Hi. I'm JJ with Carousel Digital Signage, and I'm really excited to share with you a new player integration that we just released for Carousel Cloud. But first, a bit of background.

Our mission is to help organizations create spaces where people feel welcomed, informed, and connected by using digital signage. For the most part, this has meant putting digital signage in spaces where people gather, like entryways, breakrooms, and common areas. While these are great places to communicate with people, we knew that there was one important space that we were not reaching. Conference rooms!

Companies are building more and more conference rooms and huddle spaces in their offices. For good reason too, these spaces allow us to collaborate with both our in-office and remote colleagues. With more meeting spaces comes more opportunity to communicate with our employees through the screens in these rooms. Just think about how much time you spend waiting for meetings to start. A lot, right!

The problem with putting digital signage into conference rooms is that it's complicated and costs a lot.

Think about a classic conference room. It has a long table with chairs all around and a speakerphone right in the middle. There is a screen at the front of the room which looks like a giant black square and a whiteboard on the side wall. To connect my computer to the the display I need to plug my laptop into a HDMI cable which is the size of a garden hose. Then I need to fumble with the display until I get the correct input. Oh, and of course, since I have a new MacBook Pro, I need to go find a USB-C to HDMI adaptor! Yuck! If we also wanted to run signage in that room, the user would need to switch back to the correct input. Resetting the painful cycle for the next user.

With the rise of new collaboration and video conferencing tools, there is a much better way!

Now let's think about the modern huddle room. The huddle rooms in our office have a table, 4 chairs, a flat screen on the wall, and a Solstice screen sharing appliance. As I walk into the room the display is showing our corporate messages, not just big big black rectangle on the wall. When I want to share my screen I simply use Apple AirPlay to wirelessly share. When my screen sharing session is over, the display goes right back to my digital signage. It's totally seamless!‍

‍In this example we are doing 4 very important things. We're creating a more beautiful space by putting content on black screens, extending the reach of our communication by using digital signage in more places, alleviating stress, and we're making a seamless screen-sharing experience.Text on screen?

This brings us to our announcement... We are adding player support for the Mersive Solstice platform. This allows any Solstice appliance to become a full-featured digital signage media player, driven by Carousel Cloud. Let's look specifically at how this new integration works. ‍

‍My huddle room has a display and a Solstice. The Solstice is physically plugged into our network and hooked up to the display via HDMI. Best of all it's POE so those are the only 2 connections I need.  

Once booted up, I can run the Solstice Dashboard software, select the pod that I want to configure for signage and click the Digital Signage tab. Now I just pop the URL for my Carousel Cloud account into the Server URL field. Super easy!

After 10 seconds, the Solstice will contact my Carousel Cloud server as a media player. Just like all other players, I will register THIS player with my account. Now that it's registered it will start showing content. Because this is a full-featured media player, the Solstice will show all my awesome content including templates, dynamic data, alerts, and even channel changes.‍

‍We are thrilled to be helping organizations create spaces where people feel welcomed, informed, and connected. Our new integration with the Solstice platform extends the reach of digital signage in a very cost-effective way. For more information about Carousel, our Mersive Solstice integration, or to get started with a Carousel Cloud account please reach out to our sales team. Thanks!