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As a side-project at work we're looking into setting up a display wall to monitor our network. Currently we have 1 main location and 4 satellite locations, with plans to add two more satellites within the next couple years. Every site has backup links to our main location via microwave links. As our network is growing we want to be able to do real-time monitoring across our network and display it on monitors on the wall in the IT room, and be able to instantly see if (for example) our microwave link to the mountain drops at one location or another. We have the tools and the software for our monitoring. What we'd like is a way to display different information on 9 separate screens arranged in a 3 x 3 matrix on the wall. We recently upgraded monitors across our locations to widescreen, so we have a HUGE surplus of 17" flatscreen monitors, though they are older VGA only models. What would be the most effective way to accomplish our goal of having 9 independent monitors set up in this manner? Can we do this with a single PC, or will we have to use multiple machines? Is there a cost effective solution for this?
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Sep 18, 2015 18:13
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| # ? May 3, 2024 23:25 |
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khy posted:As a side-project at work we're looking into setting up a display wall to monitor our network. Currently we have 1 main location and 4 satellite locations, with plans to add two more satellites within the next couple years. Every site has backup links to our main location via microwave links. As our network is growing we want to be able to do real-time monitoring across our network and display it on monitors on the wall in the IT room, and be able to instantly see if (for example) our microwave link to the mountain drops at one location or another. Two thoughts: 1) 17 inches is really small, and probably not going to be terribly visible from any significant distance. The better way to do is is mounting around 25-30" on the wall. At 17", I would only think you'd get about two or three items of information clearly on each screen. If all you're looking for is "Is microwave link up?" green/red, sure. If you're looking for useful details, you'll need to go bigger. 2) With the above in mind, you certainly could get one or two PCs to run that many displays, but I think you'd have better results with either a bunch of ChromeCasts or these Intel Compute-Sticks, which plug into the HDMI ports. It depends on how much power you want each one to have. If you're just refreshing a webpage, the ChromeCasts would work, I think. If you're actively running some monitoring program, I think the Intel sticks would be a better option. With these smaller devices, you can avoid a lot of extra cable runs.
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Sep 18, 2015 22:51
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There may be a more high tech solution, but this is what I have done. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_9?k=off+lease+desktop&sprefix=off+lease Cheap $99 desktops running windows 7. Assuming your client software is not CPU intensive, you can find systems that run 2 monitors at once. I use tightvnc to control them from a single computer. The other option is fancy video cards that run multiple monitors. That was more expensive. What are the requirements of your client software?
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Jan 18, 2016 03:59
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We're running a workstation from this company for 6 monitors in our NOC. It's got something crazy like 16 displayports on it.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:02
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How about a bunch of 32-40 inch TVs with an Intel Compute Stick? Or Raspberry Pis.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:12
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KillHour posted:How about a bunch of 32-40 inch TVs with an Intel Compute Stick? Or Raspberry Pis. Every setup made in the past couple of years that I've come across (a dozen or so) has done this and the data projected is from internal webpages. If you need to span multiple monitors (for surface area), a projector mounted on the ceiling works well rather than attempting to span across two devices. Just get a modern enough TV that supports sending power via usb/hdmi to the Pi so you don't have to worry about another plug, and you're golden.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:24
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I think we need some more information about the monitoring tools and whether or not you're looking for an "off-the-shelf" product or would be comfortable with a home-brew solution. Are you really just looking to make a bank of 9 monitors, or make them work together? I think it's better to consider some pitfalls of the software and hardware. Software: It'll be helpful to know what OS your software runs on: Windows/Linux or OS independent. The question is whether your want 9 displays to act as one through some software/driver trickery. Assuming it's web based, I could see pointing each attached "computer" to a different URL which has a 1/9th slice of the whole picture. Hardware: First, think about spanning text across those 17 inch monitors, they might be old or not bright enough, and the bezels might be quite thick. I'm sure you've considered the cost of vesa mounts already. Next, are they really all VGA? No DVI on any of them? Pi Zeros with these VGA adapters might work: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/gert-vga-adapter/ Another idea would be to create a virtual machine with 9 VMs, each one connected to a chromecast with an HDMI to VGA adapter. I'm not sure if you'll run out of 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi bandwidth for screensharing or sending a URL, so you might want to get some Chromecast wired Ethernet adapters. You can probably find some refurbished chromecasts cheap for $25/each or less. Again, it's helpful to know what the software situation is. I haven't used a Chromecast in over a year, so the VM may be unnecessary if you can run 1 PC with multiple instances of Chrome, each one chromecasting a webpage, rather than sending display data. I'm interested in the total bill of materials for this project, since I might want to do something similar one day.
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Feb 27, 2016 07:49
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It just kind of makes me chuckle that we're at a point in the tech world where all these kiosks and status displays and operational walls just display internal webpages. My god if you were there for the rage and anger about how awful and unusable these horrible technologies were in the 90s, html is a disaster, javascript is a trainwreck, we NEED plugins. Applets are the future. Flash is the future. Silverlight is the future, buy a Visual Studio license! No the best future is cheap as gently caress $300 tvs displaying still displaying good old html on a free open source stack, even for huge companies. That's amazing to me, never thought it would happen.
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Mar 1, 2016 22:19
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| # ? May 3, 2024 23:25 |
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At my work we got a Nvidia NVS 810, I think is the model. It drives 8 monitors. The PC we're using isn't even that powerful either, a Core 2 Duo. Might be a little spendy, but it's worked well so far.
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May 10, 2016 05:28
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