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You’ve had enough of printed posters and have decided to make your store, your restaurant, your school, or your workplace more engaging and dynamic. You understand the importance of communication with your audience and customers, especially in today’s world when attention is so hard to attract and keep.

That's exactly why businesses come to Fugo to materialize their vision of building a digital signage content strategy. If that’s you, you’ve come to the right place.

In this guide, we’re going to help you get started on your digital signage journey with Fugo by showing you how to pair your first screen and publish a playlist.

If you’ve got your hardware in place already, you can skip down to Step 2: Install the Fugo app onto your screen

In order to display content, you’ll have to be running Fugo on your screen. You can accomplish this with various types of hardware.

When we talk about digital signage hardware, we’re essentially talking about one of two things:

Fugo is supported on most Smart TV and media player platforms, both consumer and commercial grade. You can find the list of those platforms here.

Each platform has its benefits and drawbacks:

It’s not expensive to purchase a pretty capable Android player - many come in at under $100. Their ease of use also makes them attractive as users can simply plug them in, download the Fugo app, and start delivering content. And because of the range of power & budget within the line of Android devices, you can find one to fit the needs of a simple or complex project.

We recommend using a device running at least Android 5.0. Fugo can be run on a few older versions, but please be aware that they may not be powerful enough to support all of Fugo’s apps & features.

Here are a couple of Android players we recommend:

Fire TV Sticks are surprisingly powerful little devices that plug right into a screen’s HDMI port. Depending on the version, they can stream 1080p or 4K media, browse the web, run apps, and more. And by the standards of digital signage devices, they’re remarkably inexpensive - coming in around $50, and often much less during holiday sales given their popularity as a consumer product for home usage. They can usually get the job done for simpler networks that don’t need to push very large files or complex media.

These are the fire sticks we recommend:

Windows devices are generally very powerful and fall into the mid-range commercial category. Because of their sheer computing power, they’re often used to run complex projects like large networks with dynamic media, and building video walls.
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For an entry level device with plenty of processing power and display capability, we recommend the Intel NUC8CCHKR. One of its greatest advantages is its support for multi-zone layouts. Additionally, t’s powerful enough to display 4K and difficult content like live streams.

Chrome devices have been hot stuff in the digital signage industry for quite a while, and for good reason - devices running Chrome offer native support for HTML5 media, which includes animation, and responsive sizing. They run all along the pricing spectrum from $100 sticks to full-blown computers costing well over $1000.

What makes them particularly useful for digital signage is that they can run in kiosk mode, which locks your screen to display a single app, such as Fugo. Note that to access this feature requires paying an extra license fee. And an additional license fee is required to access remote management features that allow you to control your internet-connected Chrome OS devices from anywhere in the world.

A Chromebase or Chromebox will usually do the job - here are a few we recommend:

BrightSign players command great name recognition in the world of digital signage media players, owing to their reliability and efficiency. They offer an industrial design and sleek look, front & back port access, as well as an ultra-thin form-factor that easily fits into any digital signage installation.

Designed in the US exclusively for digital signage, BrightSign’s OS delivers powerful signage capabilities and exceptional 4K and Full HD video quality. Plus, their energy-efficient devices consume very little power, keeping heat emission and operating costs down.

The BrightSign HD series is ideal for mainstream commercial digital signage applications. Both models - the BrightSign HD224 Standard I/O & the BrightSign HD1024 Expanded I/O Player support 4Kp60. The models start at $375 and offer HTML5 playback, H.265 decoding, and support local, streaming, and networked media playback.

Raspberry Pi has picked up steam as a digital signage player in the last few years. Various versions are available, with packages that include storage and other useful added features and generally go for well under $100. If you’re looking to buy up a bunch of devices to display simple images or small video files the cheap, Raspberry Pi can fit that bill.

However, unlike most of the other digital signage players, Raspberry Pi is the distinct opposite of a “plug and play” device. Its entire point originally was to give hobbyists and tinkerers a cheap & customizable computer that they could Frankenstein to their liking. So unless you buy an RPi that’s pre-programmed for digital signage – which drives your price up – it’s going to take some time to get your signage up and running.

IAdea devices are professional grade media players, robust and suitable if you’re looking to build a large, stable digital signage network. Despite running an older version of Chrome, even their entry level players like the MBR-1100 are stable when displaying images and videos. Though they can struggle with heavy animations and HTML.

Samsung commercial grade smart signage displays are built specifically for professional use and (sometimes) up to 24/7 continuous operation. With built-in system on chip (SoC) media players, SSSP displays offer an all-in-one solution when paired with Fugo digital signage software.

