info-beamer blog - info-beamer

info-beamer hosted is the world's first digital signage solution for the Pi4 with dual display support, 4K display support and now HEVC/H265 video decoding with a resolution of up to 4K. Read more...

Feb 15 2019 - info-beamer hosted 10 released

The info-beamer hosted operating system gets a new major release. Read more...

Jan 04 2019 - The 35C3 info beamer setup

As is tradition, I've been running the info screens at the anual 35C3 conference again. Read more...

Sep 06 2018 - Edge computing and digital signage

The reliability of your digital signs is very important. In the best case they still fully function during network outages or other temporary problems. The info-beamer hosted system can help with that. Read more...

Jul 10 2018 - info-beamer hosted 9 released

The info-beamer hosted operating system gets a new major release. Read more...

Jun 16 2018 - info-beamer hosted on the CM3-PANEL

info-beamer hosted now supports the CM3-PANEL for digital signage. Read more...

May 10 2018 - info-beamer hosted CEC support

The next info-beamer hosted OS will add easy CEC support. Read more...

Apr 16 2018 - info-beamer pi 0.9.9 released

info-beamer pi 0.9.9 adds minor improvements and finally allows paused HDMI audio for videos thanks to a firmware fix. Read more...

Feb 20 2018 - Using the REST API for automating video wall configuration

Using the REST API unleashes the true power of info-beamer hosted. This blog post describes how it can be used to automatically create configurations for synced video walls. Read more...

Jan 10 2018 - Accelerated peer-to-peer content distribution

info-beamer hosted can soon optionally distribute content locally among your devices. This can speed up downloads of large files to devices located in the same local network. Read more...

Jan 05 2018 - Remote control interfaces

info-beamer hosted now allows a package to include a custom remote control interface that can be used to control the devices running that package in real time. Read more...

Jan 04 2018 - The 34C3 info beamer setup

I've been running an installation at the yearly chaos communication congress again. Here's how it worked. Read more...

Dec 17 2017 - info-beamer hosted 8 released

The info-beamer hosted operating system gets a new major release. Read more...

Nov 04 2017 - info-beamer hosted on Artista-IoT

info-beamer hosted fully supports the Artista-IoT TFT controller board by Data Display. Read more...

Oct 16 2017 - Pricing updates and a Free Tier

info-beamer hosted now offers a Free Tier. One device as well as 1GB of storage are now free forever. Read more...

Sep 20 2017 - info-beamer hosted on NEC displays

info-beamer hosted fully supports the NEC P and V Series of professional displays. Read more...

Aug 14 2017 - info-beamer pi 0.9.8 released

info-beamer pi 0.9.8 adds support for Raspbian Stretch as well as other minor improvements. Read more...

May 13 2017 - What other systems do wrong - what info-beamer hosted does better

Why you should choose info-beamer hosted for your digital signage installation. Read more...

Apr 20 2017 - info-beamer hosted 7 released

The info-beamer hosted operating system has been updated. It adds a wide range of new features. Read more...

Apr 05 2017 - info-beamer pi 0.9.7 released

This release corrects minor problems and adds a new way of playing 1080p60 videos. Read more...

Mar 14 2017 - How info-beamer hosted handled two big internet incidents

Recently two major incidents made it to the news. This blog post describes both those incidents as well as how info-beamer was built to minimize the impact of those incidents. Read more...

Jan 16 2017 - info-beamer hosted 6 released

The info-beamer hosted operating system has been updated. It offers minor updates and fixes. Read more...

Jan 09 2017 - The 33C3 info beamer setup

At the recent 33C3 conference in Hamburg I was running the information screens in all halls as well as on all venue TV screens again. Similar to the last 3 years I have been using info-beamer hosted for that. Here is a small summary and links to the source code. Read more...

Nov 14 2016 - Updates to info-beamer hosted

The info-beamer hosted website is constantly being improved. Often changes are not visible unless you search for them. This blog post summarizes what happend recently. Read more...

Sep 27 2016 - info-beamer hosted 5 released

The info-beamer hosted has been updated and offers a wide range of additional features. Read more...

Jul 25 2016 - info-beamer pi 0.9.6 released

This release updates the library LuaJIT used by info-beamer. The version used in 0.9.5 could result in wrong numerical results in some cases. If you're using 0.9.5 you should upgrade. Read more...

Jul 18 2016 - info-beamer pi 0.9.5 released

After more than half a year of development the new info-beamer 0.9.5 release is ready. It offers a number of improvements like nested content. Read more...

Apr 26 2016 - info-beamer hosted 4 released

The info-beamer hosted has been updated to officially support the Raspberry Pi3 as well as adding additional features. Read more...

Feb 29 2016 - A new way of organizing code and assets

info-beamer pi 0.9.5 will add a new optional way of organizing code and content of a node. This post describes how it works and what's possible with the new nested node feature. Read more...

