HomelandDefenseStocks.com ‘Electronic Signage Networks’ Report: “From Advertising to Terrorist Alerts and First Responders – Keeping the Public Informed”. 

Signage Can Display Terrorism Status Alerts

HomelandDefenseStocks.com
February 2005

In North America today, an informed public is a high priority. Throughout the Homeland Defense, commercial, and corporate sectors, displaying visual messages in a timely, efficient, and highly controllable manner is a much sought after and therefore profitable enterprise. Many companies within the Electronic Signage Networks (ESN) industry are currently developing and supplying solutions that work hard to incorporate the indispensable elements of ease of use, portability, effectiveness, diversity of usage, and extreme manageability. Companies like NEC Solutions, OnScreen Technologies, Sarnoff Corporation, and Automated Digital Signage Networks, Inc. provide solutions that are either developed for a specific sector or that are able to span one or more categories of signage demand.

Electronic Signage Networks are LED, LCD, or plasma screen based display solutions that are utilized within the Homeland Defense sector in airports, borders, ports, highways, and other public areas to inform and manage crowds of people during emergency or disaster scenarios. Electronic Signage Display solutions are in high demand for use by first responders, firefighters in building stairwells for example, or by law enforcement officers at the scene of road accidents or traffic related incidents. ESN are also in demand in the commercial sector for their high degree of efficiency in distributing and managing local and nationwide visual advertising campaigns. 

Categorizing the Industry

The signage systems industry can be split up into four categories explained Norman McLeod, Associate Director with InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, who have just released their “Study on Commercial Digital Display Systems”. The first category includes promotional/informational signage in stores and certain types of retail outlets (bank branches, hospitality, and service industries). 

The second category is similar, (primarily informational although it may include promotional messages) encompassing signage that is used in public spaces (airport networks and transportation terminals). 

“In the last few years we have seen transportation terminals shift pretty rapidly from conventional electromechanical or CRT signage to a more sophisticated digital signage,” said McLeod. “Airlines are now using plasma screens at check in gates, or as informational displays in pedestrian areas.” 

The third category of signage incorporates internal corporate communications. “This category shifts signage from public spaces to semi public or totally private spaces,” explained McLeod. “The internal corporate communications solutions utilizing signage at the semi public level include digital informational signage in lobby areas, or Audio Visual applications at use in sophisticated conference rooms.” 

The final category is what McLeod calls ‘command and control’. This category includes government-use command centers and security related displays. “This type of display is used extensively in transportation and telecommunications industries utilizing very sophisticated digital display systems to monitor systems status.” This category also includes signage designed for use by first responders in emergency situations, roadside displays, exit area signage, color coded defense status alerts, border and port stationed status devices, and as described later in this article, sophisticated signage solutions involving the multiple communications frequencies required for biological and chemical detection devices. 

InfoTrends/CAP Ventures executed three structured surveys as part of their research efforts, with a total of 450 responders. Staff also conducted a number of in-depth interviews with vendors and users. “One of the challenges that we had in achieving the level of desired detail as regards the final governmental category, was that responders generally refused to share information with us citing the conflict of security issues.” McLeod states that, “if you look at the survey results as a whole, the signage industry for government represents a healthy portion of current business, but that portion of the market is not growing to the same extent as the promotional signage or the corporate and internal applications categories, which are growing at remarkable rates.” 

NEC Solutions (America), Inc.

 “We think that the plasma display market in general will show a healthy rate of growth over the next few years especially on the consumer side,” said Keith Yanke, product marketing manager with NEC Solutions (America), Inc. “The commercial sector, specifically digital signage, is also healthy. Would we like it to grow faster? Of course.” 

Since January, NEC has seen a lot of applications and projects resurfacing that Yanke was not expecting. “Judging by our market research data and client feedback, we expect 2005 to be a very good year for digital signage. In 2004, even though the market grew, it did not grow as quickly as we would have preferred due to the financial situation in North America. In this type of scenario the large projects are usually the ones that are placed on hold. So far in 2005, this scenario seems to be changing.” 

The first and foremost market driver for growth in the signage industry is price. As the cost of plasma technology comes down it becomes increasingly affordable to incorporate multiple display units into digital signage applications requiring up to hundreds of screens. Enhancements to the plasma screen technology also drive today’s market. Plasma screen power consumption has decreased considerably while the life of the product has extended. 

“A third driving factor,” said Yanke, “centers on end user product familiarity and capability. While plasma or flat panel display technology has been in use for a number of years, the technology has finally improved to the point where end users now better understand what they want to get out of the application and how to go about doing that in a more efficient way than they did a few years ago.” 

