Psst - this video ☝️ is a great overview, we recommend you don't skip it!

Table of Contents

You’ve had enough of printed posters or ineffective communication channels at work.

You've been tasked with building a network of screens at your office, warehouse, restaurant or school to make your spaces more engaging and dynamic.

You understand the importance of communication with your audience and customers, especially in today’s world when attention is so hard to attract and keep.

You've checked out Fugo as a solution for digital signage, maybe had a demo call, signed up for a trial, and now? You need a bit of help to get going!

If that’s you, you're in the right place.

In this guide, we’re going to help you get started on your digital signage journey with Fugo by showing you how to pair your first screen and publish a playlist. Feel free to jump down to any section or check out links to more resources below.

If you've already got your hardware, you can skip down to Step 2: Install the Fugo app onto your screen.

In order to display content, you’ll have to be running Fugo on your screen. You can accomplish this with various types of hardware.

When we talk about digital signage hardware, we’re essentially talking about one of two things:

Fugo runs on most consumer & pro hardware, delivering a convenient and flexible solution for showcasing your digital signage. We support a handful of popular media devices, smart TVs, tablets, and more. You can browse through our supported devices & minimum OS (Operating System) requirements for using Fugo here.

Each OS has its benefits and drawbacks:

It’s not expensive to purchase a pretty capable Android player - many come in at under $100. Their ease of use also makes them attractive as users can simply plug them in, download the Fugo app from the Google Play store, and start delivering content. And because of the range of power & budget within the line of Android devices, you can find one to fit the needs of a simple or complex project.

We recommend using a device running at least Android 7 or higher (with Android 10+ being optimal.) Fugo can be run on a few older versions, but please be aware that they may not be powerful enough to support all of Fugo’s apps & features.

Here are a few Android players we recommend:

And some Android-powered smart TVs:

Learn more about Android support & recommended devices here.

Windows devices are generally very powerful and fall into the mid-range commercial category. Because of their sheer computing power, they’re often used to run complex projects like large networks with dynamic media, and building video walls.
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Here are a few Windows players we recommend:

Learn more about Windows support & recommended devices here.

Chrome devices have been hot stuff in the digital signage industry for quite a while, and for good reason - devices running Chrome offer native support for HTML5 media, which includes animation, and responsive sizing. They run all along the pricing spectrum from $100 sticks to full-blown computers costing well over $1000.

What makes them particularly useful for digital signage is that they can run in kiosk mode, which locks your screen to display a single app, such as Fugo. Note that to access this feature requires paying an extra license fee. And an additional license fee is required to access remote management features that allow you to control your internet-connected Chrome OS devices from anywhere in the world.

A Chromebase or Chromebox will usually do the job - here are a few we recommend:

Learn more about ChromeOS support & recommended devices here.

BrightSign players command great name recognition in the world of digital signage media players, owing to their reliability and efficiency. They offer an industrial design and sleek look, front & back port access, as well as an ultra-thin form-factor that easily fits into any digital signage installation.

Designed in the US exclusively for digital signage, BrightSign’s OS delivers powerful signage capabilities and exceptional 4K and Full HD video quality. Plus, their energy-efficient devices consume very little power, keeping heat emission and operating costs down.

The BrightSign HD series 5 is ideal for mainstream commercial digital signage applications. Both models - the BrightSign HD225 Standard I/O & the BrightSign HD1025 Expanded I/O Player support 4Kp60, HTML5 playback, H.265 decoding, as well as streaming and networked media playback.

Learn more about BrightSign support & recommended devices here.

Raspberry Pi has picked up steam as a digital signage player in the last few years. Various versions are available, with packages that include storage and other useful added features and generally go for well under $100. If you’re looking to buy up a bunch of devices to display simple images or small video files the cheap, Raspberry Pi can fit that bill.

However, unlike most of the other digital signage players, Raspberry Pi is the distinct opposite of a “plug and play” device. Its entire point originally was to give hobbyists and tinkerers a cheap & customizable computer that they could Frankenstein to their liking.

