Get a screen live in about 20 minutes.

Get the hardware

The simplest setup is a Raspberry Pi 5, a PoE adapter, and a microSD card — power and network over a single Ethernet cable to a PoE switch, no separate power outlet needed at the screen. Pi 5 is also the only model that supports splitting one screen into multiple independent zones.

Don't have PoE at the display, or already have Pi 3 or Pi 4 hardware on hand? Any of them work — you'll just need the official power supply and an HDMI cable instead, and every model besides Pi 5 runs a single full-screen playlist rather than multi-zone.

Flash the SD card with Raspberry Pi Imager

Download Raspberry Pi Imager on any computer. Choose "Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit)" as the OS. Before writing, click the gear icon (Advanced Options) and set: a hostname, your Wi-Fi network name and password, and enable SSH with a username/password. This lets the Pi join your network and accept a remote connection automatically on first boot — no monitor or keyboard required for this step.

Boot the Pi and connect to it

Insert the card, connect the Pi to power and to your display via HDMI, and let it boot (about a minute). From another computer on the same network, connect over SSH using the hostname and credentials you set in step 2.

Run the setup script

Unzip the client software you downloaded above onto the Pi (or copy it over via scp), then run:

sudo bash setup-client-image.sh --tier pi5

That's it — no server address to look up or type, the script already knows how to reach RingCast Cloud. Replace pi5 with pi3b or pi4 to match your hardware — only the Pi 5 supports multi-zone layouts, so every other model should use its own tier name here rather than pi5.

Reboot and find the pairing code

The script finishes with a reboot. Once it comes back up, a short pairing code appears automatically on the connected display — nothing further to type or configure on the device itself.

Claim the screen in your dashboard

Log in to RingCast, go to Displays → Add Screen, and enter the code shown on the physical screen. Give it a name and pick its hardware tier to match what you set up in step 4.

Upload content and assign a playlist

Go to Content and upload an image, video, or PDF/PowerPoint (auto-converted to a slideshow). Create a Playlist, add your content to it, then go back to the device and assign that playlist. The screen updates automatically on its next check-in — no reboot needed.