We’re often asked about different types of content to show on TrilbyTV, things like Weather for the locality and countdown clocks which show a number of days to go to a big event.
We don’t have these built into TrilbyTV, but the Web Content feature allows you to tap into a wealth of online tools which can be customised and embedded into your signage screens to then be played back just like your other TrilbyTV content.
Skill Level
🔧 Easy
🔧🔧 Medium
🔧🔧🔧 Harder
Local Weather 🔧
This gets asked frequently, usually as a hangover from a previous signage solution. We would like to think that signage showing the weather is a thing of the past. Lots of our users are creating amazing video and slideshow content which is more interesting to watch. Some even do their own green screen weather forecasts!
Here’s how to embed a weather feed on TrilbyTV…
- Head over to www.meteoblue.com
- Type in your location in the top search box
- On the left select Products and the Widget menu and choose Widget 3h
- You can customise the display changing the days, temperature until and wind speed units as well as some of the colours.
- Below the preview is some HTML text, you’ll need to select all of this and copy it.
- Now go to app.trilbytv.co.uk and click the + then choose Web Content
- Paste the code you have just copied and click Add
- Just like adding other content you can now tag and set options, remember to Approve it!
- You’ll also want to set how long it is on screen for, with the weather around 10 seconds is normally enough time.
- Then click Save
The weather will now be available to playback full screen in your playlists and on screens around your site.
Lunchtime Menus 🔧
There are many ways to add menus to your signage. We’ve seen menus added as slideshows from powerpoint generated content as well as videos made in iMovie with images of the food.
A nice version which allows kitchen staff to update the menu live is via an embedded Google Slides document. This means the kitchen staff can have access to a single google doc and make changes which pretty instantly update on the screens. AS they are editing a google doc they don’t even need to touch TrilbyTV to do this.
Here’s how to build and embed a Google slide doc on TrilbyTV…
- Create a new Google Slides document at slides.google.com (you’ll need a google account)
- From the File menu choose Page Setup and set the size to Custom and 1920×1080 pixels
- Design your slide as you want, you can use more than one slide if you have a big menu!
- When done from the File menu select Publish to the Web…
- Ensure you are happy with the slide time which defaults to 3 seconds and place a check in both boxes before clicking Publish.
- The embedding text will appear which you need to copy.
- Now go to app.trilbytv.co.uk and click the + then choose Web Content
- Paste the code you have just copied and click Add
- Just like adding other content you can now tag and set options, remember to Approve it!
- You’ll also want to set how long it is on screen for. If you have 2 slides set to auto advance at 5 seconds then try and match the timings so 10 seconds minimum.
- Then click Save
The lunch menu will now be available to playback full screen in your playlists and on screens around your site. You may wish to set a single item schedule for this so it plays none stop for 1 hour around lunchtime. See our support article Using Schedules for more info.
Countdown Timer 🔧🔧
Countdown timers are great for reminding people that an event or special occasion is coming up. Typically they will start a few days before but might be longer, for example, a building grand opening date may be set months in advance.
To add a countdown to your signage will require a bit more effort on your part than the previous two examples. You will need to be able to create a web page and this will need to be accessible via https.
- First, make your countdown, tickcounter.com is a great site to do this on as you can create a highly customised counter.
- Then you’ll need to make a new web page in your website building software. The code you copy from tickcounter.com will need to be placed somewhere in the page and you can, of course, add other images and text as you wish.
- Once complete, like the previous two examples you’ll need to copy the web address for the page you have just made and use the + Web Content button in TrilbyTV
- The countdown page will now be available to playback full screen in your playlists and on screens around your site.
As always the TrilbyTV support team is here to help, just tap the chat icon bottom right or email support@trilbytv.co.uk.