Bethune has a very simple digital sign program. It is actually a Javascript file that resides in http://bcmastermac.cns.yorku.ca/sign/index.html. It looks for jpg image files in http://bcmastermac.cns.yorku.ca/sign/ directory with future dates as filenames and displays the earliest one. For example, 2023-9-23.jpg is for September 23, 2023.
The javascript program works very simply. If first tries to open a file with today's date. If it finds one it displays it. Otherwise, it looks to see if there is a file with tomorrow's date. If it exists, it displays that. If it doesn't exist it then continues to look forward in time, up to a week ahead. If it finds nothing for the coming week it then displays a default image, one that says "Welcome to Bethune College". Note: the program repeats this search every 10 minutes so when new files are added the sign will be updated promptly.
The monitor displaying the digital sign is connected to a Raspberry Pi. This Raspberry Pi is running on open-source digital signage program by Binary Emotions.
You can use any paint program to generate the image files. (I use Pixelmator Pro on my Mac.) You can use this background image and write your announcments on top of it to generate your image files.
