The largest dorm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sidney-Pacific Graduate Student Residence (S-P), was looking to run a digital display network for its 700 residents with minimal effort by a small team of student volunteers. There was already a large display at the main foyer and 16 displays in front of all elevator doors. With a high frequency of content changes due to submissions from students, campus events, calendar updates, local time/weather information, and MIT bus schedules, the system needed to update automatically. S-P also wanted to have the option to use SMS applications, including Security Alerts.

Sidney-Pacific picked Aerva’s AerChannel solution to drive its display network, SPTV, after 8 months of evaluation. AerChannel replaced an existing student-built system due to AerChannel’s powerful features and easy operation. The student volunteers also using the AerChannel API to program their own scheduling rules, such as probabilistic scheduling and automatic content expiration.

Ben Mares, VP of Information of S-P said, “Flexibility and support were the biggest factors in our decision to adopt the Aerva system. Our home-grown software served us well, but it became too unwieldy as we attempted things like integration with web content and Flash animation. Aerva supports all these features out-of-the-box. Moreover, the SDK from Aerva allowed us to adapt the functionality to our own needs by integrating with our existing content management infrastructure.”

Karthik Balakrishnan, SPTV Co-chair, added, “Due to the modularity of the design, it was easy to extend the platform to suit our needs. We have also been very happy with the support and technical prowess of the Aerva team.”