Our favorite piece of digital signage. And as you would expect from a brand name known for reliability, Sony BRAVIA professional displays deliver best-in-class imaging. The 4K HDR Processor X1 reproduces content in the finest details, making text and graphics sharper & easier to read. The displays run on Google’s Android TV operating system, are IP network-ready, equipped with RS-232C connectivity, have optional interactive touch support, and are available in sizes ranging from 32 to 100 inches. These screens are great options for commercial deployments if you’ve got the budget for it.

LG webOS digital displays comes with a powerful, fully integrated SoC that features a robust quad-core system-on-chip player. Other specs that make these screens great for professional deployments are the internal 8GB memory, built-in Wi-Fi, PIP, Wake on LAN and Smart Energy Savings mode.

These screens are known for their easy installation & operability, while the built-in SoC delivers a high-powered, reliable media playback without the need for external players.

If you have any questions or would like to consult with our team on hardware options, we’re always more than happy to offer guidance. Just reach out to us at support@fugo.ai.

Once you’re set up with your hardware, it’s time to connect your screen & publish some content. Let’s dig in!

Where you download the Fugo player app will depend on which hardware you’re using, but here are the app stores where you’ll find Fugo:

2.1 Internet connection: Make sure your player is connected to the internet. The better the internet connection, the more stable your playback will be. Fugo supports offline playback too, so your player does not need to be online all the time. Just note that some apps require an internet connection, so in the event that the player goes offline, that content will be skipped in the playlist rotation until the internet connection is restored.

2.2 Install & launch the Fugo player app: We have dedicated guides for each player platform that explain how to install Fugo app on your device. You can find the guide for your selected hardware from the list here.

If you haven’t selected any hardware, you can test out Fugo on your laptop, PC, or tablet with our Chrome extension player, which functions essentially as a virtual screen.

2.3 Retrieve the PIN: Launching the app will automatically generate a PIN on your screen. We’ll cover where to enter this PIN in the next section.

3.1 Register: If you haven’t registered a Fugo account yet, you can head over to fugo.ai/app to start your 14-day free trial.

3.2 Add your screen: After successfully logging in, click Add Screen on the Welcome page. Alternatively, you can click the Create button in the top left corner of the the screen and then select Screen.

3.3 Enter the PIN:You will be navigated to a new page where you will need to enter the PIN in the space provided to complete the pairing.

3.4 Complete pairing: To finish the pairing process, give your screen a name and add a location (this will allow you to quickly locate it on the map using our map feature.)

3.5 Check Screen Page: Your screen will now be listed on your Screens page

Congratulations, you’ve added your screen! Here, have this cake 🍰 to celebrate!

Now you’re ready to start publishing content. We’ll cover that in the next section.

There are many ways you can publish content on you screens. Let’s start with creating a playlist to show you how quick and easy this is.

Playlists are defined by 3 concepts:

4.1 Click Create Playlist: Click the purple Create button in the top left corner and, this time, select Playlist. You will be navigated to the Create Playlist page.

4.2 Name playlist: Start by giving your playlist a name in the top left corner of the page. I’ll call mine “Sarah’s playlist.”

4.3 Select your Screen: First you need to define where you want to publish your playlist, as in which Screen, Screens groups, or a Channel. Let’s just select the screen we added in the steps above.

4.4 Select content: Next we need to choose what to display on our screen. Here you can choose from Apps, Media, Studio Content, and Dashboards.

Le’t select three images from our media library. Once selected, you can re-order them by dragging and dropping. You can also change the settings and duration of each image.

4.5 Scheduling - add start and end date: Finally, if you’d like to schedule your content, you can start by indicating the start and end dates under Date Range. Tick the box for No End Date if you want your content to play indefinitely.

4.6 Scheduling - add week schedule: You can also set the week schedule by clicking and dragging along the schedule.

Alternatively, you can select just Workdays or Weekends in the top right corner of the schedule if you want your playlist to run only on those days. If you want your content to run 24/7, you can click Select All.

At any point during the Playlist creation you can actually save your progress by clicking on the Finish Later button in the bottom bar. If you want to publish the playlist immediately, click the Publish button and your content will be immediately displayed on all your selected screens.

Once published you will see your new playlist in your Playlist page. The status of the playlist shows that the playlist is Active, as it’s currently scheduled and being displayed.

From the Screens page you can manage your playlists by pausing, editing, or removing them altogether.

These changes will be reflected on all screens automatically.

You can also see the confirmation that your playlist is running on your screen by going to the individual screen’s settings dashboard. Here you’ll see a small screen playback screenshot that shows what is currently on the screen.

If you then navigate to Playlist tab you will see all the playlists currently running on this screen.

If you have any questions regarding set up, publishing, or hardware, you can contact our support team any time at support@fugo.ai. We’re here to help you on your digital signage journey however we can.

Happy publishing 📺