First bit of feedback, WhatsApp is for my friends and family, not for work. That this is the primary way to reach out suggests this is a hobby project, and I wouldn't get in touch for a business thing on my personal WhatsApp.
Next up, the AI generated images aren't a great look, just get some actual screenshots of what I can expect when using it.
No pricing information is a bit suspicious.
That said, the idea sounds great, we used to have a little web app that did this at my old workplace, but it was something we had to build and host, and if we could have avoided it we would have.
It's apparently super common in Indonesia to have WhatsApp button on the website. In many popular websites, the Checkout button even opens WhatsApp (purchase happens in a WhatsApp chat, payment using bank transfer). It could be cultural, so maybe I'll region-lock the button. I wonder how's things in other countries?
I don't have time yet to implement payment (maybe just use WhatsApp lol), that's why I don't put pricing. Is it common to put something like "This is free but later I'm going to charge you $x"?
For the AI image, point taken. I will update it once I have some nice shots.
You could region lock, or just put an address like "hello@..." front and center, that's probably enough. Here is Australia, and in the UK where I'm from, WhatsApp is everywhere, but no payments and it's pretty much exclusively personal use. In the US basically no one has WhatsApp.
Makes sense about payments, good to focus on the product. I think saying "free during beta" is fine – it may put some people off because they don't want to rely on something that will go away or start charging later, but it's honest. You could put a target pricing if you want to set expectations for when you do implement payments.
More info in general on the landing page about how it works, or the sorts of results I can expect, would be good. The page does a good job of telling me what's possible, but I know what digital signage is, how does this particular product help me more than other alternatives?
I mentioned the email, being a sales email is a little intimidating. And using WhatsApp is highly region specific – I don't know anyone doing business on WhatsApp, including small businesses, and I live in a country where WhatsApp is very prevalent for personal communication.
I worked at a company that did interactive retail signage and wrote the platform to remotely deploy software to the screens. Can confirm it was a giant pain in the ass. A couple random thoughts:
1) Internet access was extremely unreliable on site, as was our ability to get useful assistance from retail staff. Queueing inbound and outbound signals was key, as was locally storing any content.
2) Our primary customer was non-technical marketing/creative folks. They bought us because it allowed them to deploy novel signage formats without knowing how to code. (In case that’s a useful pain point to pursue.)
I'm not a customer for this, but my first question is: given people are already able to do what you promise (that is, digital screens exist), what is wrong with the solutions they are using?
I actually built this to scratch my own itch. We put a bunch of cheap Android TVs on the wall to display metrics (Google Analytics, CI/CD pipeline, etc). However, manually updating those screens using the TV remote is a hassle, so the screens often become stale.
The app solves 4 things: it can display a series of websites (a playlist), it can refresh them automatically, it can be controlled remotely from a laptop, and we can control everything at once.
It would help to have more info on what you need to run this. The page mentions "without the need for any new hardware", but doesn't say what existing types of hardware it is compatible with. The apps available for download gives a hint, but are the apps for displaying the content, or for controlling the content?
For example, I recently setup a dashboard using a Raspberry Pi running Chromium - would this work for my use case?
And does the control work over the local network, or does it require an internet connection?
The controller is a web app (https://admin.signagesync.app), and the app is basically a WebView wrapper. The app has 2 "modes", control (opens the website mentioned earlier) and display.
The app requires internet, but the content can be from local network. Eventually if there's enough demand I'll make everything local.
Funny thing: before I built this, I couldn't find anything similar (we just needed a way to show stats in the office, so I built an app). Now, suddenly, I keep stumbling across apps that already do it. Classic Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
Gonna check this out tomorrow. I've actually tried to build something like this (incidentally with the Flutter tech stack too), so I'll get back to you on this with some feedback.
Feels completely broken here. The screen looks like spooling an empty VHS tape, i.e. horizontal lines and dots, flickering and moving up and down. Sony Bravia 4K UR2, Android 10.
Thanks for reporting this! Android can be tricky because of the wide variety of hardware, but I wouldn't have expected a Sony TV to run into issues (it works on $15 Android TV dongle).
If you don't mind sharing, is the problem when opening a web page, or video (.mp4)? I use flutter and they're handled by different libraries.
Webpage. To be honest, I don't even know how to add a video. There is only URL input field available in the admin webUI. I understand that it is early days and alpha quality software, so I didn't want to be nitpicky and report every single annoyance, but this is a major bug. Let me know if I could help with some log collecting or something.
I guess that's what separates side projects from "professional" apps :D They can have the same functionalities, but the professional ones are more polished down to the minor details. Mine: copy-paste URL. Theirs: video file upload or integration with Google Drive/Dropbox. Behind the scenes, they both use a URL. But my app will get there!
First bit of feedback, WhatsApp is for my friends and family, not for work. That this is the primary way to reach out suggests this is a hobby project, and I wouldn't get in touch for a business thing on my personal WhatsApp.
Next up, the AI generated images aren't a great look, just get some actual screenshots of what I can expect when using it.
No pricing information is a bit suspicious.
That said, the idea sounds great, we used to have a little web app that did this at my old workplace, but it was something we had to build and host, and if we could have avoided it we would have.