In the financial services industry for example, digital signage users benefit from cost savings as well as direct marketing opportunities to branch customers. “Financial institutions traditionally produce great amounts of paper collateral in their marketing efforts,” said Jenna Held, Public Relations Manager with NEC Solutions. “Marketing literature has to be printed and sent out individually to each branch. With digital signage, marketing departments can easily control the messages being broadcast, making the marketing effort a much easier, less costly, and more streamlined process.” 

Yanke explained that the military and homeland defense sectors constitute a very healthy segment of NEC’s digital signage business. “It is easy to see the overt governmental applications, for example when the Pentagon uses plasma displays during press conferences. There are however a lot of behind the scenes applications and the information is very limited on how our products are being used.” 

In the coming months, NEC plans to launch its next generation of plasma displays that will feature improved modules, meaning greater control over contrast and brightness. Yanke explained that it will not be before 2006 that he can disclose information about other forthcoming NEC advancements. “The trend in plasma screen technology is focused on increased sizes and resolutions. This development of course will go hand in hand with decreased prices over time.” 

Panasonic’s Solutions

Leslie Wherett, Marketing and Creative Manager with Panasonic Corporate Systems Company, quoted a study by The Digital Signage Directory, stating that the market is poised to increase by 300% in the next five years. Wherett attributes this phenomenal increase to the fact that, “point of purchase sales increase by about one and a half times in a retail outlet utilizing digital signage. We have observed situations where a product being advertised and situated below the advertising screen, proceeds to sell out. Signage really engages consumers to purchase products and to stay in your store longer.” 

Wherett explained that, “currently users are just discovering both what plasma technology can do and what they can do with it. Part of my job at Panasonic is to educate retailers and other people implementing digital signage on optimal strategies and usage i.e.: positioning within a retail outlet.” 

There are two different digital signage models – advertising and promotional – Panasonic concentrates on ‘promotional’ digital signage. Under the ‘advertising model’ signage users gain advertising revenue by broadcasting advertising initiatives for other companies; and the ‘promotional model’ is when a company’s own marketing initiatives are broadcast. 

Panasonic makes plasma screens encompassing an all in one solution for digital signage called Retail TV. Typical clients for Panasonic’s system include users within the following sectors: retail, corporate, hospitality, financial institutions, malls and auto dealerships. Clients either have a pre-existing network or Panasonic can provide a wireless system, including a plasma screen, projector, or a plasma kiosk. Panasonic’s plasma kiosk is currently the only product of its type on the market. “The Plasma kiosk is interactive with customers,” explained Wherett, “and it comes in 42 and 50 inch horizontal and vertical screens. We also provide the software which allows you to push and pull content from each of a client’s outlets.” 

In terms of solutions for government, or homeland defense, usage, Wherett said that Panasonic is just starting to develop that market. “We have considered the possibility of utilizing our solutions in a ‘Find Your Evacuation Route’ type application.” 

OnScreen Alerts

OnScreen Technology’s RediAlert variable message signs were developed after a conversation with a director of Homeland Security in New Orleans. The director noted that in emergency situations officials had no way of communicating visually with the public. He conceded that trailer based LED signs were available, but those could sometimes take hours to set up, causing an official’s window of opportunity to manage the public in an emergency scenario to shrink considerably. 

“This industry,” said Steve Velte, President of Product Division with OnScreen Technologies, “needs a signage solution that can be put in any vehicle and then be set up quickly so that officials can start to manage a situation very quickly - whether it’s an evacuation or setting up a perimeter.” 

Velte believes that Homeland Security concerns are a huge market driver for the signage industry. “There are some huge gaps within Homeland defense and Department of Transportation (DOT) strategies. This fact is illustrated in part by studies that the DOT conducted after 9/11 in Washington and NYC. The following scenarios are anecdotal but frightening nonetheless. At 11 o’clock on 9/11 a NY city transit authority official was outside of Grand Central Station with a megaphone, trying to yell directions to people. At another point Rudy Giuliani was on the radio telling people that if they’re stuck in their cars, to get out and walk north.  

“There was no effective way to get information to people. The same thing happened during the recent NYC blackout where tens of thousands of people were streaming in all directions with no idea of what was going on, or where to go. These examples illustrate that getting visual messages to the public during an emergency scenario is a huge priority.” 

Velte continued to explain that, “Japan, a place about the size of Florida, literally has over a million intelligent transportation system type visual signs. Here in the States we have about 50,000. We are frightfully lagging in true ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) messaging. We have to reverse the dumbing of our highways and consciously build a more intelligent roadway system. This segment of the market is showing robust, almost double digit gains, which is impressive at a time when a lot of technology spending is down.” 

