Notice boards that actually tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it

Traditional bulletin boards can be messy and confusing. There is a better way of relaying the necessary information: digital signs. Especially electronic paper ones.

A digital sign can successfully replace the old school paper bulletin board only when it is as simple and elegant to use as paper itself.

Imagine the all too familiar scenario: a notice board in your building, full of half-torn, smudged papers from god knows when (dates being the only thing these bulletins don’t tell you) informing you of everything, from the kitty appreciation meetup your neighbour is hosting to the fact that your hot water will be shut off this weekend. In short, a super-confusing jumble of tacks, scotch tape and paper.

And of course somewhere in all this mess is the information you so urgently needed to avoid being stranded in the shower that only runs ice-cold water, your hair full of shampoo.

The notice was right there. How could you not see it?

What if we told you there was a better way of relaying information? The answer is simple: digital signs.

When replacement with a digital notice board makes sense

A digital sign can successfully replace the old school paper bulletin board only when it is as simple and elegant to use as paper itself – but also has that added value due to dynamically managed content that paper just cannot compete with.

An electronic paper notice board is easy to install, simple to update, highly readable and has extreme battery autonomy.

Otherwise, who would want to substitute a simple if not really that effective method of attaching piece of paper onto some cork with a complicated flickering digital sign confusion that takes up insane amounts of electricity, is hard to update and even harder to mount?

ELECTRONIC PAPER TO THE RESCUE

If you ever held a Kindle or any other e-reader, then you know that electronic paper is like magic, taking up very little energy, meaning that the battery on your device will last for what seems to be forever. Add to that Wi-Fi connectivity, no wires and the fact that the e-paper device can be easily mounted on any surface with nothing more than a few velcro strips, and you have a winner.

Now imagine all these features on your bulletin board – a thin, wire-free electronic paper display that is easy to install, is just the right size, is always highly readable, has extreme battery autonomy, and is, most importantly, super easy to keep up to date, as it is always connected. Yes, such a solution exists – we have you covered.

Putting electronic paper notice boards to the test

First, we wanted to clear up the notice board mess from the beginning of this article – behold, an e-paper solution for your apartment building notice board that is clear and always up to date.

Better, isn’t it?

NEVER SERVE A NOTIFICATION THAT IS OUT OF DATE AGAIN

No confusion here: the content displayed on the screen can be quickly and easily updated, with data received from the Visionect Server via a Wi-Fi connection. This means that the notifications displayed are never out of date and you get exactly the information you need, when you need it. It’s as easy as clicking a button on a laptop or updating the screen from a mobile device.

Now, it’s easy to implement and update e-paper digital signs in locations where new notices are few (one feline meetup per week quite enough, thank you). But what about a bulletin board that has to be regularly updated with large quantities of new notifications pouring in?

TACKLING FREQUENT LARGE SCALE UPDATES

Take a bulletin board on your average college campus for example. It has to feature info ranging from the current events scheduled, to important campus dates and upcoming theatre performances. A lot of notifications to process; how would an e-paper notice board work in such a situation?

Pretty much like your simple apartment building bulletin board – there really is no difference. Even with a large quantity of updates Visionect’s electronic paper notification board would flawlessly and seamlessly sync with the server and display the latest data received.

I wish my school had one of these…

UPDATING CONTENT SEVERAL TIMES PER DAY

What about a situation in which the content on the board has to be updated more than once a day?

Take your local bank, displaying up to date foreign currency exchange rates for all you lucky people out there about to go on vacation. These exchange rates change often – so is it more practical to keep printing out new rates in order to display them for the bank customers, or would it be easier to set the exchange rates up on the electronic paper display unit and have the numbers updated automatically? The latter we think. Again, super as easy with the help of Visionect’s software and hardware created specifically for digital signage.

Vacation starting in: 3, 2, 1.

So there you have it: replace the cork and sticky tape bust-up with a better user experience of electronic paper and find out exactly what you need to know, when you need to know it. It’s that simple.

And if you’re a technical type, you can check out docs.visionect.com and find out just how fast and easy deployment of digital signs, i.e. notice boards can be.