http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TSUGXKE
We can get 6 for the price of 5 ($250) and could set one up in front of every classroom.
Each classroom would show what is going on in it, directly connected to the Calendar eliminating the need to do the multiday papers on the wall… which are often delayed in terms of content. No hacking required.
I am willing to help pay for this endeavor. Anyone else?
I like the idea and have seen similar tablets/screens used in other commercial buildings. What are the thoughts on powering them up?
My vote is that we prove the software side of this idea before we buy the hardware. We have had a few other threads talk about buying hardware like this and the software is the part that seems to be the killer feature we need.
I think that has been a sticking point, also, but the last discussion was months ago, and I don’t remember it very clearly.
Yeah, I have run in to that problem as well. What do you use to display the information you want?
I had tried doing some research in how restaurants are displaying their menus now-a-days.
I believe it is just a looping video and for our use we would type in some text information in a database or some other text file that would then be entered in to some sort of video template.
My personal experience with this type of updating is with signature banners in gaming forums where your game stats are updated automatically to the .jpg image file. Same kind of updating could be done to the video template and then rendered each time the schedule it updated (weekly).
We should get a few people together who are interested and make it work on one of our own tablets then video the results and show it off for people to decide that it is a good way to go.
Then we can conquer the power problem… baby steps… baby steps.
I was basically thinking of just writing an android app which is the “launcher” and is really just a webview of our calender with each room having their room open on the Calendar.
You forget - we have a couple of professional android developers at the space.
Actually I was EXPECTING there are some really smart people that are better at doing what I can only think of. 
So when will those guys be ready to show us a room’s weekly calendar on our tablet? LOL
Let’s DO this!
I still think if there’s going to be dev party for doing stuff on tablets we should consider putting sign-in for classes online with tablets in the instructor’s hands. RFID to scan member’s badges for auto-enter would be such sweet icing.
In fact, I would do that first, since the power issue is a non-issue…
Alas, I have the solution to exactly none of these problems.
I would never forget that Stacy, we have many professionals in our group. The key is professional are often paid to have projects take priority.
As a none professional DMS organizer, I’ll work to get funding for the computers as soon as I see working software.
It isn’t that I feel you can’t do the work, it is when will you have the time. Paying gigs take priority and you and Steve are in high demand on that front before you get to your personal projects.
What about something like a powermat? Or make a nice frame that would go around it to hide power?/ powered over Ethernet maybe?
You guys really should use the search feature to see all the previous hashings on power for tablets as agenda displays…
Great. Now I’m one of those people…
Are there no off the shelf android kiosk apps we could purchase along with the tablets?
Ok did the search and read a few previous threads from a while back.
I like the POE idea only because the wire is cheap, easily moved/maintained. Not sure on the costs of the switch if we don’t already have available ports that are POE or the end break out module.
Adding a stand alone RFID reader would require some different wiring and power, but if you used a USB version that was mentioned in another thread…? Not sure about them or what the total power consumption would be.
@StanSimmons and @Gus_Reiter were working on this, last I knew. I’d check with them before doing anything else!
I would recommend trying to beat them to an implemented solution to prove your superiority. This is a do-ocracy, not a sit around and wait for someone else to do something-ocracy.
I’ve got a few ideas about powering them and getting them connected via ethernet. Stop by the main room some time and lets chat about getting something going.
OK… not what I meant… I meant check with them because they already started something.
I work for a restaurant who has had the menus. You can either use static pictures, or just use a webpage in full screen view.
I would be more interested if you could lock out all the other functions except what you want to use. I also have iPads in our cafes and you are able to lock them down pretty well.
Hey, so IMO the hardest part of this project is getting the data properly exported out of Google Calendar and parsed properly. I haven’t seen any good ways to do that, after looking at it a bit. If you can get that done, there are thousands of ways to do this project in a day.
Knowing Google, there is probably an API to get at that information instead of trying to screen scrape it.