OnScreen’s sales forecasts for their recently introduced RediAlert products are doubling every month. Velte attributed this success to the fact that OnScreen are providing a product that has not previously existed - meeting a demand for, “truly portable, cigarette lighter powered, off the power grid, compact, single person deployable signage products. We are building a new mousetrap in a completely different way.” 

OnScreen has integrated LEDs, “which have been around for a long time, incorporated in a brand new architecture, and that is where we differ from other companies. We have approached the design of our products with an architecture that has enabled signage technology that previously did not exist. It has allowed us to create the world’s first truly portable rapid dispatch emergency sign.”  

Velte stated that the OnScreen products are 70 to 80% lighter than typical existing signage. The company has also reduced wind loading on their signs with some real innovations.  In a traditional sign the static pressure at the center of a sign builds as wind speed increases. In the State of Florida a budget of $250,000 to $300,000 needs to be taken into account in order to install a $70,000 variable message sign that covers two lanes of highway. Installation of signage in current use requires twenty feet of rebar, twenty foot concrete footers, and a superstructure to be erected with a crane.  

“In Florida, after four hurricanes we know that a secure structure that can hold the sign is a necessity. And by using architecture that allows air to pass through our signs the amount of superstructure required has been lowered. We can install a three by five foot forty pound sign on places like a span wire, versus a two hundred to two hundred and fifty pound sign from our competitors.”  

On the commercial side OnScreen features the RediAd signage solution. The first product to come to market will be the Living Window Display. The Living Window incorporates another unique feature: these signs are about 75% transparent. “Our product maintains the integrity and continuity of a location’s architecture while providing a sign that features full LED messaging including transitioning and graphics. We are incorporating innovative architectures to create new markets and product applications,” said Velte. 

OnScreen has just signed a multi year agreement with a company called eLutions (a Nextel Integrated provider and partner) to provide wireless deployment capabilities for the company’s RediAlert and RediAd signage products. “We have opted at this point during initial introduction of our signage products,” said Velte, “to use a wireless approach as it gives us a known environment both on the consumer side and also on the application service provider side. Users will be able to control any number of signs simultaneously, each with a different message, remotely through a redundant ASP. OnScreen has also optionally included a GPS so that messages can be managed according to geographic location.” 

“Using Nextel IDEN and eventually WiDEN (Corporate WI-FI) networks, the deployment scenario will be such that if you can get a single bar of signal on a cell phone then, for the kind of data packets that we are sending, communications can be established.”

ADSN’s DIPA

The Dynamic Image Provisioning Application from Automated Digital Signage Networks, Inc (ADSN) offers nationwide message override capabilities and incorporates visual recognition and other identification capabilities as referenced in the 9/11 Report "A Biometric Screening System". ADSN’s solution features broad multimedia support; playback log reporting mechanism, internal interactive kiosk capabilities, controlled override emergency response, direct video support for streaming immediate street level communications. 

“Among our main initiatives is the electronic exit sign (EES),” said David Bertrand, ADSN president. “This initiative needs to be analyzed carefully from a governmental control issue level, and it needs to be put into the hands of first responders. We know that digital signage is going to be everywhere; there is no question about that. We are more concerned about the people and how they will benefit from watching it. What greater benefit can this technology provide, aside from straight advertising? The purpose of this kind of network is to help man kind, not just advertise to them. ADSN has seen to it that there is a way for both to work effectively together.” 

Over the past several years ADSN has developed their proprietary Dynamic Image Provisioning Applications (DIPA) which is unique in that it utilizes dual communication channels for Life Safety. The first frequency is general to the signage industry, pinging at a preset time, and the second is a higher frequency used for the ADSN Life Safety Sub-system, intended for two way communications. 

The DIPA solution is now in commercial use. “We found,” said Antoniette Zarcone, vice president with ADSN, “that there was no solution within the industry that could manage large signage networks, especially when utilized in a homeland defense scenario. Connectivity within different networks, need to be standardized. The DIPA software was designed to extend the management to thousands of systems. The technology is now available so that one day all homeland security systems can be interconnected and managed at the point of incident.” 

“The concept is that eventually all of the networks will be interconnected as they are on the internet or private use networks,” said Bertrand. “Anything that is in the public space should have the ability to be used effectively at the time of incident. Our focus was to build a system that is not only able to perform scheduling tasks for hundreds of clients to thousands of systems with unique content on each one, but to also be able to tie into those systems demographically at the point of incident, and to bring that information together as an initiative to the digital signage industry.” 

