Guides

How to run a photo wall without a TV

Most function centres have a projector and no television. Here is the setup that works, and the settings that ruin it.

Ask a venue about a screen and you often hear “the TVs you have seen were brought in by the hirer”. That is fine. A photo wall is a web page, so anything that can show a web page full screen will do: a laptop into the house projector, a laptop into a hired screen, or a smart TV with a browser.

What you need

  • A laptop with a normal web browser. Chrome is the safest choice.
  • The cable the venue uses — usually HDMI. Take an adapter for your laptop's port, and a spare.
  • An internet connection for that laptop. Venue wifi if it is reliable, otherwise a phone hotspot. The wall is downloading photos, not uploading them, so a hotspot handles it easily.
  • Power. Do not run a three-hour event on battery.

The settings that ruin it

Almost every failure on the night is one of these:

  • The laptop sleeps. Turn off sleep and the screen saver before you start. On a Mac, System Settings → Lock Screen; on Windows, Settings → Power. Plugging in is not enough on its own.
  • The screen is not full screen. Press F11 on Windows, or Control-Command-F on a Mac, so no browser bars show in the room.
  • Notifications pop up. Turn on Do Not Disturb. Nobody needs your messages on a three-metre screen.
  • The projector goes to standby when the laptop briefly stops sending a picture. If the venue's projector does this, ask the AV contact how to disable it.

Sound

If the wall plays music, the laptop's headphone output needs to reach the venue's sound desk, and someone needs to press play once — browsers will not start audio by themselves. If there is a band or a DJ, it is usually better to run the wall silent and let them handle the room.

Test at the venue, not at home

Go in when they are setting up. Plug in, put the wall on the screen, check the picture fills it, and check the hotspot has signal in that room. Function rooms are often concrete boxes with bad reception in exactly the corner the AV desk sits in. Ten minutes on the day saves the night.

Have a plan for a dead screen

If the projector fails, the night still works: photos keep arriving and the album is there afterwards. Say so to whoever is running the event, so a technical problem does not become a panic.

GuestCam's photo wall runs in any browser, so a laptop and a projector is all it needs. While the wall is waiting for its first photo it shows guests how to join, rather than an empty screen. See it on the events page.