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Going through some old posts on my blog and discovered this from nearly 15 years ago. I worked as the software development director for a digital advertising company, a glorified title as I was the only developer. Needless to say he was convinced and he let me expense one.

I wrote some proof-of-concept code on it based upon the hello_video example to play MP4s and, whilst I didn't get the opportunity to deploy this model of Pi, I did end up deploying on the Pi 2 and 3 a few years later. Still got a handful of Pi's from back then and I apparently own the code IP now.

The code includes: - MS SQL Server database files - A Linux file server backend - A Windows web server frontend - Video playout software The playout software also includes a touchscreen wayfinder framework for shopping centres (got the code for all of them) and touchscreen/label printer drivers.

Oh and some random stuff, like code to pull data from those 2-line bus shelter displays, older Flash and Director versions of the wayfinder, and a load of supporting files. We supported some pretty big malls including the Trafford Centre, Bluewater, Lakeside, and so on.

The company was always cash strapped and near the end there was a pattern of being "made redundant" just before Christmas and then mysteriously being "rehired" in the New Year. Quite stressful really. We collaborated with Clear Channel for a while, which was great. Lovely bunch of folk to work with.

Here's another post I wrote shortly after I was told to pick which staff I'd need to keep on. Several of us took voluntary pay cuts so that we could keep most of them. This is one of the reasons I feel for all those in the games industry at the moment. They're not the only industry run by sharks.

Anyhow, after years of running adverts on screens in some high profile international sites it ended up with just three of us posting local "Pearl & Dean" style adverts on about 200 screens in newsagents and post offices in the UK.

Anyway, going back to the Pi, our original kiosk with two touchscreens, two 55" plasma screens & two industrial PCs cost around £25,000. Near the end we got that down to a single 65" portrait LCD display (like you see everywhere these days) run off a Pi with 4G router for about £1,000.

And the Pi 2s were as reliable as anything, so maintenance costs shot right down. Anyhow, that was a bit of a rambling story that I remembered after spotting that post. Thanks for sticking with it.

It's a good story, and interesting to me as I spent some time working on an indoor navigation technology I'd come up with and hoped to sell to malls, hospitals, museums. As a one man band, getting in there was impossible. They really nailed the Pi platform early on, great for applications like that

Weird old thing is digital startups. My bezzie jumped in with a guy that had a 'good idea', I dunno 20 years ago. It was a shambolic mess for years and I was convinced it would crash and burn.