Sharp/NEC Solutions Zone

In a highly competitive market, KFC relies on new technologies to stay ahead of the competition. Using NEC displays embedded with Raspberry Pi computing, Digital Menu Boards at the fast food chicken outlet react quickly to changing offers to satisfy its customers’ appetites.

NEC Display Solutions, m&r Kreativ and IT-Haus GmbH delivered a full-service solution to the fast food giant KFC.

In cooperation with the system house IT-Haus GmbH, professional large format displays from NEC were installed in the sales area comprising 48” MultiSync® P484 and 40” MultiSync® P404 models, with integrated Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3.

Thanks to an impressive brightness of 700 cd/m² and the screens’ anti-reflective coating, the range of food on offer is superbly presented, readable even in bright ambient conditions. The modern and slim design fits perfectly into the brand’s modern interior design. Brand recognition is also guaranteed as KFC’s iconic CI colours - white on bright red - are accurately reproduced.

KFC also decided to integrate digital menu boards in cooperation with the advertising agency, m&r Kreativ. „Unlike the analogue alternative, digital menu boards emphasise KFC‘s modern brand presence,“ Lisa Probst, the Head of IT at m&r Kreativ, says. „They enable a mix of flexible product presentation, infotainment and interaction with customers. KFC can provide its customers with better information and positively influence their purchasing patterns“.

„We are more than satisfied with the result. Even at the age of 50, KFC is a young, modern brand and should be perceived as such“ says Dr Thorsk Westphal, Chief Marketing Officer at Yum! Restaurants International, the parent company of KFC. „We now plan to replace all indoor posters gradually with digital options in order to become even more flexible“.

 

Waapiti, the most intuitive digital signage platform, integrated into the P and V series of NEC

The challenge: Jean Louis David hair salons sector had a problem of not having the flexibility and immediacy to change pricing and promotions in the windows.

The aim: to speed up and provide flexibility to Jean Louis David hair salons franchise when promoting their services in the windows, and attract customers, as well as generating cross-selling.

The solution: In this case, in San Fernando Jean Louis David’s franchise, the problem was solved through the implementation of 55” professional vertical screen in the windows that integrates Waapiti digital signage platform into Raspberry Pi Firmware.

The success: is achieved through a communication consulting service that comes from the Waapiti content department, as well as a customer support & technical maintenance team. The content design service and self-management of each hair salon provide a remarkable value for a franchise brand: adapting two campaign each year, creating templates and managing contents weekly. Projects like this one demonstrate that a digital signage service goes far beyond just equipment.

Advantages of Waapiti digital signage platform:

• SaaS platform cloud based

• Linux-based player software

• Total stability: local playback

• co-management & access from different user levels

• Management based on tags

• Dynamic content: smart playlists and HTML templates

• Triggered content

• Sensors integration

Waapiti’s Raspberry Pi firmware developed for digital signage is very advanced in terms of functionality and is a simple and clear way to offer a unique and complete solution of digital signage.

Advantages of working on a integrated hardware on the manufacturer’s display:

• Ease of installation and maintenance

• reduces amount of necessary cabling (power, connectivity, serial control)

About Waapiti - The Waapiti digital signage platform is integrated into the P and V series of NEC large format professional displays. The Waapiti platform has a good track record in the market: over 7 years running and more than 1,000 players installed. Also, being one of the first platforms to use the Raspberry Pi hardware has given Waapiti a lot of experience, which results in great stability in digital signage projects.

Strimy is a very simple and versatile digital signage service: it’s the ideal solution for strong and effective visual communication. It can be used for information purposes, advertising and/or entartainment.
The client-server technology allows you to manage hundreds of monitors, at the same time, located anywhere. With a few clicks on the web interface, you can upload multimedia files into the cloud, define rss sources and schedule your contents.
The monitors can be managed individually or jointly, and at your convenience.

Strimy has been natively developed for Raspberry Pi.
It needs a 24/24h internet connection; however it’s not a streaming service: the scheduled contents are downloaded to local memory before being played, so it’s ensured to work even with intermittent connection, without bandwith consumption.
If the requirements are satisfied, Strimy is ready to work: at first boot you’ll see on screen an unique code, that has to be entered from the web interface to complete activation.

Making Digital Signage simpler and more flexible - The NEC Edition of the Raspberry Pi 3 Compute Module leaves nothing to be desired.

Seamlessly embedded into many NEC Large Format Displays, the Compute Module boosts the display performance to suit any visual application. This open-platform solution offers unrivalled flexibility and performance in creating customised display applications whilst securing futureproof operation with an upgrade path through its modular and exchangeable slot design. Software providers and users benefit from the vast number of already available open source solutions accessible from the global Raspberry Pi developers community. The NEC edition tops the standard Raspberry Pi performance with extended memory capabilities and intelligent Digital Signage support such as the Watch Dog Timer and Real Time Clock for scheduling. The Ethernet and USB interfaces of the display allow easy integration into a network or connection with external devices such as mouse, keyboard and touch.

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 NEC Edition is the smartest combination of computing power with professional yet cost-effective Signage displays for use in retail environments, passenger information, quick service menu boards and so many more applications.

Delivering Genuine Benefits:

• Future-Proof with Open Modular Intelligence Expansion – Upgrade the power of the display by escalating the computing power at any time to boost performance capability.
• Powerful possibilities – the Quad Core 1.2 GHZ processor provides amazing performance for crisp Full HD playback with an unrivalled price-performance ratio.
• Designed for professional Digital Signage – The NEC Edition features an extended onboard memory of 16 GB, a Watch Dog Timer and a Real Time Clock as well as pre-loaded licences for video decoding to meet the particular demands of professional signage applications.
• Unlimited versatility – Supporting a broad range of operating systems, such as Raspbian, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, as well as Win10IoT Core, this open platform offers high flexibility for digital signage software providers and system integrators.
• Seamless and fully embedded – Simply slotted into the display for a fully integrated solution, external mounting is obsolete. An elegant, cable-free solution with internal connection for power, video, audio, data and all control interfaces.
• Economical – enjoy high performance and low energy use with associated savings.
• High reliability – the use of industrial grade components and our advanced heat management makes this solution ideally suited for 24/7 operation.
• Trusted state-of-the-art technology – Raspberry Pi computing is a worldwide success story with proven high reliability and an unmatched price-performance ratio making it attractive for professional applications.