So unless you buy an RPi that’s pre-programmed for digital signage – which drives your price up – it’s going to take some time to get your signage up and running.

Learn more about Raspberry Pi support & recommended devices here.

IAdea devices are professional grade media players and suitable if you’re looking to build a large, stable digital signage network. Despite running an older version of Chrome, even their entry level players like the MBR-1100 are stable when displaying images and videos. Though they can struggle with heavy animations and HTML.

Learn more about IAdea support & recommended devices here.

Samsung commercial grade smart signage displays are built specifically for professional use and (sometimes) up to 24/7 continuous operation.

With built-in system on chip (SoC) media players, SSSP displays offer an all-in-one solution when paired with Fugo digital signage software.

Learn more about Samsung support & recommended devices here.

LG webOS Signage displays comes with a powerful, fully integrated SoC that features a robust quad-core system-on-chip player. Other specs that make these screens great for professional deployments are the internal 8GB memory, built-in Wi-Fi, PIP, Wake on LAN and Smart Energy Savings mode.

These screens are known for their easy installation & operability, while the built-in SoC delivers a high-powered, reliable media playback without the need for external players.

Note that not all LG screens are suitable for digital signage use cases. We exclusively recommend LG screens running Web OS Signage 4.0 & up.

Learn more about LG support & recommended devices here.

If you have any questions or would like to consult with our team on hardware options, we’re always more than happy to offer guidance. Just reach out to us at support@fugo.ai.

Once you’re set up with your hardware, it’s time to connect your screen & publish some content. Let’s dig in!

Where you download the Fugo player app will depend on which hardware you’re using, but here are the app stores where you’ll find Fugo:

Internet connection: Make sure your player is connected to the internet. The better the internet connection, the more stable your playback will be. Fugo supports offline playback for media & some apps too, so your player does not need to be online all the time. Just note that some apps require an internet connection, so in the event that the player goes offline, that content will be skipped in the playlist rotation until the internet connection is restored.

1. Install & launch the Fugo player app: We have dedicated guides for each player platform that explain how to install Fugo app on your device. You can find the guide for your selected hardware from the list here.

If you haven’t selected any hardware, you can test out Fugo on your laptop, PC, or tablet with our Chrome extension player, which functions essentially as a virtual screen.

2. Retrieve the PIN: Launching the app will automatically generate a PIN on your screen that will be used to sync your screen to your Fugo account. We'll cover what to do with it in the next section.

1. If you haven’t registered a Fugo account yet, you can head over to fugo.ai/app to start your 14-day free trial or login to your existing account.

2. After successfully logging in, head to your Screens page and click Create Screen.

Alternatively, you can click the Create button in the top left corner of the the screen and then select Screen.

3. You will be navigated to a new page where you'll need to enter the PIN in the space provided to complete the pairing.

4. To finish the pairing process, give your screen a name and add a location (this will allow you to quickly locate it on the map using our map feature.)

5. Your screen will now be listed on your Screens page.

On the TV screen itself, you'll see a notification that the screen is waiting for your content.

You can create a screen group, starting with this screen, to help organize it for later. Screen groups make several screens essentially function like 1 - every action you perform on the screen group will affect all screens in the group - e.g. publishing a playlist to the group will send that playlist to all screens.

This feature is useful if you have multiple locations, segments, and departments that you’re using to manage different screens groups and you know that the screens in any given group need to be playing the same content.

You can choose to leave it ungrouped or create a new group later from the Create Screens drop-down menu:

Please note, you are charged per screen that is added to your account. If you’d like to test a screen free of charge at any point, click Create Screen and Add a test screen.

The flow for adding the screen will look similar to pairing a paid screen. You'll need to use the pairing code to sync it to Fugo.

You can continue to use this test screen as long as you like, but note that it will be watermarked with the Fugo logo:

You can remove the watermark by activating it, AKA, upgrading it to a paid screen from inside the screen's dashboard:

With your first screen paired, you’re ready to start publishing content! We’ll cover that in the next section.

