North Dakota Legislative Council Digital Signage Deployment

January 5, 2009

North Dakota State Capitol uses MagicBox SignMate system for displaying conference room schedules.

The North Dakota Legislative Council recently installed Magicbox Inc. digital signage in the North Dakota State Capital building. The goal of the project was to provide legislatures and the public accurate information regarding what bills and meetings were scheduled for a particular committee hearing room. Utilizing Aavelin SignMate RT players and EZ Stream software those outside the meeting room are able to view the upcoming meetings and see which meeting is currently in progress. Tricorne Audio, Inc. proposed the SignMate players to the council and provided a demonstration of the project. Dallas Anderson, project manager with Tricorne Audio, stated, “Having the capacity for the intern’s inside the room to quickly and accurately update the information was a key element in helping the Legislative Council to make their decision.”

The EZ Stream software accesses a database where the daily schedule is posted each day by the interns. If during the course of the day meetings are postponed or changed, the intern is able to change the information in the database and the updates appear on the display for the public to see. Additionally, a small area in the corner of the screen monitors an .XML file and updates the current meeting status every 60 seconds. Other commonly used databases that can be accessed by the EZ-Stream software include People Cube Resource Schedule, Dean Evans EMS, Outlook, Google Calendar and text files. The EZ-Stream content was designed by Magicbox based on information provided by the Legislative Council.

In addition to the meeting room schedule, the SignMate players are able to display up to 4 crawl regions of information. Two of these are being used for this project. One displays a welcome message with the date and time, while the second region is linked to the NOAA weather stream, localized for the Bismarck, ND area.

A product demonstration arranged by Tricorne Audio and Excellence Marketing was very beneficial as it became apparent that this system could also be utilized by other departments when the legislature is out of session. There are opportunities for the tourism dept. and state historical society to provide relevant information pertaining to each appropriately named room. Lastly, the legislature is also considering the use of MagicBox E-Blast software which allows centralized distribution of emergency weather or security notifications to all the displays on the network in prompt and timely matter.

About MagicBox

MagicBox, Inc. has been manufacturing Character Generators and Video Messaging Systems, for CATV, CCTV, Satellite and Digital Signage applications since 1992. Customers have expanded from cable to include education, government, hospitality, medical, and corporate applications. Product development is focused on ease of use and integration with other systems. For more information, visit http://www.magicboxinc.com.

MagicBox-Making Digital Signage Simple.