Walker Fire are one of the UK’s leading fire safety providers who pride themselves on their ability to provide exceptional products, training and services for businesses of all kinds. They have branches located across the UK to ensure their customers get the benefits of a nationwide operation but with the advantages of an outstanding local service.
What was the challenge?
The Walker Fire Preston branch needed a way to display data and statistical reporting information on 4 screens in the office. The data for the statistics is pumped to a carousel which can be presented to devices using a web address URL.
What was our solution?
The standard idea of deploying fully-fledged PC machines to deal with the display outputs would have been both expensive, but also a waste of a relatively powerful machine sat doing very little work.
Q2Q proposed the use of a less well-known, but clever device called a Raspberry Pi. These devices are miniature computers, that have very few parts, are less powerful than full PCs but are also cheap and run on a free operating system rather than the relatively costly Microsoft Windows OS.
We deployed 4 x Raspberry Pi 4s in the Argon One case, each one connected to the large 4K screens. They can handle simple tasks like this one with ease and at a massively reduced price point.
What effect did it have for the client?
The client now has a cost-effective way to display the data they needed, in 4K resolution. In many scenarios, a mini Windows PC would have been a likely candidate for the job, but our knowledge of the various technologies available meant that the 4 Pi devices in total were roughly half the cost of one desktop!
The Argon One case we deployed with the Pi devices, reroutes all the Pi’s outputs to one side of the case, as well as adapting the mini HDMI to a full-size HDMI. This vastly improves the accessibility and presentation of the device. The case is in effect one large heat sink, negating the need for a fan, which means the Pis can stay cool all day without making a racket!