central location. The content is distributed via TCP/IP over the campus network to the Aavelin players.
The key reasons for choosing the MagicBox Aavelin units were the simplicity of the Aavelin Composer Software, price point, IP addressability and the Macromedia Flash support capability of the unit.
The school’s Webmaster is utilizing Flash to build an interface between the Aavelin and an Interactive Calendar that is used by the university campus-wide. By working with Action Script, the coding language of Macromedia Flash, he was able to write a “middleman script” which automatically pulls information from the XML data output by the interactive Calendar. This information is then pulled into the Aavelin Player automatically, providing unattended updates with current events.
For more information, visit www.magicboxinc.com/products/aavelin.html.
