Thin clients (i.e. can only display an image). Is that possible?

You cannot use Xibo as you describe. If you could, it would be a very limited system.

A suitable system can be had for less than £200 which is very reasonable when put against the cost of thin client hardware.

Alex

I disagree. When multiplied by a dozen display-only-kiosks that is very expensive!

There are a number of low cost platforms centred around chips from AmLogic and SigmaDesign which are built around ARM processor cores. These can not run full blown windows and don't need to. They are capable of handling still images and low to high bandwidth videos. What more do you need in a display-only-kiosk (i.e. non-interactive)? I could probably deploy all the hardware for a dozen kiosks for just the cost of just the Microsoft Window licences I need to run Xibo clients. Not to mention how much more reliable a client would be with no moving parts (i.e. no fan or hard drive needed).

Ok, I must be missing something. Xibo must be doing something I am not appreciating. So far, it sounds like you need so much computing power at the client end that I might as well just let people browse the web and run their applications.

Also, how on earth are you able to use a Unix or Linux Xibo server running Apache -and- still use (Reads: "need") all this Microsoft client software? I was under the opinion if Microsoft software did not see a Microsoft server it would not work (or at least be crippled).

-thanks

Clearly Xibo isn't what you want.

Alex

Thanks Alex Harrington, that solved my question.

Thanks, I think I see more clearly where Xibo fits in. This is truly more of a commercial solution for a Windows centric enterprise. (i.e. I think it is easier to sell an enterprise solution based on Windows. I find that's just how companies are.) It's unfortunate (I'm thinking for you guys) that the commercial venture didn't work out.

I was looking for an open-source slide show with current information embedded into the pictures. I was thinking of assembling these projects:
 For scraping the web:
 http://web-harvest.sourceforge.net/
 For creating content:
 http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
 For displaying:
 http://code.google.com/p/slideshow/
Someone suggested Xibo. It looked really good as it appeared to handle all of the content creation. It was the closest open source solution to a dynamic content slid show server that I could find.

You are right, small for factor PCs have a great economy to scale. Much better then commercial thin media players (probably by a factor of 2 to 10 times). But I was going cheap and was looking at consumer thin clients.

I haven't seriously worked with Microsoft products for years. At that time there was no comparison between what you could do with a Unix, Solaris or Linux box compared to what Microsoft offered. I have been told things have changed. But I have never looked back.

Thanks for your help.

To be absolutely clear, there's no need to use any Microsoft products to run a Xibo system.

You can run the server on any lamp system and the linux python client.

Alex

Sorry about that, yeah, the server can run on Linux, got it.

-thanks

And the client software can run on Linux.

If your thin clients can boot into their own operating system, then I do not see what the problem is, aside from obvious computing strength you might be lacking deploying such bare boned systems. Try booting your thin clients into a Linux environment with low demands, such as Slitaz or Puppy Linux. Almost all Linux variants allow booting from USB, as do many thin clients natively. With an 8 gig usb stick you can perfectly host a small Linux os and stream content from a Xibo server.

Concerning system specifications, Xibo isn't that demanding, even more so if you stick to the purposes you mention (still images, still slides, no video). I myself have deployed a Xibo network using just *old style* thin clients (actually, what was being considered as to be a thin client 10 years ago is still somewhat bloated or fat in today's terms), which are Compaq 1ghz P3 pc's with a 20gig harddrive (agreed, these are perfectly capable as well as semi-designed to run their own OS's).

Note that these solutions will never be as straightforward as installing the Xibo client in a windows environment, assuming, as I am, that your clients and yourself are used to such an environment. However, with some minor efforts, it should work. I would suggest you installing some flavours of Linux OS"s to find out if your thin clients would actually boot them. If yes, just follow the wiki for Python Client installations and you should be on your way. Otherwise, if it is still images you're after, I would just simply program some html pages that you show from your thin clients.