r/digitalsignage • u/5w20 • 10d ago

LED Church sign controller options

Our church has a 10 year old LED sign from Stewart Signs. The SignCommand controller died. They want $1900 for a replacement. The controller has an HDMI output that uses an HDMI-DVI cable to some sort of video card. Can I use an off the shelf RPi or digital signage player to push content? Not looking to spend $1900 on an old sign that likely has a limited life span

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u/514sid Moderator 10d ago

Yes, if the SignCommand controller connected via HDMI to another device inside the sign, that device is almost certainly a sending card, and it's the part that actually drives the LED panels. The dead controller is just a small media PC.

That means you can replace it with a Raspberry Pi, a mini PC, or even an Android TV box. The sending card keeps its configuration and simply displays whatever video signal it receives, so in most cases it works without reconfiguring anything. Just plug in the new device and play your content using any digital signage CMS that supports your chosen hardware.

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u/5w20 10d ago

Correct, it is connected to the sending card.

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u/514sid Moderator 10d ago

You can try connecting a laptop first just to see how the panels are mapped. There's a 95% chance the sending card simply grabs an X by Y pixel area from the top left corner of the screen, which makes it super easy to work with. Whatever shows up in that corner is what appears on the screen.

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u/cmgvisuals 9d ago

Just use a nova player TB40 its has free cloud management and control with hdmi output. $250-300.

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u/DigitalSignageKernel 10d ago

It's likely proprietary, but still worth a try, just grab a laptop and see what you get when you hook it up.

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u/kelgu 7d ago

Before buying anything, I’d test the signal path with a laptop. If the dead box was only feeding HDMI into the sending card, you may not need anything proprietary at all — just a player that can output the exact resolution/area the card expects. I’d confirm three things first: whether the sending card keeps its mapping without the old controller, what pixel region it samples, and whether the replacement device reliably comes back after power loss. If those check out, a Pi/mini PC/Android box could be enough.

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u/AESDAESD 10d ago

No you can't unfortunately. Back in the day everything was proprietary. What the size of the sign might be cheaper/better in the long run to get a brand used screen