Case study: XOGO digital signage

XOGO successfully launched its first bespoke media hardware – the XOGO Mini – in 2019. For its follow-up, XOGO's, Chief Marketing Officer Justin Miller knew price would be critical, especially as the company was aiming for growth along with the thriving digital signage market. He says that the choice of Raspberry Pi 4 for the company’s own media player device was clear.

The challenge

XOGO needed to offer their customers a 4K-capable turnkey hardware platform for its digital media player, at a very low price point: its solution must retail for under $100 (US).

The solution

The XOGO Mini 2 is based on a Raspberry Pi 4 running a custom XOGO Player/Linux image. XOGO’s custom software turns it into a media player that pushes content to a display. The Mini 2 is wireless-enabled, so the user can control and play content stored on its SD card using XOGO’s Player app on any smartphone. Access is restricted by a security code; entering this lets the user send playlists securely from their app to the Mini 2.

The XOGO Mini 2 is presented in XOGO’s custom silent, fanless enclosure, and ships with an HDMI cable and an international power adapter to give customers a plug-and-play setup experience.

Why Raspberry Pi?

XOGO’s CMO, Justin Miller, puts it succinctly: “No other hardware platform in this price range is as powerful or flexible.

“Raspberry Pi 4 was the perfect media player platform for us because it’s 4K-capable, it allowed us to build a customised disk image running XOGO Player/Linux, and we can even offer disk images to our customers around the world so they can build their own DIY Raspberry Pi media players,” he adds. “Competing solutions are more expensive, do not offer customisations such as international power supplies and custom cases, and are not as widely available worldwide.”

XOGO was understandably cautious about moving away from the hardware that had proven successful with its first XOGO Mini. Raspberry Pi proved convincing: XOGO’s experts were persuaded by its superior power and video/URL playback capabilities and its lower cost, together with what they describe as the “ultimate flexibility” it offers them to design their own player device around it, right down to the case and power supply. “We absolutely love Raspberry Pi 4.”

The results

Sales of the Raspberry Pi 4-based XOGO Mini 2 are strong in both the US and the UK, and the device is proving extremely reliable in the hands of customers. XOGO believes that “Raspberry Pi is the platform for digital signage,” and its software is now integrated with Sharp-NEC’s Raspberry Pi Compute Module-driven displays. The two organisations are working together on sensor integration plans using Raspberry Pi hardware at the cutting edge of digital signage technology.