Tag: advertising wayfinder

User experience

Important improvements of advertising with wayfinding

Some of the important improvements include:

⦁Drag-and-drop feature for changing advertisement frames

⦁Default duration setting for video adds

⦁Improved splitting of advertisement areas

⦁Easy separation of Portrait and Landscape screens

Internet connection can be a fickle thing. Everything from natural conditions and technical problems to human error can jeopardize a stable connection. As a result, offline wayfinding may be needed as a fail-safe. For instance, a shopping mall might have issues with their internet connection because of the internet provider. This would mean that, without offline wayfinding, their investment into a kiosk or digital signage screen would suffer needlessly.

Offline wayfinding to the rescue

But we have a solution! Two solutions actually. Firstly, it’s possible to create an offline snapshot of the project. The add-on creates a static files of all the assets and modifies the template file for local use. To use the snapshot files you need a local web server  because modern browsers do not allow requests to local files. Also, the offline snapshot will still display advertisements and all other features, that don’t require internet connection. However, if you need to update the template you have to either connect the device to the internet or download an updated snapshot to a memory card and upload it manually to the device.

Secondly, you can opt for our Enterprise License, which allows you to host all files locally. This means that you can use our powerful CMS to manage all aspects of the template yourself, without any internet connection. All updates to the template, 3D model, advertisements or other integrations will be sent directly to the kiosks and screens. The devices need to be connected to the administrator panel either trough cables or a wireless network, like Wi-Fi for example.

In addition to offline wayfinding, choosing the Enterprise License can be a valuable investment. The Enterprise license enables you to have one hundred percent control over your data and host everything locally. This makes safety one less thing less to worry about. Also, you receive access to backend software, databases, maintenance scripts etc.

Contact our sales team to learn more!

We have recently experimented with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, to see how it can work as media player for digital signage display or wayfinding information kiosk. As a result we can say, it works well with 2D wayfinding maps and with 3D Wayfinder Advertisement Module.

What is Raspberry Pi?

Raspberry Pi is a small credit card sized linux based open source computer. It is equipped with:
– Broadcom 64-bit quad core CPU clocked @ 1.2 GHz,
– 1GB of RAM,
– built-in WLAN and BLE modules,
– HDMI output.

But everything is soldered to the board hence there is no option to upgrade, except for the microSD card. You can also have a nice box for it, so it doesn’t look like a hackers development board.

Compared to other small form factor computers like Intel NUC or Gigabyte BRIX, it is much cheaper. Raspberry Pi with a nice case and microSD card would cost about 50..70 USD. The NUC or BRIX boxes start at 110..130 USD new, and you still need to equip them with a hard drive (SSD/HDD) and memory module(s) (DDR3/DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM) which would cost you about an extra 30 USD for a 32GB SSD and ~25 USD for DDR3 or ~30 USD for DDR4. Totalling up to about 165..190 USD.

Raspberry PI plays in Full HD, so it is not a problem to use large resolution screens.

Enable WebGL

For 3D the Raspberry is still a bit weak and by default it doesn’t have WebGL enabled. To enable WebGL you have to:
1. Open up the terminal application (or command prompt if you prefer to call it that)
2. run command sudo raspi-config
3. navigate to Advanced Options
4. enable GL support.

The GPU on the Raspberry PI 3 Model B doesn’t support floating point textures, so we cannot use transparent textures.

To build wayfinding or digital signage project based on Raspberry Pi you need to use a special linux distribution that opens a browser in full-screen mode instead of the regular desktop interface.

At the same time the kiosk based on Raspberry Pi is quite bullet-proof. There’s no need to worry about excessive power consumption as it actually only consumes about 3.7W under full load and only about 1.4W when playing a FullHD video, which is roughly 10% of the Intel NUCs ~38W while under full system load and ~18W while watching a FullHD video.

It boots up fast from a microSD card which can be easily replaced when it wears out or breaks.

Although remote managing a kiosk that uses a Raspberry Pi can prove to be quite a cumbersome task as you cannot use regular GUI remote management tools like Teamviewer or LogMeIn. The fastest way to remote manage the Raspberry Pi is to use SSH, which is a CLI (Command Line Interface) and this might scare-off most of the users that are not used to poking around via a CLI.

With 3D Wayfinder you can brand your wayfinding application just like it has been developed by yourself. It is possible to use custom loading bar and even get your own layout for administration panel.

We are using small watermark with 3D Wayfinder logo on 3D floor plans. But this only appears, when you are using free plan. As soon as you choose another plan, the watermark disappears.

When using the Business plan it is possible to customize the loading bar of your wayfinder application.

With the Enterprise license it is even possible to change the branding of the Administration Panel. This way you can offer the 3D Wayfinder under your branding or integrate 3D Wayfinder inside your digital signage solution. For Enterprise licensing, please contact us.

Advertisement add-on user manual is now publicly available. Advertisement add-on makes your wayfinding application part of your digital-signage channel. It is possible to use video and banner ads. Also set duration, layout and everything you need for managing advertisements in malls or airports.

User manual covers the most basic part of managing advertisements:

• Choosing advertisement area.
• Creating frames and modifying frame layout.
• Managing frames.
• Setting restrictions e.g. date period, when frame will be shown.
• Uploading images and videos.

Advertisement user manual is part of 3D Wayfinder administration panel manual.

Read how to add and manage different ads in 3D Wayfinder. Ads can be images or videos. It is possible to create different layouts. You can also use a “screen saver” mode. Then you can show only advertisements. This helps to profit from wayfinding, when nobody is currently using the application. It is he good opportunity for shopping center and transportation facility.

Advertisement add-on price is 99 USD per month. See also other 3D Wayfinder add-ons.

Please contact our sales team for more information.

Some of our customers prefer a “Welcome” screen for their wayfinding application. Welcome screens are good way for inviting visitors to use wayfinding, it is also a page where you can show advertisements or welcome text. To minimize the load for kiosks we change the frame-rate of our WebGL rendering engine FRAK. 

Welcome page is configur as an idle-page, when no one is using wayfinding. Usually it is set to 10+ seconds after idle time, when the welcome screen is displayed. On this view, we are hiding wayfinder map component and directory. When visitor starts to use wayfinding, then welcome screen close and floor plans with directory are activate. Certainly, the welcome screen is also helpful for customers to understand what the screen is about. Also a great way to advertise for businesses located in the mall.

To save the kiosk pc and graphics card (GPU) we set the 3D rendering (see FRAK WebGL engine) also idle. This is important for limiting the frame-rate to a minimum. Frame rate change can be invoke with Engine.startIdle(fps) and return to normal operation with Engine.stopIdle(). See 3D Wayfinder API for specific documentation.

We have also fixed a bug in SmoothOrbitController that made animations oscillate on very low frame rates.