Raspberry Digital Signage is an operating system designed for digital signage installations on the Raspberry Pi: it displays a full-screen browser view restricted to a specified (web) resource.

It shows web pages from Internet, local area network or internal (SD-card contained) sources; there is no way to escape this view but rebooting the machine. It is a hacker-proof secure operating systems for indoor and outdoor use.

Raspberry Digital Signage 9.0 comes with Chromium v.56 (featuring advanced HTML5 capabilities, Adobe Flash support and H264/AVC video acceleration), so you can display more attractive resources, more easily.

For example (to name just a few) you can display your own advertising resource, booking site, queue or timetable management web application or display superb web presentations made with Google Slides (Powerpoint compatible).

System parameters are set by a web interface, a PHP/JavaScript interface which wraps lower terminal commands. Via the admin interface one can set the screen resolution and rotation, system i18n and sound volume. Regarding the digital signaging, have a look at the admin interface screenshot in order to have an idea about what’s easily possible (click to enlarge).

SSH and VNC remote management systems are available (please, don’t be a Windows fellow, use SSH ;).

 

Changelog for version 9.0

  • underlying operating system updated: raspberrypi-bootloader, apache, php, openssl and xorg packages have been updated, among many others;
  • Chromium browser is now at v.56, bundled with system’s new SSL certificates – needed after the infamous SHA1 collision event for browser’s correct behaviour with “https” sites;
  • Raspberry Pi Zero W compatibility;
  • digital signage page can be retrieved from the Internet, LAN or even from localhost (a www folder inside the Raspberry Pi’s SD card). To simplify the management of the internal site setup, RDS 9.0 comes with WordPress already installed;
  • a little more polished UI (official 7″ R-Pi touchscreen view is painless now);
  • more robust prevent-cache technique for Chromium when reloading-web-page hack is enabled (thanks to Marc Giavarra);
  • some minor improvements on code.

 

Users of previous Raspberry Digital Signage builds can request a private beta.

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