There are many ways you can publish content on you screens. Let’s start with creating a simple playlist to show you how quick and easy this is.

Playlists are defined by 3 concepts:

1. Click the purple Create button in the top left corner and, this time, select Playlist. You will be navigated to the playlist builder.

2. Start by giving your playlist a name - something that will help you easily identify it later. It's usually helpful to include aspects like what screen and/or what content and timeframe it will run. For example:

3. Select your screen: First you need to define where you want to publish your playlist, as in which screen, screens groups, or Channel you want to send this playlist to.

You can select one, multiple, or all screens in your account.

4. Select content: Next we need to choose what to display on our screen. Click Select Content.

Here you can choose from a few different content sources by navigating the tabs in the content selector:

You'll have some default media & Studio content in your newly created account. We recommend you choose a piece of media, an app, and maybe a piece of studio content just to get an idea of how connecting these content sources works in Fugo:

5. Configure your content: If you add any apps to your playlist, you'll need to configure them before publishing them to a screen. For example, if you connect a Google app like Google Slides, you'll need to login to Google & select the presentation you want to display. Each app will have its own settings to configure.

You can also configure media to make sure they're displayed how you want them on screen.

To configure, click the cog icon in the right-hand side of the slide's pane. Orange cogs indicate apps that need to be configured.

Once you're happy with your playlist, you're ready to publish it! We'll cover options for how to do that in the next section.

Fugo uses a mechanism called Playlists to publish content on screens. They’re a way to set content to display on a particular day, time, and to expire when it’s no longer relevant. You can use playlists to plan a content calendar in advance. You can also them to push content to screen right away or even set them up to be triggered from external systems.

For now, we'll cover some basics.

Clicking Publish right off the bat will send this playlist to your screen immediately and play it indefinitely until you unpublish or delete it. Publishing content this way is good for when you have content you know you want to always show up in your content queue and aren't fussed about the timing of when it displays.

It's also a good way to test content on screen quickly.

If you’d like to schedule your content, that is - if you'd like get specific about when you playlist starts and/or stops - you can indicate the start and end dates under Date Range.

This kind of playlist is great for things like announcements for upcoming events or time-sensitive reminders and digital bulletins. Many users will plan weeks' or months' worth of content at a time in advance using the scheduler.

This will tell Fugo when to send your playlist to your screen & when to expire it.

Within that timeframe, you can also set days of the weeks & hours for when to play it by ticking the Week Schedule box to open up the scheduler.

You may have content that you want to repeat on a daily or weekly basis. The scheduler is great for helping you map that out.

Click and drag along different parts of the scheduler to assign that playlist to specific days & times.

Tick the box for No End Date if you want your content to play indefinitely.

Alternatively, you can select just Workdays or Weekends in the top right corner of the schedule if you want your playlist to run only on those days. If you want your content to run 24/7, you can click Select All.

After setting the schedule, click Publish to save it to your content queue.

At any point during the Playlist creation you can actually save your progress by clicking on the Finish Later button in the bottom bar.

It will be saved and marked as Unpublished on your Playlists library and you can come back to it at any time.

Once published or saved, you will see your new playlist in your Playlists page.

If the status shows that it's Published, it's either currently being played on screen or in the content queue, waiting to play at its scheduled time.

Next, you may want to dive in & learn more about Fugo's full feature set!

These are some great starting places:

⛑️ We have an extensive collection of articles in our Help center.

🎥 We also have a great Youtube channel with guides on hardware set up & recommendations, feature and app tutorials, as well as customer success stories! Subscribe so you don't miss any super helpful video guidance.

📖 Check out our blog for tips & ideas about how better to use your digital signage or to find some resources that will help you build the business case for your screens.

📱 Follow us on LinkedIn - that's where we post about what we're up to, events we're attending, and insights we've gained from our years of building digital signage!

If you have any questions regarding set up, publishing, or hardware, you can contact our support team any time at support@fugo.ai. We’re here to help you on your digital signage journey however we can.

Happy publishing 📺