cool things to do with lcd displays brands

LED screens are a great way to liven up your event. Sure, you could use projectors and screens, but the advantages are that screens created from LED panels are brighter (think daylight and outside use) and easier to see in rooms with ambient light issues. They can be assembled at almost any size and screen ratio, and don’t require the extra space and positioning concerns of a projector.

You can use them as a backdrop for your stage, to display social media posts with your event’s hashtag, or live stream the main presenters from a different location. But that’s just the beginning. Indoors or out, LED screens can transform your next big event in other unexpected and memorable ways.

Giant LED screens can display wall-size murals that transport attendees to an entirely different environment. They can also display sponsor logos, your event’s branded visuals, or the message of the day.

Some events such as music concerts and sports events require huge venues that accommodate very large audiences. Crowds build excitement, but it’s virtually impossible for most people to actually see the action on the field or the performers on-stage. Unless you use LED screens. Live-streaming your event onto strategically placed screens ensures no one misses a beat. Or a play.

Overly popular speaker at your upcoming conference? No bigger room available? No problem, just live-stream the presentation onto one or more LED screens in another space, and no one will miss out.

Use an LED screen to display a continuous montage of stills or video clips from your year as a corporation. The same idea applies to political or cause-related events.

People love to see themselves on camera, so project audience “sweeps” onto the big screen. Sporting events do this all the time, but you can do the same thing using a hand-held camera at your festival or conference.

Even better, instead of just showing a sea of faces, get them talking. Before your event, do some on-camera interviews with attendees — what do they expect, why are they there, etc. — then show those clips during the event. Conduct “man on the street” live interviews in the hallways during your conference (or around the grounds at your festival) — what did they think of that last talk or performer, what’s their favorite part so far?

Use LED screens to deliver messages to conference attendees — scheduling reminders, updates, etc. Or set up one or more screens to serve as social media hubs. Encourage attendees to post comments and visuals using your event’s hashtag, then display those postings for all to see.

As an event organizer, you want to wow attendees, whether you’re producing a one-off concert, an annual conference, or special festival. LED screens are so versatile, they can give your guests a more engaging, immersive experience and leave them wanting more.

At the heart of every great digital signage display is this: content. Make it look good and people will stop to look at it. Make it look bad or outdated, and chances are they won’t be looking at your screen again.

But with the flexibility of scheduling and real-time editing in ScreenCloud, all you’ve got to worry about is what you want to show. So here are 30 good examples of digital signage content to inspire.

The most obvious is social media. If you invest your efforts in social media, why not use this to bring your digital screens to life too? You can also utilize user-generated content.

Showing social media feeds on your digital signs can help pair your online reputation with your offline one, building credibility and helping customers buy into your brand.

Walls.io offers a unique feature to showcase sponsored ads from brands you partner with. This feature is called Sponsored Posts, and they are special posts on your social wall that aren’t filled with regular social content from your sources. Instead, you can upload specific images (or videos or just text) that you want to display there and have it show up on your wall in regular intervals.

The main function of Sponsored Posts is to make money by offering ad placements to sponsors. Tomorrowland, for example, made sure that their sponsors received a prominent advertisement space on the festival’s official social feed.

However, these posts are a versatile tool that can be used in various other ways as well. Make sure to check out their guide How to Use Sponsored Posts on a Social Wall.

You can show your website (or any URL in fact) on a screen by simply adding it into the Links section on ScreenCloud Studio. This can then be added into a Playlist.

Customers are 10 times more likely to observe dynamic digital signage content than static messages, which makes video the perfect content form; it’s also usually screen-ready in 16:9 format. Video to share on digital signage could be your showreel, a new demo video, or a customer caught on screen talking about how great you are. Add to your screen playlist either by direct upload or through an app such as YouTube or Vimeo.

ScreenCloud supports pretty much any image formats, including JPEG, PNG and GIF, so you can upload images from company workshops, events, product showcases - anything you like really. Create your own image showreel within a Playlist simply by uploading the images, setting the duration of each one and then leaving them to play.

If you need to create a quick notice, perhaps detailing a room change or a meeting time, there are a wealth of apps to make that happen. Like Noticeboard - an app that can be found in the ScreenCloud App Store. It allows you to create a quick and easy display in seconds, and also allows for real-time edits.

Most of us have a preferred news site or newspaper we turn to when we want to find out what’s going on in the world. That’s why we’ve created apps that cover many of the most popular news sites including Aljazeera news, CNN news and ESPN.

Add a news app to your digital signage playlist and you’ll always be up to date with the latest headlines. Your customers will sip their coffee longer, your guests will loiter in your reception hall.

As well as general news you can make your digital signage even more specific. RSS feeds are the gateway to unlocking any content you like, from Buzzfeed to your company blog to specialized news from your niche.

We’ve found these three apps to be among our most popular as they appeal to almost all audiences - we even have one of our schools using them to help students brush up on their economics.

This type of content works well as ‘filler’ content in between video, ads and social media displays to stop your viewers from getting digital-overload.

Food is such a big part of our lives, it’s natural that we’re drawn to images, descriptions and menu boards showing it. Enter the digital menu board digital signage display.

This is one of the most important content displays you’ll create if you work in a restaurant, fast food chain or bar. It also works in an office cafeteria, an event setup or even as a fun noticeboard where you can swap menu items out for things you’re working on or fun descriptions of your team members. If you’re a franchise, this works especially well as you can change the price of an item across all screens and locations from one ScreenCloud login.

Add your reviews from sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp on your screen and share them with other customers. This is great for enhancing sales, and also customer engagement.

Data-driven companies are more likely to succeed – because they can easily see the areas that need attention. But most of the time this business-critical data is siloed and not seen by the teams that can make an immediate impact. Historically this data hasn’t been shown on screens due to security fears, which is why ScreenCloud developed Dashboards.

