---
id: products-signage
area: products
level: 3
title: "Artefact — Commercial signage on commodity hardware"
claim: "A digital signage platform built as market disruption — any HDMI screen · a small player · fleet control of power · rotation · layout and playback · sold to twelve businesses over time."
confidence: delivered
period: "2014–"
tech: [Raspberry Pi, ESP32, HDMI-CEC, JavaScript, three.js, FFmpeg, Python]
metrics: [{label: "businesses currently running the product", value: 3}, {label: "adoptions over time", value: 12}]
artefacts: []
public: true
last_verified: 2026-10-26
tags: [products, signage, artefact]
---

The product shipped and customers still run it. The rebuild on the current stack is not finished and is labelled as unfinished everywhere it is mentioned.

## What the artefact is

The product in use: a player on commodity hardware — a small Raspberry Pi or a microcontroller class device — driving any HDMI screen, with fleet control from the platform: switch screens on and off, rotate, mirror, lay out multiple screens, coordinate boards, and synchronise playback across a site. Content is built by the customer from complex animation down to a simple image rotation, and the system adapts to the board it finds rather than demanding a specification.

## What it proves

The commercial read: a market was overpriced, the substitute was built on commodity hardware, and it was sold and operated for years. Twelve adoptions over time, three businesses still running. That is a product, not a project.

## Limits stated on the page

Twelve is cumulative adoption and three is the current count — the distinction is kept because inflating it would be the easiest lie on this site. The rebuild is in progress. No revenue figures or customer names beyond type of business are published.

## When it is delivered

Phase 7 for screenshots and a demonstration recording, captured from the running product. The one-liners for reference customers are approved for the salon and the financial services business only.