The DIPA dual use application ties into ADSN’s AIM Module (Artificial Intelligence Management) which allows connections to surveillance integration, emergency exit signs, RFID, biometric interfaces, real time location demographics, and location identifier technology. 

Chemical and biological detection is also possible through the DIPA system. “The software is designed to communicate with an intermediary module,” said Bertrand, “so that any device which can communicate a signal will be able to trigger content on the player. We have built a com object that sits between the communication device and the ADSN player, which then triggers internal or external content to display on the screen.” 

ADSN’s advanced scheduling system is what sets the company and their products apart from the competition. “We built our own software to meet the criteria of broadcasting several channels of content on one screen, that is site specific, with an infinite number of displays, or locations, with specific content,” said Zarcone. “This scenario requires an advanced scheduling system and pre-marketing ideology. We are in fact about to announce our first scheduling project for a large city in the US.” 

Sarnoff’s FabriLED

 “We are an innovation services company,” explained Tom Lento, Corporate Communications Consultant with Sarnoff Corporation. The company is the successor to RCA Laboratories, one of the seminal research centers responsible for the birth of the electronics age. Among other things, Sarnoff develops signage products for both commercial and governmental sectors. In his experience, Lento says that the government is very fond of COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) technology products, i.e. products based on commercial items in wide use. Economies of scale make such products cheaper, lowering the overall cost of government procurement. That's why government agencies fund intellectual property development projects with commercial implications: the promise of lower costs if the result is a success in the market. 

FabriLED is a new signage technology developed by Sarnoff with two applications in mind: portable commercial signage and emergency applications. The product combines super bright LEDs woven into fabric to create a low-cost, lightweight, messaging medium. FabriLED is roll-able, foldable, extremely lightweight, portable, and basically conformable, i.e. it is possible to wrap the sign around a pole, drape it off of a shelf, or in an emergency situation, law enforcement officials can hang it from the hood of their cars.  

The FabriLED sign can be programmed with a laptop and perhaps ultimately through a PDA. “The big advantage,” said Lento, “is that it can be set up and taken down in an instant. It can also be updated in real time as events occur.”  A prototype of the product is available, which the company launched at trade shows in 2004. 

One of Sarnoff’s strengths lies in advanced networking. Lento explained that the company has a fairly unique set of protocols that allows what is called ‘ad hoc networking’. “This means that we can set up network nodes, which will automatically link themselves into a network, with no configuration required. In the scenario where direct contact between two nodes is unavailable or broken down, our system lets them survey other nodes and hop through those until they find each other on a dynamic basis.  

This means that the end user will never be out of touch. According to Lento this system has many applications. “Our system is sensor agnostic - it does not care what information is sent through it - safety data, numerical data, photos, text, any type of data or information is suitable.” This fact means that in addition to numerical and textual situations, their networking system is also ideally suited for biological and chemical detection scenarios.  

 “We have been developing a product line called Dynamxx,” said Sarah Paris-Mascicki of Sarnoff, who serves as Dynamxx Marketing VP, “for use with our networking system. Dynamxx will be marketed primarily to small commercial and corporate airports.  

 “The devices can be positioned whenever and wherever airports need them,” continued Paris-Mascicki. “One device can be set up to guard an asset, another can count planes taking off from a runway, yet another can perform perimeter guarding… the possibilities are endless. The received signals and information can then be monitored over a laptop or a PDA. A prototype of this system has been shown at trade shows, although we are not yet at the point where we know how this product will be marketed.” 

Getting the Message Across

As the future of communications in general, and more specifically the Electronic and Digital Signage industry, seems to trend towards all things wireless, Markland Technologies provides the means to get the message to its end destination. Markland manufactures a plasma antenna technology that can be utilized within digital signage solutions to wirelessly deliver information to display units. 

Markland's recently announced gas plasma technology can be utilized to create secure WiFi data transmission capability for use in business and military applications. WiFi’s biggest drawback is data transmission security. Although manufacturers are working to make interception of WiFi data transmitted via the airways more difficult they have encountered obstacles to solving the problem. 

One approach towards creating secure WiFi networks is to incorporate gas plasma transmission antennas within a wireless network environment. Gas plasma antenna technology allows for highly directive and electronically steerable digital data transmission. The low cost solid-state semi conductor based plasma generators can be rapidly enabled and disabled in less than 1 microsecond, and can be repositioned to point in any required direction or can scan at very high speed. A plasma antenna can also change its beamwidth and bandwidth creating spatial and spectral security features which are not presently available with conventional WiFi antenna technology. Markland's significant patent portfolio of innovative gas plasma antenna technology can potentially create a new model for secure WiFi data transmission

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