If you have a product, gaining visibility over feature development, customer number or what the future holds is kind of central to your work. That’s why pulling project management insights from Jira, Trello or your favorite project management tool and sharing them through digital signage in your office helps everyone to stay on the product pulse.

We love Slack at ScreenCloud. Like many startups, it’s how we do about 90% of our communication. So when a room’s really crucial to what we do, like our #praise room, we share it on our digital signage screens. This is made really easy with the Slack app.

Digital signage is a great canvas for all of your sales, small or large. Share real-time sales messages, promote offers and encourage customers to buy when the price is right. These can be easily created in Canvas.

How much time do you think your reception staff spend directing people to the right floor or meeting room? We love using the building directory app to share details of where everything is through our digital signage screens. The best part? If a room changes, you can update the screen easily unlike your static signs. Here are some non-obvious benefits of wayfinding in retail.

As well as advertising your own content, digital signage is a great method for selling advertising space within your building or store. Simple Playlist setup means you can schedule specific advertising slots, upload sponsored content between your own notices, or have dedicated days or areas where only advertising is shown.

If travel is essential to your customers or employees, then sharing a live travel information board is a great use of your digital signage. As you can see here, this provides up to the minute travel details on buses, trains and trams for your local area.

Adding a dedicated screen to travel information in your office by the exit is also a great addition to your internal comms and employee engagement strategy.

User generated content is a goldmine of free marketing material. This could be reviews, social media feeds or customer quotes. Tools like Walls.io and Taggbox can help pull UGC from social media platforms while giving you moderation controls and the ability to only show posts with certain hashtags or mentions.

The benefit of digital signage over static signage or printed pamphlets is that it can be updated in real-time and pushed out instantly. This gives you the power to update signs with last-minute offers or promotions on items that are low in stock.

Imagine having a method of internal communication that allowed you to broadcast to your entire company, at the click of a button… That’s exactly what ScreenCloud Broadcast can do for you. This makes it easy to share company broadcasts that go out to all screens simultaneously with news, praise or health and safety announcements. Broadcast can securely live-stream meetings or announcements to screens in your office, and also onto the mobiles or desktop screens of remote or deskless workers, making sure everyone gets the news.

Digital signage can be used in retail to show-off in-store promotions and increase the number of customers who take up offers as soon they’re available. Couple posters with reviews, user-generated social media content and ads to really drive your brand home.

SOLETRADER uses digital signage to share the company’s Instagram feed, promoting more discussion and helping customers to see its shoes out in the world.

Who doesn’t love an inspirational quote? Using digital signage to share motivational quotes works in almost any scenario. In the ScreenCloud office, we even share quotes of things our Founders have said to keep the team inspired and uplifted.

In churches, sermon timetables, sermon quotes and hymns are both ways you could use digital signage to attract and retain more members to your sessions.

Everyone likes to see where they are in a leaderboard, whether that’s in sales or counting reps in the gym. Use your digital screens to show off this leaderboard and add an additional layer to your customer/employee experience. You can create it easily using Google Slides, or for something more automated, check out a tool like Bonusly, as shown below.

In the same way you might use your digital signage to share leaderboards, you could also entice employees or customers in with competitions. Promoting giveaways or asking them to submit something (like an Instagram image) for the chance to win, is a great use of your digital screens. Create a poster using Canvas and add a QR code to link through to a competition landing page.

Screens are great for all of the good stuff we like to put out into the world, but they’re also a good vehicle when you need to make an emergency notice that needs to reach a lot of people. For (planned) fire drills, you can schedule the alert to pop up on your screens, otherwise, have a template at the ready to push live should you need to display it in the moment.

Ever had a bad meeting room experience? Someone waiting awkwardly outside? Knocking before you’re finished to ask ‘how long’? Same. It’s why using small screens, iPads or tablets you have laying around is an awesome use of digital signage. We wrote more about how to set this up here.

Companies with fast growth will know the pain of getting to know employees, when there seems to be more new people arriving faster than you can say “All hands”. It’s why the Meet the Team app is a fast and easy way to upload employees, old or new, and show them off to all of your team.

If you work in an art gallery or somewhere you want to show off work, then digital signage is a great way to showcase photos, videos or actual designs of something special you’ve been working on.

Of course digital signage can always be used to create a pretty picture, but when it’s seriously useful, that’s when it makes the biggest difference. Digital signage is increasingly being used to facilitate and improve internal communication strategies. From sharing company notices, to key information and reinforcing health and safety training messages, so that they’re always seen.

Now that you have so many ideas about how to create content and how easy it is to get it up on your screen it’s time to get started. Try our 14-day free trial - we can’t wait to see what you create.

Digital signage is a remarkable solution that has attracted a great deal of attention in the marketing world as an instrument to drive user engagement and communication.

But finally, it all boils down to the content that you play on your screen. That is what keeps the audience engaged. That is what produces the result.

The content is the final switch that prompts the viewers to take action, whether it is purchasing a product they would have otherwise ignored or participating in a fun office contest that makes them enjoy their work.

The bottom line is simple: even the sleekest and most sophisticated digital screens will feel dry without a telling content that brings value to the audience.

On the other hand, engaging media can breathe new life into an old screen. Displaying high-quality, highly relevant content for digital signage and choosing the proper display for digital signage is essential.

Your digital signage content strategy can help you increase user engagement, impulse purchases, revenue, boost employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

A survey report by EY shows that data-driven businesses are more likely to succeed in general because they can quickly identify problem areas. However, this business-critical data is often segregated and unavailable to the grassroots level workers who bring about the actual impact.