Feb 16 2016 - The info-beamer hosted architecture

info-beamer hosted is designed to be as reliable as possible. This blog post describes the info-beamer hosted architecture and how it archives this goal. Read more...

Jan 24 2016 - Creating a reliable operating system

When running a digital signage installation it is important to make sure that your devices are as reliable as possible. Here's how info-beamer hosted solves this challenge. Read more...

Dec 08 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.9.4 released

info-beamer 0.9.4 now officially supports Raspbian Jessie. Various minor improvements make it easier to develop and debug visualizations. Read more...

Oct 24 2015 - OMX vs CPU jpeg decoding

There are multiple ways of loading JPEG images on the Pi. OMX (hardware acceleration) and using the host CPU. This blog post compares those two options on the Pi1 and Pi2. Read more...

Oct 03 2015 - info-beamer for Raspbian Jessie

There is now an info-beamer version that supports the new Raspbian Jessie release. Read more...

Sep 28 2015 - Performance experiments

Getting the most out of the Raspberry PI is one of the top priorities for info-beamer. Not all improvements work as expected. This blog post shows three examples. Read more...

Sep 22 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.9.3 released

info-beamer 0.9.3 adds an option that makes it easier to use the official Raspberry PI display. Read more...

Aug 27 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.9.2 released

info-beamer 0.9.2 improves smoothness for visualizations that are running for a long time and provides a new way to safe energy. Read more...

Jul 07 2015 - Running info-beamer in production

You have developed your visualization and are not sure how to run it in production? This post highlights a few recommendations. Read more...

Jun 28 2015 - Playing a video on multiple screens

This is a walkthrough on how to use info-beamer as a multiscreen video player. Read more...

Jun 28 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.9.1 released

info-beamer 0.9.1 fixes a bug introduced in 0.9 that could lead to info-beamer getting stuck. Read more...

Jun 11 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.9.0 released

info-beamer 0.9.0 is the result of three months of development. It has some pretty awesome improvements. Read more...

Apr 20 2015 - Unix filesystem semantics or 'How to foolproof your syncing process'

Sometimes you want play a sequence of videos or images. Making sure they are not deleted while playing them might be tricky. It might add complexity to your process of syncing media files to info-beamer. info-beamer 0.9 and later help you make this a lot easier. Read more...

Apr 10 2015 - Understanding Pi dispmanx/HVS

info-beamer 0.9 will offer an additional way of displaying videos. To use it it's important to understand how the Raspberry produces a video signal. This first blog post will walk you through all the steps your Pi is taking. Read more...

Mar 05 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.8.3 released

info-beamer 0.8.3 adds improvements to JPEG loading speed and prevents screen tearing during video playback. Read more...

Feb 16 2015 - A visual watchdog for the PI

Sometimes visualisations go wrong and get stuck for various reasons. It is useful to be able to detect and react to that. Read more...

Feb 05 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.8.2 released

The first info-beamer pi release that is ready for the Raspberry PI 2. Learn what has changed. Read more...

Feb 02 2015 - Raspberry PI 2 released

The Raspberry PI 2 Model B is now available. And it is fully compatible to the previous Raspberry PI versions. Here is how this is going to affect info-beamer. Read more...

Jan 29 2015 - Understanding garbage collection

Having an eye on performance is critical when developing visualizations using info-beamer for the Raspberry PI. One of the things you have to consider when writing your code is garbage collection. Read more...

Jan 21 2015 - info-beamer pi 0.8.1 released

Here is another release after 3 months of development. This release will give you yet another big performance boost. You visualizations could by up to 50% faster now. Read more...

Jan 10 2015 - Performance insights into info-beamer pi

Performance has always been a top priority while developing info-beamer for the Raspberry PI. Since version 0.6.3 (released in november 2013) a lot has changed. It's time for some benchmarks and for some insights on how improvements were made. Read more...

Nov 02 2014 - External data sources: A bitcoin ticker

Often you have external dynamic information that you want to show in an info-beamer visualization. Since info-beamer itself doesn't provide an API to (for example) use HTTP you might wonder how to do this. info-beamer makes this very easy. It's also language agnostic. So you can use the language of your choice to fetch information and then make it available to info-beamer. Here's a pretty basic bitcoin ticker that shows how to do this. Read more...

Oct 26 2014 - Taking screenshots on the Raspberry PI

Want to share something you created on your PI and could figure out the best way to create a screenshot? This small blog post will show you an easy way to create snapshots. Screenshots work both in X and in the linux console since the tool directly captures the screen using the lowlevel Dispmanx API. Read more...

Oct 19 2014 - info-beamer pi 0.8 released

I'm proud to annouce the release of info-beamer pi release 0.8. It's been under development for a few month now and will enable you do get more out of your Raspberry. Faster rendering, reduced memory usage and new debugging abilities. Read more...