Programmable scrolling text displays for Bjelovar, written around a requirement most suppliers ignore: the board that has to work at two addresses. What follows covers the mounting and transport arrangements that make relocation realistic, the electrical supply at the second site, how character height is chosen when the two reading distances differ, running two message lists instead of one, and what the warranty means for a unit that is deliberately moved. Our works is 267 kilometres away, which is one working day out and back.
LED scrolling sign in Bjelovar — manufacturing, installation, quote
A good many Bjelovar businesses live two lives in a single year. For most of it they trade from a fixed address in town; for one intense week they are an exhibitor at the Bjelovarski sajam on the showground at Gudovac, in a marquee or on open ground with a stand that has to look like a proper operation. Feed merchants from the Bilogora villages, machinery dealers, food producers and equipment hire firms all follow that pattern, as do several shops on Trg Eugena Kvaternika. It has a direct consequence for anyone buying a programmable text display here: the board should not be treated as a fixture. Specified correctly, a single unit serves the shop for fifty weeks and the stand for two, and the specification that permits that is not the same as the specification for a board that never moves.
One board, two addresses across the year
A decision taken before the order, not after
Relocation is easy to design in and awkward to add later. A board intended to move is ordered with a demountable mounting, a plug-and-socket connection instead of a hard-wired supply, and a transport case sized for it. A board built as a fixture has its cable buried in the wall and its fixings sealed, and freeing it for a week at the fair means an electrician at both ends and a set of holes left behind. So the first question is not technical but commercial: will this unit have a second job? If the answer is yes even occasionally, the additional cost at manufacture is modest and the arrangement pays for itself the first time it is used. If the answer is genuinely no, we build a fixture and it will be the better installation for it.
The quick-release mounting and the transport case
Two brackets, one board, and something to carry it in
The practical arrangement is a pair of matching mounting plates, one at each address, with the display locating onto either and secured with a small number of accessible fasteners. Removing it becomes a ten minute job for one person with a step ladder rather than a project. The second plate is fitted once and lives on the stand frame or a stall post between uses. The case matters more than people expect. A text board is a long, shallow object, which is exactly the shape that gets damaged when it travels loose in a van among stand fittings. A fitted case with cut foam costs a fraction of a replacement module and turns the display into something a member of staff can be trusted to load.
The electrical supply at the second site
What a stand distribution board can and cannot be asked to do
A text display draws very little, which is the good news: it will not trouble any sensible stand supply. The difficulties at a temporary site are quality and protection rather than capacity. Supplies on showgrounds are shared, extension runs are long, and residual current protection is sometimes assumed rather than provided. We therefore specify a plug connection with the correct protection at the board itself, and we recommend that the display is not chained onto a lead already feeding a kettle and a heater at a stand. Where the display sits outdoors on the stand rather than under cover, the outdoor build applies: IP65 sealing and a cable entry that faces downwards, which is a detail worth checking every time it is reconnected.
Two reading distances, one character height
The compromise, and when to refuse it
A shop window in town is read from three or four metres across a pavement. A stand at a fair is read from eight or ten metres across an aisle, by someone walking. Legibility follows roughly one centimetre of character height for every four to five metres of distance, so those two positions do not want the same letters. In practice one board can serve both if it is specified for the longer distance and simply looks generous at the shorter one. The reverse never works: characters sized for a window are unreadable across an aisle, and no amount of brightness compensates. Where the two requirements are genuinely far apart, the cheaper answer is a second, shorter board for the stand rather than a compromise that suits neither.
Two message lists for two jobs
Prepared once, switched by date
The content the board carries in town has almost nothing in common with the content it carries at a fair. In town it is hours, availability and notices; at a stand it is what you are selling, where the demonstration is, and who to ask. Rather than retyping everything on the morning of build-up, both lists are prepared in advance and held in the controller, with the fair list given validity dates so it takes over automatically and lapses afterwards. That also solves the problem that follows every event, which is the board still advertising a stand two weeks after everyone has gone home. A message with an expiry date removes itself. A message typed by hand in a hurry stays until somebody notices, and somebody notices late.
Warranty, damage and the moves you make yourself
What is covered, what is wear, and what spares are for
The warranty period is one or two years depending on the build, and it covers the equipment rather than the handling. A module that fails is a warranty matter; a corner crushed in the back of a van is not, which is the honest reason we press so hard on the transport case. Boards that move regularly should also be inspected once a year for loosened fixings and cable entries, which are the two things that suffer from being connected and disconnected. Spare modules travel with the original consignment and stay with you, so the most likely fault is repaired in Bjelovar by a local electrician with a screwdriver. That is the arrangement that makes 267 kilometres irrelevant most of the time, and it is deliberate: we would rather build a board you can maintain than sell a response time you have to rely on.