Displaying your company’s sales and customer statistics on your digital signage screen will align your employees’ and top-management ambitions. Employees are better equipped to comprehend client behavior and discover how close they are to achieving the actual figures.

People say a picture speaks a thousand words. So why not leverage it to convey your message? Showcase your new and forthcoming innovations, product launches, employee achievements, or event promotions.

Videos are fantastic examples of dynamic content. Your office digital signage screens can play engaging videos like start-up journey, motivational TED talks of company executives, or CEO interviews to establish your brand & organization leaders as industry ground breakers.

Other interesting corporate media examples include show-reels, demo videos, or videos of customers caught on camera gushing about how great your services are.

A little pat on the back never hurts. According to a report by Gallup , frequent employee recognition, preferably once per week, results in better work output. And yet, only a meager 11% of corporate managements understand the importance of employee recognition. Corporate offices can leverage installed displays to show an employee of the week or star employee of the month.

Further, with digital signage apps like Meet the Team, it becomes remarkably effortless to add employee images and professional details. Introducing the new joiners becomes fun.

Team profiles also serve to represent the office culture. Displaying some behind-the-curtain images or videos of office fun and frolic can prove to be a fantastic first impression to clients and visitors.

Scratching out canceled appointments & overwriting the new dates is already sounding repulsive. Instead, There is a text software for digital signage is ten times more organized, and the company receptionists can update schedules within moments.

A thriving organization keeps up with the most recent trends, developments, and alterations in the field. As an efficient corporate strategy, many firms regularly attempt to feed their employees with niche-specific trending news such as competitor collaborations, bankruptcy news, trade events, market shares, white papers, industry analytics, & reports from reliable organizations like McKinsey, World Economic Forum, or PewResearch.

This digital signage content is another excellent way to showcase the quality of your work and establish customer trust and loyalty. Whether you work in real estate, interior decoration, cosmetic surgery, hair styling, or personal grooming, you can highlight your projects’ before & after images to demonstrate your success. People want to see progress pictures before collaborating with you or availing of your services.

Everyone, regardless of their line of employment, is entitled to a break. According to research, employees are more productive when anticipating a vacation. So, to make your staff happier, why not display a list of forthcoming holidays on your digital signage screen? Add some thrills with ticking countdowns to the Christmas holiday or make a routine ‘Friday is Here’ announcement to make your workplace a little upbeat.

Another interesting example of corporate digital signage media is showcasing the corporate social responsibilities of any company. Your organization can display images and text-based messages that remind employees of your CSR principles. Screens in high-traffic areas such as waiting-lounges and entrances are the best locations to showcase your CSR initiatives.

Volunteer opportunities, images from community efforts, real-time data indicating how much waste or energy is being saved across the organization, donation amounts, and anything else that can be useful to your company culture can all be included in your display content. The overarching purpose is to remind and reassure everyone in the firm about the good that is being done because of their efforts.

Every micro detail in a training session is impossible to grasp or note down. Therefore, showing pre-recorded training videos on your company screens can come in handy for your staff. This practice makes it easy to coordinate and arrange training sessions as team activities rather than individual tasks completed at one’s desk. Corporate digital signage screens can highlight reminders and key takeaways so that the trainees can apply what they’ve learned at work.

Everything happening in the world affects business. That is why at least one screen in your corporate office needs to be tuned into the live news feeds all the time. Adding the top global news apps to your digital signage playlists, such as CNN News, BBC is a must-have. News feeds also serve as infotainment for your corporate clients waiting in the reception bay or meeting rooms.

RSS feeds is another fantastic example of digital signage content. RSS feeds are live updates from news channels, blogs and practically any website. Corporates can follow RSS feeds of industry-specific news channels or their competitors to stay updated on the latest trends.

You have a digital signage sitting idle in your office reception or showing a default logo of your brand or some boring screensaver. Why not use it utilize it to tickle some funny bones?

Showing office jokes, entertaining GIFs, office memes on your corporate screens can help break the monotony of a standard 9-5 workday. Humor can be the most helpful instrument when you’re trying to promote business culture or get a team through a difficult situation. Jokes are also great icebreakers & conversation-starters.

Retail stores can make the best use of electronic signs for both in-store displays and outdoor window displays. Bright screens attract customer attention and content scheduling allows store owners to plan their marketing activities ahead of time.

Retail stores can gamify deals on products with a discount coupon solution. With such a solution, one can set the discount parameters (like discount percentage, discount duration, scan duration) and enable the QR code feature; a unique QR code is then auto-generated. Customers can receive their e-coupon by scanning this QR code with their mobile phones.

Food-service and hospitality businesses can use digital signage to boost the brand value with user-generated content such as customer testimonials, reviews, social media posts & tweets about your restaurant or hotel. It’s a subtle way to build trust among the audience, provide social proof, and reinforce your brand’s credibility.

Another incredible example of media for in-store digital signs is a digital product catalog. It is a clever way to upsell and cross-sell your merchandise; retailers can add attractive images on life-size screens to create an immersive experience.

Digital catalogues are super easy to make and update. A store can show a collage of the same product in different colors or create a mix-and-match suggestion with complementary products to cross-sell.

Contests are a terrific way to attract the attention of your audience. The more you promote your contests, the higher the likelihood of participation. Interactive digital displays that allow the passerby to ‘Spin the Wheel’ and get free gifts is a super cool idea to make your newly launched items sell quickly. Retailers can also use store digital signboards to give spotlight to the contest winners.

Many car dealerships use digital signage to display a myriad of content like loyalty programs, special membership packages, car maintenance schedules, and more.

No amount of promotion is enough when it comes to retail. Whether it’s showing off the sleekest gizmos or the spring apparel collection, retail brands can make the best use of digital signage.

