Keep an eye on your project, blog, appointments, news and to do lists onto a wall public display.
Create easily your own public/wall display with your feed!
RollGator aggregates your favourite feeds and show them fullscreen on a wall
display. It's easy and free!!
You only need a computer and a screen to hang on a wall. Rollgator find your information for you and shows them with a professional look.
You can use any display you like, no matter the dimensions. Of course the wider
the screen the more professional the installation will be (like public displays)
-Big screen LCD TV or monitor for professional look and visual impacts
-Standard LCD or CRT computer monitor for low cost installation
-Old CRT TV for vintage and recycling installation
-LCD or DLP videoprojector for extra big and cool installation
-Plasma TVs are not recommended due to Burn-In effects (use
only old/recycled plasma TVs)
Plasma and Chatode Ray Tube TVs are not designed to display fixed images for extended periods of time.
Burn-in, sometimes also referred as permanent image retention, is an effect of an after-image appearing on your plasma or other phosphor-based screen after a still picture is displayed for an extended period of time. The most common type of burn-in is the result of watching 4:3 video with black bars on both sides on a 16:9 screen. Other examples of burn-in may include non-transparent channel logos, fixed parts of the screen used, for example, for teletext or weather display, video and computer games, logos, menus, task bar, start menu, pop up or even a paused DVD or DVD title menu. When time passes, your TV phosphors age, and the overall lightness of your display is gradually reduced. This is normal wear. Not only plasmas are susceptible to burn-in effect. Just about any phosphor-based screen, whether plasma, tube rear-projection (but not the modern LCD, LCoS or DLP based rear-projection screens), and even CRT TVs may be affected.
Basic rollgator templates can mitigate the Burn-In process without using fixed images but we are no warranty. Use plasma and CRT Tvs only at your own risk only in a full screen mode without navigation, status and task bar.
The burn-in is usually not covered by your TV warranty. Rollgator are not responsible of any type of Burn-In retention image.
The Flat Display Mounting Interface is a family of standards defined by the Video Electronics Standards Association for mounting flat panel monitors, TVs, and other displays to stands or wall mounts.It is implemented on most modern flat-panel monitors and TVs. The original VESA mount consisted of four screws arranged in a square, with the horizontal and vertical distance between the screw centers being 100 mm. This is still the most commonly used configuration for desktop computer displays. A 75 mm × 75 mm layout was defined for smaller displays. The secific was extended in 2006 with a collection of additional screw patterns that are more appropriate for larger TV screens. Specific wall mount support they are easily available from many hardware stores.
You can use any computer with Pentium class processor. For power saving installation you can use a small size nettop or minimac computers. But also an older refurbished PC are ideal to this work.The minimum system requirements are: small hard disk (4GB), few memory (128MB), network adapter, simple or embedded video card, with optional TV out for specific installation. For viewing Rollgator you must leave your PC always on for many hours at a day. Check if the fan are operative!
After installation and configuration go to the BIOS settings and set no warning for missing keyoboard/mouse and always power on on the power loss management.Then disconnect keyboard and mouse and leave your PC connected only to display.
The only task of your computer is to display a Rollgator news page. Virtually all operating systems and browser are supported. The operating system must have screensaver, power saving and update disabled with autologon (no password required at startup). Your browser must be setting to start automatically. Then you configure your browser to start in a fullscreen or kiosk mode and set the URL comes form Rollgator as your homepage.
Kiosk mode for Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer includes a Kiosk Mode feature. When you run Internet Explorer
in Kiosk mode, the Internet Explorer title bar, menus, toolbars, and status bar
are not displayed and Internet Explorer runs in Full Screen mode. The Windows
taskbar is not displayed.
Simply copy shortcut to internet explorer in the autorun folder, edit property
and add the -k flag
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154780/en-us
Kiosk plugin for Firefox:
Real Kiosk is a Firefox 2.0 - 3.0 extension that defaults to full screen,
disables all menus, toolbars, key commands and right button menus.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1659
The Rollgator computer requires only two connections: always-on internet connection and display connection.
Internet connection
You can use wireless or wired connection to the network. The amount of data downloaded depends from the news but are usually very low so you can share the existing Internet connection of your home or work. The Rollgator news page refreshing contents every 5 minutes, then your connection plan must be a "flat" connections without time limits and time charging.
Video connection
Rollgator use extra large fonts, so you can use all connection avaiable (VGA, HDMI, S-Video, RGB or Video Composite) without visible loss of quality.
To connect standard LCD/CRT PC monitor the ideal connection is VGA or HDMI. This cable are expensive for long distance (max 15-20 meters). For extra long distance and multi monitor connections you must use a video splitter/amplifier.
To connect a wide screen TV you can use VGA/HDMI connector for optimal video output.
To connect old and new TVs you can use standard video signals if your video adapters have TV out. The standard Video Composite cable are very cheap and can cover long distance without video splitter/amplifier. You can create homemade your custom cable. If you want to connect multiple TVs you can relaunch video signals form on tv to another simply connecting the video-out signals of first TV to the video-in signals of the next TV. S-video and VGA-RGB-Componet cable are suitable but the cable is more expensive. See the Hardware Book for all video connection issues.
With standard video connections set the computer resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768 pixels.
If you want to shut down automatically the computer at a certain time you can use the Switch-Off utility for Windows environment.
If your PC have a sound card and your monitor have speakers you can add a media player tuned to a streaming web radio (like ambient/new age/jazz) and set it to autostart. Then your display spread music and create a pleasant atmosphere in the room.
For create your custom news display page you need to create new Rollgator
Account. It's a free web 2.0 service.
After registration you can select your favourite source and choose style,
animation, colour and much more.
