What do I need besides a video monitor to use this to create a variety of displays?

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You will want:
*Windows (even if it is running in a virtual machine on a Mac - that will work)
*SD Card - used in the device for the first boot up and for storing media later on.
*Wired network connection to the box
*HDMI cable
*A nearby power outlet

You probably WON'T need a big SD card unless you are going to store a couple of hours of HD video on the sign. I got a 4GB card and that is more room than I need. Most of the videos I put on there are short (20-30 seconds) at full HD and come out to be less than 100MB each. I don't store audio with them but audio is probably 10% or less of the total size of the video file.

You can download the brightsign software for free from the brightsign site (do that ahead of time so you can start playing with your design ideas now). You can also get the user manuals there.

Make sure to download the BIOS update, too. The sign I got had a BIOS that was so far out of date that the software couldn't communicate directly with it. The software can create an update package on the SD card. Then just plug the card in to the sign (while it is off) and turn the sign on. The sign may take five or so minutes to update and you may see the it reboot a couple of times. Eventually it will done and you can use the software to connect up to it over the network. After that you can just leave the SD card alone in the sign as your storage space.

Start playing around with images, videos, text, or whatever you want to display on the sign. You will want to have something to drop in place so you can start playing around with how the sign looks.

Video can be kind of tricky to get in the right format - you may not be able to take it directly from your camera to the sign. Look on the brightsign site or in the documentation for video formats to make sure that you can prepare the video for use.

If you only have the one sign and you have it on your local network then you won't need to sign up for the brightsign network service they offer.

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