Use life-size bright screens to show advertisements and convert casual onlookers into store customers. Retailers can also use window displays to play personalized advertisements based on demography, weather, seasons, holidays & celebrations.

Restaurants, QSRs, bars & hotels are constantly looking for innovative ways to upgrade their businesses and add little eccentricities to their brand image. Their digital transformation strategies directly impact their business sales. Here are a few examples how the hospitality sector can use digital display boards.

Digital welcome board displays are a modern and professional approach to greeting guests or customers as they enter your hotel, resort, restaurant, or banquet hall. No high-end commercial screen is required. You can turn any modern Smart TV into a digital signage screen and repurpose it to show custom welcome messages and preliminary information such as the hotel manager’s name, the company values, hotel amenities, and service extension numbers.

People are crazy about food! And that is one good reason to digitize your menu. A digital menu board that shows your food list with high-resolution images, rich animations, and dynamic videos will naturally attract more eyeballs. Adding nutritional facts, ingredient lists, recipe information, or hygiene certificates are successful ways of making restaurant menus more eye-catching.

Hotels & resorts can showcase amenities such as swimming pool, free Wi-Fi, spa, gym and other facilities that make their services special. Many hotels have unique selling points like zero-plastic tolerance, or theme-based experiences. For such hospitality businesses, promoting their USP with the help of digital signage gives them a unique identity.

The transportation industry is using digital technology to modernize the way people travel. From GPS-based maps to metaverse tours, travel & tourism landscape is changing rapidly.

We always run into difficulties and confusion while navigating a new city or searching for a friend’s home address. And yet, we don’t carry a physical map in our pockets. That makes sense since maps are now digitized and readily available on our phones.

To make things even better, the transportation industry and the city administrations can place roadside kiosks that allow the public to check virtual maps with real-time traffic monitoring. Providing a more participatory experience, these maps can also show an on-demand 360-degree virtual tour of any area.

When it comes to catching a flight, bus, or train, people are in a rush. The last thing they want is to run from corner to corner to search for the latest updates on flight schedules, gate numbers, lane numbers, and expected arrival time. Customers prefer to get information comprehensively, so displaying such travel information on large commercial monitors using a Passenger Information System makes more sense.

Airports, bus stops, or railway stations are inarguably the worst places to wait, yet one still has to. That is why it is so vital that any transportation hub shows infotainment content like weather, AQI data, regional news updates, or entertaining YouTube videos on digital screens.

According to the World Bank, the year 2019 alone saw 2.28 billion international tourist movements globally. Transportation hubs, particularly international airports, can deploy digital tour guides or information kiosks.

Tourists can use these kiosks to browse a plethora of travel-related information such as popular destinations, inter-state travel advisories, local travel agent details, emergency helpline numbers, the best restaurants in town, or the top local food recommendations. These kiosks can also allow booking of flights, hotels & cab services.

Kindergarten, high schools, universities & research labs are all quickly upgrading their campuses to join the digital era. And the electronic signage for the education sector is resulting in massive productive outcomes.

Integrating student-generated content into the screen, such as paintings, craft work, science models, or best-graded projects, is another excellent use case for school digital signage.

Promoting children’s academic or non-academic achievements with their peers and teachers boosts their confidence and motivates them to keep working hard.

For in-campus communication, digital display technology is rapidly replacing paper notice boards. It is quick and efficient and doesn’t require too much manual management. School and college administrations can update any information instantly with a bulletin board application. One can put up multiple messages on a single screen, such as event calendars, scholarship opportunities, faculty meetings, holiday lists, and class timetables.

A classroom digital signage can help students learn faster and retain information for a longer duration. Particularly among elementary grade students, bright imageries, when played on high-resolution screens, can contribute significantly to the student’s cognitive development.

The most significant advantage of integrating digital displays in your teaching process is the perk of audio-visuals. When ears are involved, a child will comprehend lectures far better.

Digital signage on campus is the most efficient way to communicate safety messages to students and staff. A safety-first digital signage program should be a priority for all schools and institutions, especially since many screen software can be combined with emergency alerting systems.

There is a whole list of benefits that hospitals & clinics can reap with digital signage screens. Here are a few examples. From enhancing patient experience to improving internal communication and branding, the healthcare industry is a playground for innovative use of screens.

A hospital or clinic’s foundation is its doctors and nurses. Complete doctor and surgeon profiles, including headshots, contact numbers, qualifications, specialty, experience, and achievements, are much easier to present on hospital screens. Another technique to build patients’ confidence in healthcare providers is to show their video interviews on a screen.

Waiting to see a doctor can be stressful, frustrating, and monotonous, especially if you don’t know how long you’ll have to wait. This has ramifications for hospital employees and clinicians, who are likely to bear the brunt of this dissatisfaction.

A digital patient queue management solution can help patients feel less anxious while waiting by keeping them informed and entertained. In addition, the hospital obtains valuable data to use in operational and staff management. Patients can check-in via a digital kiosk and, using a QR code, track their queue ticket status on their smartphones.

When we go to a gym, we look at the amenities and the ambiance. For many, fitness centers are a way to relieve stress. So, for gyms, digital signage showing high quality audio-visual content is a must-have amenity.

Instead of preaching to members on the importance of health, appealing videos on the advantages and transformation outcomes encourage them to keep going. Fitness centers can show their members crucial training suggestions & instructions and educate them by showing healthy food charts and a list of foods to avoid.

Sharing success stories, members’ transformation journeys, and their testimonials increases credibility and trust among new joiners. Transformation pictures of clients is one cool content idea to display on your gym’s digital signage.

We often use so many various gym equipment, but many of us are not fully aware of the fundamentals of those tools. Fitness centers can use digital signage to share equipment details such as the equipment name & weight, use, and dos & don’ts of handling it.

