Intel Stick Computer

Community Discussion Hardware
21

Hi

especialy for this we dont use Intel STick (FAN) - this mele Clients are fanless mit a realy good Cooling Concept.

We tested many other Stick PC´s with this Chipset - but all of them getting too hot ao CPU Speed goes down.

The new Intel Chipset (atom) wich will come this month (Asus Stick pc) will bring more stability because this chip only produce the half heat of the currently used Z Chip in the Mele Sticks …

Best regards

22

I have been using Intel Compute stick at our Hotel ( as windows player )
works perfectly fine !!

23

Just finished testing the latest (April 2016) Intel Compute Stick and despite the ugly name, it works perfectly with the Xibo player. It makes deploying display screens very easy.
Most of the setup time was spent tidying up the Windows 10 O/S, which was only to be expected. A big thumbs up to Intel for this product.
Here’s some info I collected along the way which might be useful to others installing Xibo on a Compute Stick for the fist time.

  1. The ICS has an Atom 8300 1.44Ghz processor with 2GB RAM and 32GB of storage (half of the storage is used by the system). Plenty of room for Xibo and some utils.
  2. To keep Windows 10 as quiet as possible, I configured the user account to be local, selected custom, (not express) install, and turned everything off. There are lots of resources on the net on how to properly restrain Windows 10’s data mining and telemetry.
  3. The built in Intel HD graphics has a range of screen resolutions from 800x600 to 1980x1080 portrait and landscape.
    (It will detect the screen resolution automatically, but you’ll have to manually select portrait if that’s what you’re using)
  4. Pre-installed O/S is Windows10 Home 32 Bit (so no Domain networking or Remote Desktop host).
  5. It has two USB ports so you can plug in a standard kb and mouse and be up and running in no time.
  6. There’s also a remote keyboard/mouse app you can download from Intel so you can drive it from a smartphone/tablet. It’s not great but it allows you to control a screen over WiFi when its not easily accessible.
  7. Once the Xibo player is running, it only responds to AltF4 to close it, “I” for the info screen or the windows key, from the keyboard.
1 Like
24

I have had luck with the Lenovo Stick so far. I picked up a used one to test with for around $79 but on amazon new for $99. It runs a little hot but not too bad, had it running for 2 weeks with no issues.

25

Hello RD98ac2

Please would you share what type intel stick computer you bought either the first generation or second generation? In other words, I would like to know the system spec of intel stick computer of #60.

Thanks,
David

26

All,

Just thought I would share my luck with the Intel Compute Sticks.

We currently have 100+ deployed running 1.8.1 windows client. The stick we are using is BOXSTK1AW32SC.

These have worked very well so far, but I would STRONGLY recommend deploying them with windows embedded 10 vs the windows home that comes on them. We are now having to reimage the devices so that we can have better control on things like windows updates and remove all the crap bloatware like Cortona and games/ads.

Other things I have had to fix. Disable windows search service and delete the program data for the windows search “database”. This “database” grew to over 15GB on some of my devices and caused them to run out of storage space.

Also, if you never reboot the devices and you are constantly changing the running content, you should look at adding something like a nightly reboot task. We did this because if Xibo never restarts, it seems it doesn’t clean up old unused media files. In our environment, we are passing content every minute, so space really ads up and the device can run out of space in a few days if you Xibo client doesn’t clean those files up.

Overall, I think the Intel stick makes for a wonderful Xibo player and allows for cheap deployment of a digital signage solution.

If you have any questions, please feel free to message me directly. I have been working with Xibo on an Intel stick for over a year now and might be able to help with questions/issues.

Thanks.

2 Likes
27

Great information, thanks! Could you provide a little more information about Windows Embedded 10? Is that the same thing as Windows 10 IoT Core?

28

Hello,

The Windows 10 version of “Embedded” is now called “Windows 10 IoT Enterprise” and the most current version is 2016 LTSB. This is essentially Pro without all the bloatware. It was taken from version 1607, so you wont have some of the cool features they added in the last two feature updates, but besides that, its far superior.

I just built a new gold image for the Intel Stick, running this version of Windows, and I believe it will be far more stable than running my digital signage fleet on Windows 10 Home.

To get a copy, you need to set up a CLA with Microsoft, and then purchase from an embedded distributor. I have been working with Avnet, and they are very easy to work with. They will also help you get the CLA set up, and then you can purchase your COA’s directly through them. For the Intel Stick, you can purchase the Entry level license, which runs about $35 per. That does ad a cost since you are overwriting the Home license that comes on the stick, but that cost is quickly eaten up the first time you have to clean up storage on the stick, or go physically touch it because of a forced windows feature update on Home Edition.

If you have any questions on making an image for the Intel Stick, let me know. I use Clonezilla on a partitioned flash drive, and its a piece of cake. I have imaged and deployed over 200 Intel Sticks this way.

Best of luck,
Nathan

1 Like
29

Hi Nathan. Thank you for the info. I have worked out the CLA/Microsoft parts. While I understand what you are doing with Clonezilla and imaging, how to put it all together is not so clear. If you could break it down into steps, that would help a lot. Any passing of knowledge is appreciated.

-Scott

30

We bought 3 Intel Compute sticks in 2016, only one is still running. The other two have a disk failure :frowning:

31

As far as I know , setting up WOL is not possible with Intel Compute stick (stck1A32WFC), correct?
There’s is also no possibility for RTC in the bios…
What windows-device would be recommended with the possibility of WOL?

32

Hello,
I bought Compute stick STK1AW32SC with Windows 10 home. I have installed Xibo client on it and it worked fine but after some time I realized that display is not accessible from CMS. Then I checked the CMS parameters in “Xibo player options” in player (Compute Stick) and all the credentials were set to default. I re-entered CMS address and Key and saved to player. After this, player started working again but credentials again set to default as soon as player powered off.
Please do let me know about the solution.

33

Hi Mohammad_Azam, I’ve only just seen this message, welcome to the community!

The issue you describe sounds like what has been described by Users who have installed the Player on a temporary User Account, or perhaps something else is running on your PC that is removing the xml file that contains those credentials.

If the issue returns, please create a new topic on the Support channel of the Forum, as your issue is less likely to be seen here in the Hardware channel.

Many Thanks.