XOGO
All success storiesRaspberry Pi is the perfect platform for this digital signage company
With demand for digital signage soaring among small and micro businesses, digital media provider XOGO knew just how to make the most of an opportunity to extend its market reach.
| Solution | Raspberry Pi 4 |
| Size of business | Small to medium |
| Industry | Digital signage |
XOGO’s digital signage software works across almost any computer platform and has a simple and user-friendly interface. At XOGO’s inception in 2015, digital signage was an industry aimed decisively at existing premium brands, with a price tag and complexity to suit. XOGO wanted to make digital signage easy and accessible, and saw a huge opportunity to offer improved setup and user experience, while also lowering the barrier to entry with a tiered pricing structure.
XOGO successfully launched its first bespoke media hardware – the XOGO Mini – in 2019. For its follow-up, XOGO founder and CMO 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 exacting price point: their 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 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 customized 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” says Justin. “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 their first XOGO Mini. Raspberry Pi proved convincing: they 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.