Motivation is an effective instrument for influencing trainees to achieve their goals. There are plenty of motivational quotes that can resonate among fitness enthusiasts.

Increase audience engagement in your service by displaying prayers and hymns where people can see them readily. It can also make older church members feel more at ease by providing a bright, easy-to-read display for people who have vision problems. At the same time, digital signage reduces the need for paper fliers and handouts, lowering printing costs and reducing the environmental burden.

The age of bitcoins and digital wallets has arrived in our world. People nowadays rarely utilize paper money for even the most basic transactions. Churches, too, can take part in this cashless economy. Churches can allow visitors to make online donations and pay for products with their digital wallets by placing a simple QR code on their digital screens. Churches can also acknowledge generous donors by showing their portraits or thanking them on a digital signage screen.

Another interesting digital signage content idea for church is to highlight contributions. Using big screens to thank donors implies that your church truly values their participation and this will encourage others to donate to your cause.

There is usually a lot going on in places of worship. You will almost certainly host gatherings, groups, and classes. Similarly, you will very certainly require volunteers for numerous activities. Rather than relying on a plain paper calendar, display a vibrant calendar that informs the entire congregation of what’s going on. You can share the same information on the internet so that everyone has access to a consistent and comprehensive calendar.

Digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) content is one of the most important among all digital signage content as DOOH media has to appeal to a wide range of audience across demographics and culture. Here are the top two ideas for your DOOH screens.

Digital out-of-home advertising is the best way to promote events. Whether it is a grand book launch or the inauguration of a brand new showroom in a shopping mall, the event’s promotion on DOOH will indeed have the desired impact. What if the next BTS concert is in your town? Wouldn’t you like to be informed?

Give your viewers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at a live event you’re organizing. It’s a great way to create excitement. Concerts can use digital signage to improve the overall audience experience by increasing the visibility of the live event around the venue. Sporting events and shows can be broadcast in real-time alongside advertisements for food and beverage specials to increase sales.

There is no quantifiable limit to the variety of content that one can show on digital signage. Each organization will have its own unique content catering to its unique objectives. But the bottom line is clear: your digital screens should never crave for content when you have so many ideas & inspirations to look up to. Blank screens and boring screens equal a plateau in your sales & productivity graphs. We leave you at that.

Well, not only can you save a piece of old technology from the scrapheap, but you also can repurpose a mundane blank screen into a range of intriguing projects.

Not only can you now spend a rainy afternoon or two taking apart your busted LCD screen, you’ll get that insider’s view of all the interesting circuitry that goes into these electronic devices that are a part of everyday life.

If you are an artist or photographer, you will be well aware of the importance and expense of lighting. But what if we told you that you could make a powerful, portable DIY light panel from an old LCD screen?

This amazing LCD screen hack produces a high-quality panel light that radiates daylight quality light. An equivalent panel light can cost well over a hundred dollars!

We have to admit we were skeptical about this LCD screen project, but the walk-through provided by the BrunaLab team in Florida was convincing. These scientists were more than qualified to take apart an old Panasonic screen to make a StarTrek-worthy infinity table.

This tutorial is a little more than purchasing some IKEA table legs to screw into the screen to make a coffee table (the original hack). Emilio Bruna decided to take his project in a high art direction to produce an infinity lighting effect with blue LEDs.

Again with a little electronic know-how, wiring and battery-powered LED lights an infinity TV coffee table was born. The turnaround of this project was within a day which makes it doable on a weekend that you have free.

We love the futuristic results of the LCD recycling project and the low costs. Emilio Bruna’s project came in at $73 all in, with a wacky blue lighting pattern that kept his kids glued to the coffee table screen!

If you are a tech and electronics enthusiast, you will be aware of the Raspberry Pi revolution. These remarkable single-board computers have the processing power to be put to work in a wide range of projects, including partnering with your broken LCD screen to make your high-end digitized smart mirror!

There are loads of tutorials for this LCD screen mirror which vary in cost, complexity, and overall swagger. The majority of them, place the LCD screen behind a two-way mirror and rely on the WiFi-enabled Raspberry Pi3.

The basics of this build include combining an old OHP projector and laying a stripped-down LCD on the glass of the projector. The OHP does all the hard work of projecting your movie or game.

The like the old school OHPs the visual effect of this projector will be strongest in very low light as the claim to High Definition projection may be a little too enthusiastic.

Also, the LCD does age quite quickly in this arrangement as the light passing through the denuded screen damages the LCD. However, you can definitely gather the family round for a decent movie night or two before it all falls apart!

Raspberry Pi comes to the rescue again as the perfect partner for repurposing your own screen. After all the Raspberry Pi is a computer with no screen to call its own.

This hack is very similar to the smart mirror and uses the slightly more powerful Raspberry Pi 4 which has the comparable processing power to a regular computer.

This project totally blew us away. How cool is a transparent screen that you can see through while you stream films or play games?! Though this project is not for amateurs it is possible to requisition a discarded LCD TV and create a see-through screen.

To achieve this, you will need an expert takedown of the TV, sepearating every single layer of the screen and building up a custom design and housing.

A broken LCD screen is a potential hazard to your health and the environment so it is important that you handle the screen safely to prevent injury or harm.

Though the screen has liquid crystal, the amount contained within a busted screen is small and unlikely to cause a hazardous spill because it is viscous.

However, there are certain substances to be careful off including N-(4-Methoxybenzylidene)-4-butylaniline (MBBA), a compound that is often used as liquid crystal is hightly irritant and can cause blood poisoning if ingested.

It is best to wear gloves, goggles, and a dust mask when taking apart electronics as you cannot be sure what you will encounter. Be careful handling circuit boards as capacitors can have retained enough power to give you a nasty shock!

