Please don't laugh...

[artsapimp]

I have been recently asked to figure out a way to take emails received based on network outages and have them display on 3 TV screens throughout our office. I need help

We receive updates whenever something changes which is usually every 20 minutes or so. They are being sent to us via email and are in HTML format. It has a lot of useless information so only the main portion of the BODY is what we need extracted. I need to extract a paragraph from each page and post it onto some type of a slide show which is then displayed on all 3 Monitors placed throughout the office.

If you are one of the 3 people that understand what I'm rambling about, and not too busy laughing at my terrible position, please reply with any ideas.

When I say any ideas, I mean any ideas.

Thank you very much for any help.

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If you think an education is expensive...try ignorance.

[This message has been edited by artsapimp (edited 06-19-2000).]

[This message has been edited by artsapimp (edited 06-19-2000).]

[Xayd]

Well, the solution that comes to mind cheaply for me is this.

Set up the mail client on your computer to automatically display new messages, for a certain length of time. Then get a video card with a TV output, and run the TV output from the video card into one of those 5 dollar splitters you get at Wal Mart. Then run cable from the splitters to each TV.

This seems like the most cost effective way to go about it. Video card with TV out for about 100 bucks, splitter for 5 bucks, couple hundred feet of coax (depending on office area) for about 50 bucks. The kicker would be to find a mail client that has these specific features.

Xayd

[UncaDanno]

Art,

What Xayd said. (say THAT ten times real fast!)

If you're using Exchange, you're partway to programmatically extracting the body of the message. If Exchange and IIS are on the same box (AND you have OWA installed), you're almost there.

You can "steal" a lot of ASP code from the OWA site that will allow an app to log into Exchange, go to a folder, and retrieve all the messages or ones with a specific subject, from, or to line. The BODY is what you're looking for at that point.

Since the ASP code is VBScript, you can change it to straight VB.

After you get the message you want and open the body of it, the rest is an exercise in parsing to find the part of the body you want, and, say, write it to a text box.

I'm not laughing, either. This very thing (sans the TVs) is part and parcel of a lot of collaborative applications.

[artsapimp]

I have money to back this project, and access to a great VB programmer if necessary. Does anyone know the names of the exact things I would need to purchase/download? Thanks

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If you think an education is expensive...try ignorance.

[Xayd]

The video card that comes to mind off hand would be a Voodoo 3000. Has a TV output and should run you around 100-150 bucks online. Cheap enough.

Next you need a video signal splitter, which you can get at Wal Mart for about 5 bucks, or of course Radio Shack or any of those places.

All you need from that point is enough video cable to run from the splitter to the TV's.

Run the TV out from the video card to the splitter, then each line out of the splitter to the TV's in the office.

All there is to do from that point is get the mail client to do what you want it to do. I.E. display the messages automatically and what not.

Xayd

[archie]

Another option to get the signal from your computer is an Averkey. The output is RCA or Svideo, whichever the TV monitor has. It has extra feature like magnification and freeze frame. As an added bonus, this can easily be hooked up to other computers for presentations to small groups (20 or less).
As you may be aware, going through the RF circuitry (using coax) does not yield as good results as RCA or Svideo, this last one being the best.
Art, how far are the 2nd and 3rd TV from the first one? What kind of inputs on the TV monitor? Is there a VCR attached to them?

[artsapimp]

My job is to find the monitors we need, find the cables we need, the program, etc. Nothing has been purchased yet, I am supposed to find these things myself and buy them. I don't want to spend $100,000.00 on this project, but money isn't really a big issue here. I just want something that will work perfectly.

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If you think an education is expensive...try ignorance.

[Charliey]

What size of screen are needed? I might be pretty easy to buy 3 cheap 14" montiors and 3 cheap 2MB used graphics cards and get a computer running win98 that can support multiple monitors.

Maybe an ATi all in wonder 4MB card, its old so its cheap but it has tv out.

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-Charlie

[Xayd]

There ya go, that might be the best solution overall.

Run three or four monitors from a very simple mail program. We used to use a similar setup at the ISP I worked for to answer incoming support mail.

We used PINE, a Unix mail program that's freeware, which served two purposes...

First, it didn't have the ability to handle attachments, so it protected us from virus attachments by default, and two, it was completely reliable. All it did was display text. It was completely configurable, though, that's the key.

Doing this in a Microsoft mail program should be easy enough, just set up a script to automatically forward an incoming mail to mail folders for "screen 1", "screen 2", "screen 3", etc.

Each terminal could then have a monitor and a mouse.

Xayd

[Charliey]

Um, each terminal cant have a mouse with just 3 graphix cards in 1 computer.

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-Charlie

[archie]

Considering that this is a permanent install, I like the 4mb ATI video card with video output ... but how is it going to the other 2 monitors from there. The adapter in question from Radio Shack, is it RF? We need an adaptor with 3 RCA out or 3 Svideo out OR another alternative. Is there not a way of sending this straight out to the users' computer monitor?

[Xayd]

Well, without knowing much about video frequencies, I was talking in the original reply about a plain ole signal splitter, I.E. your video out from the graphics card would go to this splitter, which duplicates the signal to three other outputs.

It's all coax.

The same setup we used in college in the dorms to yank free cable TV from the guy down the hall http://www.pcmech.com/ubb/wink.gif

And yeah, you're right, I don't guess each terminal would have a mouse with one graphics card. After a little thought I think the automatic display through the video out would be the easiest solution. Might not be very "nice looking" to the end users of these three displays, but it'd work, and would be pretty fool proof. Instead of trying to admin a mail server for 3 or 4 users, you just have to set up the client to spit messages at video terminals.

Xayd

[artsapimp]

That sounds like the answer then. Let me make a small list and tell me what I have wrong or am missing.

$1200.00 - 1 PC
$200.00 - (3) ATI 4 Meg Video cards w/ TV out
$5.00 - Coax splitter
$100.00 - Enough cables to connect all 3 monitors
$750.00 - 3 monitors.
<u>$0.00</u> - Microsoft Outlook 2000
$2255.00 - Total

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If you think an education is expensive...try ignorance.

[Xayd]

Yeap, that looks about right. All you need from that point is someone who can tweak the mail client to do what you want it to do.

Xayd

[Charliey]

Ok, if you are going to use the 3 ATI AIW (All In Wonder), then you dont need the splitter, or the coax cable. You would need to have monitor extension cables. With that you need 3 computer monitors.

Thats:
ATI AIW x3
Monitors x3

The other way is to display the stuff on TVs which needs only 1 ATI AIW and the coax splitter and coax cable and 3 tvs.

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-Charlie