Changing your menu board

Put a new menu on the screen

1. 1

   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.

   That screen is the only time the box will take a new menu. Close it and the door shuts. Nobody changes your board from the parking lot.

2. 2

   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.

   Your phone has to be on the restaurant’s WiFi, the same network the box is on. Cell data won’t reach it.

3. 3

   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.

   JPG, PNG, HEIC or MP4, up to 200 MB apiece. Photos straight off an iPhone are fine. The box converts HEIC on its own.

4. 4

   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.

   Customers never see the preview. Nothing goes live until you tap Apply, and you can preview as many times as you want.

Uploading several menus at once

Pick more than one file and they all land in your list at once, skipping the preview step. Each one takes its name from the filename, so name them something you’ll know later. Lunch.jpg. Dinner.jpg. Happy hour.jpg. This is how you load up a slideshow in one go.

Your menu list

Everything you’ve uploaded stays in the list on your phone page. Four buttons on each one:

• Show puts that menu on the screen right now.
• Rename gives it a name that means something to you.
• Schedule makes it turn up on its own at set times. More on that below.
• Delete gets rid of it. Select all and Delete selected clear out a pile at once.

You can also step through your menus with Up and Down on the TV remote and never get your phone out.

Running a slideshow

Switch on Rotate through all menus and the screen starts cycling on its own.

• Seconds per slide runs from 3 seconds to 2 minutes.
• Shuffle plays them in random order instead of list order.
• Videos finish before anything moves on, whatever the timer says.
• One menu in the list means nothing rotates. There’s nowhere to rotate to.

Scheduling lunch and dinner

A schedule puts a menu up at the right time of day so nobody has to remember to do it at eleven. Tap Schedule on a menu, set From and Until, tick the days it runs.

• Overnight windows work. 22:00 to 02:00 does what you’d think.
• A scheduled menu owns the screen during its hours, over the top of any slideshow or anything you picked by hand.
• When its window ends it steps back out and your normal menus return.
• Schedules run off the TV box’s own clock, which sits at the top of your phone page.

Set two things that disagree and an active schedule wins. Slideshow comes next. Whatever you last picked by hand comes last.

TVs mounted sideways

Under Display, tell it which way you turned the screen: Landscape, Portrait rotated right, Portrait rotated left, or Upside down. Set it the day the TV goes on the wall and forget about it.

Designing a menu that reads well

The box puts out a normal 1080p television picture. Build your artwork 1920 by 1080 pixels for a screen hung the usual way, or 1080 by 1920 for one turned on its side.

• Big type. Somebody reads this from fifteen feet back, not fifteen inches.
• Six items a screen beats twenty crammed in. Run a slideshow or a second screen if you need the room.
• Light lettering on a dark background is kinder on the eyes in a dim dining room.
• Leave a margin. Some TVs shave the outside edge of the picture off.

When something's off