According to researchersDr. L.D. Rosenblum, Dr. Harold Stolovitch and Dr. Erica Keeps, here is the breakdown of how our five sense processes information:

Clearly, human beings are highly visual in nature, and this is a fact that is particularly important when you’re running a physical store. One of the main reasons why people decide to shop offline is to see merchandise in person, and this is all the more reason to design winning retail displays.

The best way to make a lasting impression is to immerse your customers in a particular environment or setting. Check out the example below. The displays themselves are simple, and the retailer only makes use of a few simple racks and fixtures.

But because all the other elements of the store (i.e., the color of the walls, the cold-weather items, and the text “it’s cold outside”)  follow a unifying theme, the overall effect is quite powerful. It engulfs customers into the “cool” theme of the store, creating an immersive experience.

Keep this example in mind for your next display. Recognize that you don’t necessarily have to build something fancy. If you have a strong theme and ensure that all the components of your shop are in line with the story you want to tell, you can create a compelling and immersive experience using just a few simple products and fixtures.

In a survey by Ripen eCommerce, they found that the top reason people shop in brick and mortar stores instead of ecommerce is that physical retail enables shoppers to touch and feel items in person.

The key takeaway here? Create displays that encourage people to touch and feel for you products. If your items are sitting on a shelf or a table while still inside their respective boxes, you could be missing the chance to connect with your customers.

So, take your products out of their packaging and get shoppers to really experience your merchandise. Ulta Beauty, for example, does this with their hairdryers. While other stores keep the products in their boxes, Ulta has their hairdryers out for people to touch and feel them.

Need an easy and affordable way to breathe life into your visual merchandising? Use plants. Doing so doesn’t just make your displays more attractive, they can also create healthier and more pleasant shopping experiences.

In an interview with Retail Focus, Joey-Michelle Hutchinson, associate vice president at CallisonRTKL, said that having more greeneries in retail environments “makes them feel more inviting, which in turn decreases customer stress levels and increases their dwell time.”

Having more “green” displays clearly has some benefits, so consider incorporating plants into your designs.For inspiration, look no further than homeware retailer Harper & Grey House. Plants are a staple in their displays and the greens do a tremendous job in accentuating their merchandise.

Cross-merchandising is a subtle but effective way toincrease basket sizes and average order values. The practice promotes product discovery and entices shoppers to look at items that complement what they’re already buying.

There are a number of ways to implement cross-merchanding. One is to merchandise items that go together. You could, for example, create a display with a blouse, jacket, and matching purse.

Another idea? Display gift cards next to relevant products. Have a look at what Target is doing. The retailer has some baby-centric gift cards next to some toys in the store’s baby section to remind shoppers about their gift cards.

Speaking of little ones, have you considered creating kid-friendly displays? The practice can be quite effective particularly if you cater to Gen X and Millennial consumers.

Even the most creative displays will fall flat when they’re not well-lit. So invest, in the equipment to make sure that your products are displays in the best possible light.

Is your store on the small side? Consider using portable displays so you can make better use of your space. Such displays are easier to move so you can quickly re-merchandise your shop or make room for other things if necessary.

Portable displays can also help in keeping your visual merchandising focused and on-point. Since you have limited space, you’re forced to only display the most important and most high-impact products.

The following cookware display at Crate & Barrel does exactly that. The top part of the display has images of the items for sale along with a quick description of what each product is and what it does.

Colors can make or break your retail displays, which is why it’s essential to select the right color scheme. A big part of this will be driven by the colors of your products. If most of your items are come in pastel shades for instance, then those colors will be quite common in your displays.

That being said, how those products are displayed together matters a great deal. There are various ways to mix and match colors, so have a think about how you’ll do it in your displays.

The folks at Live By The Sword salon did an amazing job merchandising their shelf of Amika products, which come in a variety of colors.By really leaning into the colorful nature of Amika’s items, they were able to set up a vibrant display that pops.

Take this example from The LifeStyled Company. The team created a display featuring Babe Australia’s products, most of which come with predominantly white boxes and labels.

Timely displays are sure to grab the attention of your customers. Keep a close eye on your retail calendar and make sure that your visual merchandising coincides with relevant shopping events and seasons.

For instance, during last year’s back-to-school season, Target dedicated an entire corner to school supplies and relevant merchandise. The area of the store was filled with large, back-to-school displays that were impossible to miss.

If you’re running multiple stores, make sure your displays reflect the tastes and preferences of each location. Pay attention to local trends and popular products in the area and ensure they’re front and center in your displays.

You can shed light on these insights using your POS reporting and retail analytics. Identify the top categories or items in different cities and use the data to inform your merchandising decisions.

It also helps to call out the name of each town or city. For instance, the homeware retail chain Home Goods has a sign that reads, “Happy to Be in Cerritos” in its Cerritos branch.

Got a bunch of quotable quotes up your sleeve? See if you can incorporate them into your retail displays. When done right, a bit of text can complement your products and encourage shoppers to take a closer look.

And as a bonus, walls or displays with quotable quotes are a magnet for Instagram users. With the right display, you’re bound to gain a bunch of social shares and tags along the way.

If you’re looking for ways to showcase your full product lines without cramming your shelves and racks with too much merchandise, then see if you can use technology to “extend” your displays.

Case in point: when the online retailerShowpolaunched their pop-up store in Los Angeles, they chose to display a small selection of products in the shop.

Showpo even took things a step further and used another table to capture customers’ details in-store. To encourage people to provide their email, they threw a 15% discount that can be redeemed online.

In retail, space conveys value. The more space there is in a store or display, the higher the perceived value of the merchandise. This why many luxury retailers display items in standalone cases while discount stores overstuff their shelves with merchandise.

