Open Y Digital Signage

Digital signage allows an organization to publicly display rich, dynamic information. For YMCAs, one of the primary uses is to provide easy, real-time information in branches about class schedules for members. This information can be interspersed with promotional information or announcements as needed.

The Problem

Many YMCAs and similar organizations would benefit from the use of digital signage as an easy, convenient way to provide information to their members. Unfortunately, the expense of proprietary solutions has made digital signage cost-prohibitive for many smaller YMCAs, and even larger organizations would benefit from lower costs. Moreover, much of the information that YMCAs would like to present on digital signs comes from third-party systems that do not necessarily integrate well with existing digital signage solutions.

The Solution 

The Five Jars team has created a set of modules that build on the Open Y Program Event Framework to pull class information from systems including GroupEx Pro, Personify, and ActiveNet. Through a simple user interface, administrators can manage digital signs across multiple facilities, allowing class information along with other content from your website, to be displayed on screens with the flexible control and YMCA brand-compliance you need. Since this is built on Open Y, it does not require a costly subscription to a third-party service. 

The Result

YMCAs like YMCA of Greater Twin Cities, YMCA of Greater Brandywine, and YMCA of Greater San Antonio have adopted the Open Y digital signage solution to both improve functionality and reduce costs. In addition, the Digital Signage project and all features have been published as an open-source library on GitHub, so anyone can use an improve it.