A preview of the surprises in store when you visit BrightSign at ISE 2021.

You must admit one thing about the digital signage industry: It’s great at partnerships. I mean, really great. Like the difference between Premier League and your local team.

These are some of the recent partnerships recorded on BrightSign’s website.

As you can see, it’s a constant steady stream of relationships. But it’s one particular partnership that interests me today — Nexmosphere.

Nexmosphere is one of those companies born in the fertile plain of Eindhoven in The Netherlands, once the proud global headquarters of Dutch electronics giant, Philips N.V. When some Hollander moved the Philips HQ to Amsterdam after 106 years in Eindhoven, they left behind one of the largest private research organizations in the world. Eindhoven had been a company town and many of the townspeople were the same ones inventing the Rotalix X-ray tube, the high-pressure mercury lamp, the triple-headed dry electric razor, the Compact Cassette, CD, DVD, Ambilight TV — and now industry-first augmented-reality surgical navigation technology,

Today Eindhoven is a hotbed of startups and for the past few years, Nexmosphere has worked on enhancing retail experiences with interactive experiences, ones that address the senses, create emotions, explore the merchandise and give buyers some purchase guidance.

Yep, I’m talking about sensors. And technology that automatically generates user data upon interaction with the merchandise, that gives brands and store owners valuable info about shopper demographics, behavior and presentation design success rate. Nexmosphere brings light, touch, video, audio, pick-up and presence sensors for a tailored shopper journey — and one single Xperience controller can command all.

BrightSign teamed up with Nexmosphere for not one, but a series of demos to highlight its digital signage technology at ISE Barcelona and London.

It all starts at ISE with a product lineup display, from entry-level to XT.

The sensors are all about allowing the viewer to control their experience effectively and hygienically — while collecting buyer data (at the level of European data privacy guidelines).

BrightSign players with the Nexmosphere XT-EF650 AirGesture sensor will react to hand swipes for touchless navigation. An AirButton feature determines when a customer’s hand enters (or leaves) the sensor’s detection field. Various sizes are available, and you can adjust sensitivity or automate calibration.

Time of Flight sensor determines the presence of a customer in front of an installation—and the customer’s distance.

Nexmosphere’s XC-700 controllers use LightMark LED control to tune ambient lighting to the digital signage presentation. Now BrightSign players can control multiple Pixel LED strips, RGBW LED strips or optical audio switching. You can select any of many pre-programmed animation patterns to adapt to your own installation.

There’s even an X-Talk interface to create an interactive experience (no additional setup required).

Visitors can see all this at ISE, but there are more BrightSign demos. The display wall demo may seem more typical but once again sensor technology adds a new dimension. Sensors can trigger content by gender recognition.

And there’s an interactive retail display that’s more intelligent than most of your neighbors. Pick up a product and a circle of light highlights the product placement and relevant content begins to roll on the screen. Heck, it even knows if you switch products. This type of “3i” display will be the benchmark for many retailers and pharma chains, where light and signage are integrated, intelligent and interactive.

BrightSign had been clever enough to always be one step ahead: it was “a software company” when others still thought digital signage was about hardware. Then BrightSign was cloud (BSN.cloud) when others were thinking of software.

The pandemic has been kinder to BrightSign’s business than most.

But on top of any business boost, the pandemic has nudged BrightSign into the perfect segue to cloud: sensor and IoT technology. The need to be touch-free, to register proximity, to collect data made the move to Nexmosphere a priority. And that led to re-imagining a way to display the new partnership between signage and sensors.

Visitors to ISE 2021 will see that BrightSign has set a new record with its demos. And that showmanship sets an example for distributors and integrators who will need to make their own demonstrations in the world of post-pandemic digital signage.