Below: how a text board is sized so that it is actually readable from where people stand in Dakovo, what a monochrome board does better than a colour one, how the content is updated without anyone climbing anything, and what a service call from 381 kilometres away realistically involves.
LED scrolling sign in Đakovo — manufacturing, installation, quote
The running-text board is the least glamorous product we make and the one Dakovo buys most steadily. It suits places where the same small piece of information changes often and matters to somebody standing right there: a pharmacy giving the duty rota, a bank branch on the pedestrian street showing rates, the bus station eight hundred metres from the centre and a further 1.1 kilometres from the railway station, where departure times shift; the gatehouse of a firm in the Industrijska zona directing lorries to the right yard; and the Gradska nastavno-sportska dvorana on Matije Gupca, where a score and a clock are all the audience needs. None of those wants a video wall. They want a line of legible text that someone can change in a minute.
Legibility distance and character height
Divide the distance by four
A single arithmetic step covers most of this product. Take the gap in metres between board and reader, divide by four, and the result in centimetres is a character height that will be comfortable. Then add margin if the reader is moving, if the light is poor, or if the board is seen from an angle rather than square on. Across a pharmacy counter at three metres that produces characters under a centimetre, which is small and entirely legible. Fixed to a frontage on the Korzo and taken in from the opposite pavement, it produces something in the five to eight range. At a works gate approached by a lorry that has not yet come to rest, it produces more again, and the word count has to shrink to compensate. Almost every unsatisfying board we are asked about was ordered to fill an available space, with whatever character height fell out of that decision accepted afterwards.
Monochrome or full colour
Where the cheaper option is also the better one
A single-colour board - amber or white - is cheaper to make, cheaper to run, easier to read at a glance and considerably brighter for its power draw. For duty rotas, opening hours, exchange rates, queue numbers and gate instructions it is simply the right product, and paying for colour buys nothing. Colour earns its place where the message is categorical rather than textual: a red line versus a green one at a barrier, a branded strip above a shopfront, or a board that also shows a small logo. A useful middle path is a two-zone board, with a fixed colour graphic at one end and a monochrome text field alongside it, which gives the identity without the cost of a full colour surface across the whole width.
Updating the text without a visit
Who changes it, and how often
Content reaches the board over the network or from a local machine, and in practice it is edited by whoever already looks after opening hours - a shop manager, a receptionist, a duty officer. The editor is a plain text field with a scheduling table; nothing about it requires a technician. Where a board sits somewhere awkward to cable, it can be reached wirelessly, which is often what decides whether a board goes above a gate or above a door. We set up scheduling at handover rather than leaving it as an exercise. A pharmacy rota, a market day notice, or a hall's fixture list can be entered for a season in one sitting and left to run, and boards configured that way keep working long after the person who was originally shown the system has moved on.
Indoor, outdoor and the Slavonian year
Sealing, sunlight and cold mornings
An outdoor board in Dakovo has to survive both ends of a continental year: driven rain and freezing fog in January, direct sun and high temperatures during the Dakovacki vezovi week in July. Outdoor housings are sealed to IP65 and their output is set for daylight, with automatic reduction in the evening so the board does not become the brightest object on a quiet street near Strossmayerov trg at two in the morning. Mounting height is a small decision with large consequences. Too low and the board is within reach of anyone passing; too high and the text is read at an angle that costs legibility. Between two and a half and three and a half metres suits most street positions. Under a canopy or inside a portal the housing requirement relaxes considerably, and the cost with it.
Power, cabling and the things found on site
What we ask for before the crew leaves Gyor
A text board draws very little - most units are comfortable on an ordinary circuit - but it needs its own reliable supply and a route for the signal cable if it is not being reached wirelessly. The commonest cause of a wasted fitting day is not the board at all; it is discovering that the intended socket is shared with something that switches off at night, or that the only feed to a gatehouse runs through a contactor controlled by the yard lighting. So before the van is loaded we ask for photographs of the mounting position, the intended power point and the route between them. Ten minutes of that at the quotation stage prevents a return trip across 381 kilometres, which is the only genuinely expensive mistake available on a project of this size.
Service at a distance, and what we send with the board
Spares in your cupboard, not in ours
Every board is delivered with spare modules and a spare power supply of the same type as those fitted, along with instructions for the swap. Almost every fault a text board develops is one of those two components, and both are exchanged with a screwdriver. That is the deliberate design of the service arrangement at this range. A board in Dakovo that fails on a Friday can be back in service the same afternoon by someone on your own staff, whereas waiting for a crew to drive 381 kilometres would mean a dark board through the weekend and a travel charge on top. Warranty cover of one or two years applies according to the configuration ordered, and it is not affected by you carrying out a module swap yourself.