The right amount of space to use in your store depends on how you want to be perceived. But one thing is clear: if don’t want people to think that your products are cheap, then you’ll want to use fewer items in your display.

Take a look at this window fromSaks Fifth Avenue. The display features a single mannequin and table on which there’s just one pair of shoes. Aside from the paintings on the right, there aren’t a lot of details to distract people from the products.

Upcycling — the practice of using old or discarded materials to create something new — can help you build out-of-the-box retail displays. In the example below, we can see that the retailer used old chairs to create racks on which to hang their merchandise.

Now, don’t get us wrong: traditional racks and fixtures are still essential. But hopefully, this example encourages you to reimagine the use of old items. You never know — that old chair, box, or frame could be just the thing that would get your display to stand out.

If you’re celebrating a special holiday or occasion in your store, use your shop displays to show your festive side. Materials like balloons, tassels, garlands and other party supplies could help your displays pop.

With retail being more competitive than ever, there’s just no room for uninspired and mediocre retail displays. Now, more than ever, you need to constantly cook up in-store visuals can stop people in their tracks and encourage them to buy, share, and come back.

And remember that no matter what kind of display you have, it won’t be effective if it doesn’t showcase merchandise that your customers want to buy. That’s why it’s important to make data-backed decisions when it comes to merchandising. Use your POS or inventory management system to generate sales and product reports that will inform your decisions around what items to show off in your store.

Francesca Nicasio is Vend"s Retail Expert and Content Strategist. She writes about trends, tips, and other cool things that enable retailers to increase sales, serve customers better, and be more awesome overall. She"s also the author of Retail Survival of the Fittest, a free eBook to help retailers future-proof their stores. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Google+.

Unused electronics are the bane of the modern life. Perfectly functional gadgets sit quietly in a corner of the store room, doing nothing. If you"re wondering what to do with old computer monitors, here are a few easy ideas to repurpose unused screens.

In this guide, it doesn"t matter if your old monitor is still working or not. Even if it isn"t, you can use its parts to make a great new gadget. From turning it into a super-tiny computer or dashboard to refashioning into a smart mirror, here are some of the most productive ways to repurpose a computer monitor.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is an incredible device. While it has a wide range of uses, at its core, it is a tiny, low-cost, full-fledged computer. And that means your old monitor can be turned into a PC for less than $60.

Perhaps the best thing to do with an old flat-screen monitor is a DIY DAKboard. The DAKboard is a LCD wall display that shows the current time, weather forecast, calendar events, stock quotes, fitness data, and news headlines. It"s all displayed on a soothing photo. You could buy an official DAKboard, but the makers themselves have shown how to build your own wall display with a Raspberry Pi. when you can build one for far less money and a little geeky fun, the choice is obvious.

Attach your old monitor to a Pi and it can be put in your kitchen as a recipe and video source. Make a Pi-based retro video game console as a treat for your kid (or the kid in you).

Sometimes, you"re working on something private in an open office, or browsing certain *cough* sites *cough* at home. You can"t have your colleagues or kids see what"s on the screen. To keep snooping eyes at bay, make a "your-eyes-only" monitor from an old one.

To anyone else, it is going to look like a blank white monitor with nothing on it. But wearing a special pair of spectacles, you"ll be able to see things on it like a regular monitor. It"s magic! It"s a tough process, but dimovi"s guide at Instructables is thorough and precise.

Basically, you will be cutting out the polarizing film of the old LCD monitor. This film will then be put on a simple pair of glasses. Now your screen appears white, but the glasses can "see" the content. It"s one of the best ways to keep prying eyes out of your PC.

The reason you should use an old computer monitor is that things can go wrong. You will be disassembling and then reassembling the monitor, along with cutting out the anti-glare and polarizing films. You"ll also need to separate the polarizing film from the anti-glare one.

If you have a broken old LCD monitor, it can be re-purposed into a usable mirror; but if you have a working old LCD monitor, adding a Raspberry Pi can turn it into a smart magic mirror!

You can choose from different Raspberry Pi smart magic mirror projects, but for our money, go with the MagicMirror². It"s the original, most popular, and perhaps now the easiest way to build a smart mirror. It comes with a clock, calendar, weather forecast, and news feed.

If you"re on a tight budget for a first-time DIY project, consider the $100 smart mirror. It"s not the best version of turning an LCD monitor into a smart mirror, but you"ll get the basic features and not spend a bomb.

If you have the space available, the best thing you can do with an extra monitor is to boost your productivity with a dual-monitor setup. A second monitor has many potential purposes, such as extended screen space, a dashboard for your social media or news updates, or a dedicated video conferencing screen.

All desktop operating systems support the ability to use dual monitors. It"s pretty easy to setup dual monitors on Windows, and you can then customize how you use the two spaces. To connect two monitors, you will likely need a graphics card with multiple HDMI ports, or use an HDMI and a VGA port on desktops.

Make it a dedicated screen for Nintendo Wii:The Nintendo Wii can connect to a VGA monitor, so if you don"t have a Wii, buy one. In fact, buy a used one, they"re pretty cheap on Craigslist.

Like any gadget, monitors have a limited shelf life. If you"re looking to upgrade, you now have a few ideas of what to do with your old monitor. And that age should influence which project you chose. For example, given the effort involved in building a smart mirror, don"t go with a screen that"s already shown signs of trouble. The Raspberry Pi-based projects are usually the easiest to keep changing.

In fact, if you have an old monitor and old PC parts, you can repurpose the whole PC. You can turn it into a home security system, a home server or media center, or try other unique creative projects.

