ZEE DIGITAL blog

February 14, 2020July 6, 2020

Digital Signage For Everyone

Digital Signage is everywhere these days. What is it? Essentially, it is any type of media that can be displayed on an electronic screen such as a billboard. Here’s what Wikipedia notes.

Digital signage is a sub-segment of electronic signage. Digital displays use technologies such as LCD, LED, projection and e-paper to display digital images, video, web pages, weather data, restaurant menus, or text. They can be found in public spaces, transportation systems, museums, stadiums, retail stores, hotels, restaurants and corporate buildings etc., to provide wayfinding, exhibitions, marketing and outdoor advertising

Digital signage is useful for various businesses and non-profits. Here’s a couple of examples where it might be helpful to have digital signage:

Menus at restaurants
Informational videos at a waiting room
Religious messages in lobbies of places of worship
Event schedules at cultural centers or conferences
Streaming Live TV with sports news at a sports restaurant or bar

Building a Digital Signage solution can be fairly simple or also fairly difficult depending on what you want to achieve. The simplest form of digital signage is to stick a video or slideshow presentation loaded on portable memory device and plug that to your TV. This works however, it is difficult to change content and it is only one type of content that is being delivered.

Zee Digital is offering a solution that will assist businesses and nonprofits to achieve their messaging goals with digital signage. It is a service that connects your existing HDMI-included TV screen with a Zee Digital Signage Player (ZDSP).

The dynamic content can be programed to change on a schedule, however, changes to the content on-demand would require a LAN or WIFI network connection to the Internet so that Zee Digital can push content down to the screen.

The video below at Zee Digital Labs gives a highlight of what the physical raw setup is and what type of content can be projected.

Here are more examples of the content available through digital signage.

Updates from news agencies in the form of a slide show

As you can see, there are various content that can be projected with Zee Digital signage. The example shown in the video and photos above are using a YouTube live feed so in this case, Internet Access is necessary.

See the Zee Digital page for contact information.

October 25, 2019July 6, 2020

iClever SmartHome Plug review

Imagine you can turn on lights or small devices remotely. Yes, everyone is doing it these days with their SmartHome devices. Zee Digital Labs, our testing outfit played around with the iClever Smart plug. Here’s what we found.

Scroll to the very bottom to see the testing video.

We start with our unboxing.

Here’s what we see when we open the box.

It came with two sockets.

And here’s a view of the device all around so you can see the prongs and the maximum amperage.

Once you plug it in, you have to use the SmartLife App to pair it. Download the SmartLife application and register if you don’t have an account.

SmartLife for iOS devices

SmartLife for Android devices

It is fairly straight forward process. Now let us look at the SmartLife App. If you havent added your device, you can click on “Add Device”.

There are two ways to add your devices, either manually of Auto Scan.

For manually, pick the Lighting category and then Lightning Wifi).

We tried it with AutoScan. Make sure you click the iClever Device side button for 5 seconds straight and then start scanning on the SmartLife app.

Your iClever Device should be now detected.

Once you click Next, it will take you the device details. From here, you can turning on and off the plug.

There are three options here, Socket On, CountDown, or Schedule. We played around with the first two options.

Generally speaking, once the socket is turned on, the light turns on like this.

Finally, let’s go through a quick video demo.

October 14, 2019July 6, 2020

Making the Drone Adventure Video

These days, people are posting drone videos all over the place. We wanted to do the same as well to promote our media service offering and share how we did it. The Drone Adventure video was posted on our Media Page and it is also available for viewing below.

Drone Adventure made for 720p at 24 fps

The thing is, most people cant fly drones all over the place and with new FAA rules in place, one should be cautious flying very high. You’ll have to know where controlled airspace is as well. Just like drone shots, timelapse, slow shutter, and slow motion shots have a market online for makers to sell to individuals such as Youtubers that want to integrate content.

So this is what we did. We looked at two low priced options for grabbing drone videos. The first Widyos which cost $27. It does have quite a lot of content such as 4K and HD video, photos, audio, and vector graphics. It is not a subscription, so you are provided lifetime access. There is a sizeable number of drone footage.

Note that there was a lot of marketing when it first came out however, that has died down and it only now has a signup page.

We also used JVZOO’s StockNation. For $67, you’ll get access to thousands of videos and other content. This is also not a subscription and the price comes with with lifetime access.

StockNation has a very nice searchable dashboard. It also has a video editor built-in but it is easier to download the videos and use another editing tool (see a few paragraphs down). Note that the $67 will not give you access to Photos and Audio files which Widyos provided. That’s another fee of around $47.

After selecting our video files, we use a free editor called Hitfilm Express. You will have to download it for Mac or PC and then start editing. Although there is a paid version of Hitfilm, the Express version is more than capable of editing and composing your video and audio. It also comes with video and audio effects.

Below you will see a composite shot. After each video is imported into Hitfilm Express, the video is placed into each composite shot. This is optional it is but easier to edit the composite shots separately and the combine them in the main editor afterwards.

Below is how the main editor looks like with the various composite shots.

The whole idea is to fit, splice, and, transition the composite shots to your liking and same goes for the audio as well. If you are familiar with using iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, Hitfilm Express should be an easy adjustment. Exporting your final product is simple as well. There are various video profiles to choose from your you can create your own.

All in all, a straight forward editing process. Enjoy!

August 29, 2019July 6, 2020

Making of the Blog

This is the first post of the blog and the only expression that is right for the post is “hooray!” Finally it is done. Making a blog is straight forward if you are using blog specific services such as wordpress.com. Pick a theme, use canned graphics, and you are good to go. Starting writing. However, if you are hosting the site yourself, you’ll have to either: 1) install your blogging platform or 2) build your blog from scratch (e.g. HTML, PHP). Zee Digital, decided to use the WordPress installation available from the hosting vendor. It was easier. Next, stylize your theme and plug in images and content. Sounds easy right? Well, it does take a long time to stylize your theme and create all the elements around it. Like many blogs, a free theme was used and because of additional features available, was purchased. Zee Digital stumbled on a theme from WP-Royal called Ashe. There were modifications but not a whole lot. As you can see, the blog theme looks fairly clean. The Ashe theme has a clean and responsive look. From the screen capture below, you will see how neat the menus look. The theme definitely fits travel blogs but is versatile for other types of blogs.

Ashe comes with a Pro version which was purchased for more features. One of the features that stuck out was the pre-made 14 styles depending on your blog choice. Since the Zee Digital blog is technology project related, it aligns with either a darker background style or a style with a slider. However, the use of the travel style keeps this blog differentiated from other similar blogs in this genre. Hopefully the clean lines and decluttered feel help readers focus on the content.

Note the blog has sliding menu widgets. On the Zee Digital blog, it is on the left (click on the hamburger icon on the left after the header image). This is one of the excellent features Ashe provides. In additional, demonstration content is included which makes it easy to build the blog. Load the demo content and delete, modify, and add what suits your blog.