You raised the brisket plate a dollar on Tuesday. The board hasn’t heard.
A printed board is a decision you made back in March and can’t take back. You bump a price and the sign argues with you. You sell out at one o’clock and it keeps selling till close. This one you change from your phone, standing at the counter, in about the time it takes to ring somebody up.
Four steps, and you never leave the counter.
That’s the whole thing. Nothing to install, no password, no account to keep track of.
Open the update screen on the TV
Pick up the remote and press OK. Some remotes call it Select. Your menu slides off and you get a screen with a QR code, a web address, and a six-digit code.
Connect your phone
Point your camera at the QR code and tap the link that pops up. On a computer instead, type the web address off the TV into a browser and punch in the six-digit code.
Send the new menu
Tap Choose file and pick the picture or video off your phone. If your artwork already lives at a web address, paste the link and tap Fetch instead.
Look at the TV, then apply
The TV shows the new menu as a preview, full size, exactly the way it’ll look to somebody standing at your counter. If it’s right, tap Apply on your phone. If it isn’t, tap Cancel and nothing moves.
The remote is the lock. Your box only takes a new menu while that update screen is sitting open, and the six-digit code is different every time it opens.
What happens when things go wrong.
Most digital signage gives up the first time the WiFi stutters, and then you’ve got a black rectangle hanging over your counter in the middle of a lunch rush. This one plays off its own storage, so the network can do whatever it wants.
The internet can go out. Your menu won’t.
The screen always plays off the box’s own storage. WiFi does one job, and that’s carrying a new menu across the room when you send one. Your service goes down at noon on a Saturday and the board never notices.
After a power cut it comes back on its own
Power returns, the box boots, your menu is up. Nobody hunts for a remote or picks an app out of a list.
It restarts itself at 4am
A reboot every night while you’re closed is what keeps it steady for months at a stretch. You’ll never once see it happen.
Everything you’d actually ask it for.
- Lunch and dinner on a timer. Set the hours once. The right board turns up on its own, weekdays only if that’s how you run it.
- Slideshows. Rotate several boards on one screen, anywhere from three seconds to two minutes each.
- Video. Play an MP4 instead of a still, and it finishes before the next one starts.
- Sold out at one o’clock. Send a new picture with the item struck through. It’s up before the next person orders it.
- Portrait screens. Hang the TV sideways and tell it which way you turned it.
- Old menus stick around. Last month’s board is still sitting in the list. One tap puts it back.
The full instructions
Written for whoever’s standing at the counter. Read it on a phone, or print the PDF and tape it inside a cabinet door where the person covering your Saturday will find it.
Questions restaurant owners ask
Press OK on the remote, scan the QR code with your phone, send the picture. That is the whole job. Most people do it standing at the counter in under a minute.
Nothing at all. The screen plays off the box’s own storage, so your menu keeps running exactly as it was. WiFi only carries the new picture across at the moment you send it.
Yes, and you set it once. Give a menu hours, say eleven to four, weekdays only. It takes the screen during that window and steps back out when the window closes.
That works. There is a setting for portrait turned left, portrait turned right, and upside down. You pick it the day the screen goes on the wall.
I do. It shows up at your place already configured and locked down so it can only ever show your menu, which means there is no Android home screen to wander into by accident and no app store sitting there waiting for somebody’s kid to find it. You never touch that side of it.
Depends how many screens, and whether you want me building the artwork too. Call me and I’ll give you a number on the phone.
Want one over your counter?
Tell me how many screens and where they're going. I set the boxes up on the bench, bring them out already configured, and you get the phone page and this guide the same day.