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From cinema content to motion-based digital art, Planar® Luxe Displays offer a way to enrich distinctive spaces. These professional-grade displays provide vibrant, high-resolution canvases for creative expression and entertainment. Leading-edge technology, design adaptability and the slimmest profiles ensure they seamlessly integrate with architectural elements and complement interior decor.

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From cinema content to motion-based digital art, Planar® Luxe MicroLED Displays offer a way to enrich distinctive spaces. HDR support and superior dynamic range create vibrant, high-resolution canvases for creative expression and entertainment. Leading-edge MicroLED technology, design adaptability and the slimmest profiles ensure they seamlessly integrate with architectural elements and complement interior décor.

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Planar® CarbonLight™ VX Series is comprised of carbon fiber-framed indoor LED video wall and floor displays with exceptional on-camera visual properties and deployment versatility, available in 1.9 and 2.6mm pixel pitch (wall) and 2.6mm (floor).

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Since 1983, Planar display solutions have benefitted countless organizations in every application. Planar displays are usually front and center, dutifully delivering the visual experiences and critical information customers need, with proven technology that is built to withstand the rigors of constant use.

Glass substrate with ITO electrodes. The shapes of these electrodes will determine the shapes that will appear when the LCD is switched ON. Vertical ridges etched on the surface are smooth.

A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directlybacklight or reflector to produce images in color or monochrome.seven-segment displays, as in a digital clock, are all good examples of devices with these displays. They use the same basic technology, except that arbitrary images are made from a matrix of small pixels, while other displays have larger elements. LCDs can either be normally on (positive) or off (negative), depending on the polarizer arrangement. For example, a character positive LCD with a backlight will have black lettering on a background that is the color of the backlight, and a character negative LCD will have a black background with the letters being of the same color as the backlight. Optical filters are added to white on blue LCDs to give them their characteristic appearance.

LCDs are used in a wide range of applications, including LCD televisions, computer monitors, instrument panels, aircraft cockpit displays, and indoor and outdoor signage. Small LCD screens are common in LCD projectors and portable consumer devices such as digital cameras, watches, calculators, and mobile telephones, including smartphones. LCD screens have replaced heavy, bulky and less energy-efficient cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays in nearly all applications. The phosphors used in CRTs make them vulnerable to image burn-in when a static image is displayed on a screen for a long time, e.g., the table frame for an airline flight schedule on an indoor sign. LCDs do not have this weakness, but are still susceptible to image persistence.

Each pixel of an LCD typically consists of a layer of molecules aligned between two transparent electrodes, often made of Indium-Tin oxide (ITO) and two polarizing filters (parallel and perpendicular polarizers), the axes of transmission of which are (in most of the cases) perpendicular to each other. Without the liquid crystal between the polarizing filters, light passing through the first filter would be blocked by the second (crossed) polarizer. Before an electric field is applied, the orientation of the liquid-crystal molecules is determined by the alignment at the surfaces of electrodes. In a twisted nematic (TN) device, the surface alignment directions at the two electrodes are perpendicular to each other, and so the molecules arrange themselves in a helical structure, or twist. This induces the rotation of the polarization of the incident light, and the device appears gray. If the applied voltage is large enough, the liquid crystal molecules in the center of the layer are almost completely untwisted and the polarization of the incident light is not rotated as it passes through the liquid crystal layer. This light will then be mainly polarized perpendicular to the second filter, and thus be blocked and the pixel will appear black. By controlling the voltage applied across the liquid crystal layer in each pixel, light can be allowed to pass through in varying amounts thus constituting different levels of gray.

The chemical formula of the liquid crystals used in LCDs may vary. Formulas may be patented.Sharp Corporation. The patent that covered that specific mixture expired.

Most color LCD systems use the same technique, with color filters used to generate red, green, and blue subpixels. The LCD color filters are made with a photolithography process on large glass sheets that are later glued with other glass sheets containing a TFT array, spacers and liquid crystal, creating several color LCDs that are then cut from one another and laminated with polarizer sheets. Red, green, blue and black photoresists (resists) are used. All resists contain a finely ground powdered pigment, with particles being just 40 nanometers across. The black resist is the first to be applied; this will create a black grid (known in the industry as a black matrix) that will separate red, green and blue subpixels from one another, increasing contrast ratios and preventing light from leaking from one subpixel onto other surrounding subpixels.Super-twisted nematic LCD, where the variable twist between tighter-spaced plates causes a varying double refraction birefringence, thus changing the hue.

LCD in a Texas Instruments calculator with top polarizer removed from device and placed on top, such that the top and bottom polarizers are perpendicular. As a result, the colors are inverted.

The optical effect of a TN device in the voltage-on state is far less dependent on variations in the device thickness than that in the voltage-off state. Because of this, TN displays with low information content and no backlighting are usually operated between crossed polarizers such that they appear bright with no voltage (the eye is much more sensitive to variations in the dark state than the bright state). As most of 2010-era LCDs are used in television sets, monitors and smartphones, they have high-resolution matrix arrays of pixels to display arbitrary images using backlighting with a dark background. When no image is displayed, different arrangements are used. For this purpose, TN LCDs are operated between parallel polarizers, whereas IPS LCDs feature crossed polarizers. In many applications IPS LCDs have replaced TN LCDs, particularly in smartphones. Both the liquid crystal material and the alignment layer material contain ionic compounds. If an electric field of one particular polarity is applied for a long period of time, this ionic material is attracted to the surfaces and degrades the device performance. This is avoided either by applying an alternating current or by reversing the polarity of the electric field as the device is addressed (the response of the liquid crystal layer is identical, regardless of the polarity of the applied field).

Displays for a small number of individual digits or fixed symbols (as in digital watches and pocket calculators) can be implemented with independent electrodes for each segment.alphanumeric or variable graphics displays are usually implemented with pixels arranged as a matrix consisting of electrically co