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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

They should've sold HDMI dongles (think Chromecast or Roku), with the app baked in, for ~$100. Its easy to monday morning quarterback though; This idea could've failed as well.

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I currently do that for in-store displays. Its easy to setup because you can do a nice GUI with a powerful enough board and habe access through SSH if required. I sell it to small businesses as a turn key solution (just add a tv) for less than four hundred dollars. Most have enjoyed good success with it because it allows automatic upsells. Ive yet to use one as a status board but I might give it a try.

There's definitely the market for it, it was part of a job I had in a previous life. (Almost) every company has an IT department and they and their managers like to see cool status displays. It's a pretty easy sell.

Ive thought about it but it requires a certain level of technical capabilities on the businesse's side. Truth is that most businesses run on shitty old windows machines that dont get updated. Integrating with those systems requires building an infrastructure for them and then selling at a low price because they dont see the value in IT. That's why I sell it as a self contained marketing/sales tool.

That's pretty cool. Do you have a website? I have questions, and you probably have answers. (Like, how do IT-averse businesses manage the text/graphics/etc? ... and so on)

I dont market it online (yet) since it is an upsell to digital marketing I do. You can email me with questions. I'll do my best to answer. Also on Twitter or snapchat. :)

check my profile

I tried to do this with the Chromecast - it isn't powerful enough and has a memory leak causing a crash after around a day.

Yup, for how great the Chromecast could be, it's extremely unreliable. Mine crashes all the time, which makes it about as useful as a brick for my use-case.

Basically a Raspberry Pi zero ?

Basically, but turnkey. Just like I'd pay twice as much for a Chromecast before I'd ever consider spending a moment of time on a Raspberry Pi.

So a Raspberry Pi in a case with a pre-inserted sdcard running the app? :)

Yes. For $500 (not $100).

make it a pretty case, and be sure to include a charger.

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