Thanks for the feedback!
It's apparently super common in Indonesia to have WhatsApp button on the website. In many popular websites, the Checkout button even opens WhatsApp (purchase happens in a WhatsApp chat, payment using bank transfer). It could be cultural, so maybe I'll region-lock the button. I wonder how's things in other countries?
I don't have time yet to implement payment (maybe just use WhatsApp lol), that's why I don't put pricing. Is it common to put something like "This is free but later I'm going to charge you $x"?
For the AI image, point taken. I will update it once I have some nice shots.
You could region lock, or just put an address like "hello@..." front and center, that's probably enough. Here is Australia, and in the UK where I'm from, WhatsApp is everywhere, but no payments and it's pretty much exclusively personal use. In the US basically no one has WhatsApp.
Makes sense about payments, good to focus on the product. I think saying "free during beta" is fine – it may put some people off because they don't want to rely on something that will go away or start charging later, but it's honest. You could put a target pricing if you want to set expectations for when you do implement payments.
More info in general on the landing page about how it works, or the sorts of results I can expect, would be good. The page does a good job of telling me what's possible, but I know what digital signage is, how does this particular product help me more than other alternatives?
They have literally their email just below... also if small businesses are their target, it's quite clever to use WhatsApp
I mentioned the email, being a sales email is a little intimidating. And using WhatsApp is highly region specific – I don't know anyone doing business on WhatsApp, including small businesses, and I live in a country where WhatsApp is very prevalent for personal communication.
I worked at a company that did interactive retail signage and wrote the platform to remotely deploy software to the screens. Can confirm it was a giant pain in the ass. A couple random thoughts:
1) Internet access was extremely unreliable on site, as was our ability to get useful assistance from retail staff. Queueing inbound and outbound signals was key, as was locally storing any content.
2) Our primary customer was non-technical marketing/creative folks. They bought us because it allowed them to deploy novel signage formats without knowing how to code. (In case that’s a useful pain point to pursue.)
Hope that’s helpful!
What do you mean by queuing inbound and outbound signals?
It would be useful to have some examples on the web page, as I'm not inclined to immediately download an app.
Have a look at Info-Beamer as well: https://github.com/info-beamer
Wow, I didn't know about Info-Beamer, thanks!
I'm not a customer for this, but my first question is: given people are already able to do what you promise (that is, digital screens exist), what is wrong with the solutions they are using?
I actually built this to scratch my own itch. We put a bunch of cheap Android TVs on the wall to display metrics (Google Analytics, CI/CD pipeline, etc). However, manually updating those screens using the TV remote is a hassle, so the screens often become stale.
The app solves 4 things: it can display a series of websites (a playlist), it can refresh them automatically, it can be controlled remotely from a laptop, and we can control everything at once.
Nothing against scratching itches (we all do), but that's what literally thousand of existing digital signage solutions already offer out of the box.
It would help to have more info on what you need to run this. The page mentions "without the need for any new hardware", but doesn't say what existing types of hardware it is compatible with. The apps available for download gives a hint, but are the apps for displaying the content, or for controlling the content?
For example, I recently setup a dashboard using a Raspberry Pi running Chromium - would this work for my use case?
And does the control work over the local network, or does it require an internet connection?
The controller is a web app (https://admin.signagesync.app), and the app is basically a WebView wrapper. The app has 2 "modes", control (opens the website mentioned earlier) and display.
The app requires internet, but the content can be from local network. Eventually if there's enough demand I'll make everything local.
It doesn't work for RPi yet but soon!
It would be helpful to specify how yours compares to other, more established solutions in the same niche. Something like https://www.telemetrytv.com
Will do!
Funny thing: before I built this, I couldn't find anything similar (we just needed a way to show stats in the office, so I built an app). Now, suddenly, I keep stumbling across apps that already do it. Classic Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
Gonna check this out tomorrow. I've actually tried to build something like this (incidentally with the Flutter tech stack too), so I'll get back to you on this with some feedback.
Feels completely broken here. The screen looks like spooling an empty VHS tape, i.e. horizontal lines and dots, flickering and moving up and down. Sony Bravia 4K UR2, Android 10.
Thanks for reporting this! Android can be tricky because of the wide variety of hardware, but I wouldn't have expected a Sony TV to run into issues (it works on $15 Android TV dongle).
If you don't mind sharing, is the problem when opening a web page, or video (.mp4)? I use flutter and they're handled by different libraries.
Webpage. To be honest, I don't even know how to add a video. There is only URL input field available in the admin webUI. I understand that it is early days and alpha quality software, so I didn't want to be nitpicky and report every single annoyance, but this is a major bug. Let me know if I could help with some log collecting or something.
You can try https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/s... (I took this from a Flutter library used by my app). I'm curious to know if your TV can play the video.
I guess that's what separates side projects from "professional" apps :D They can have the same functionalities, but the professional ones are more polished down to the minor details. Mine: copy-paste URL. Theirs: video file upload or integration with Google Drive/Dropbox. Behind the scenes, they both use a URL. But my app will get there!
Just did a test on Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+, Android 15: works perfectly fine here.