We make programmable text boards: single- and multi-line LED displays for indoor and outdoor use, updated over the network, over Wi-Fi or from a stick. They are the cheapest useful thing we build, and for a good number of Grosuplje enquiries they are the honest recommendation instead of a wall. This page covers character height, colour, mounting and what the 421-kilometre distance means for a device this small.
LED scrolling sign in Grosuplje — manufacturing, installation, quote
A running-text board answers a question that a video wall answers badly: how do you tell a moving population something that changes every day? Grosuplje is the sort of place where that question has real weight - a station where the Kočevje branch and the Metlika line share a timetable, a municipal office at Taborska cesta 1 with roadworks and collection days to announce, the Brinje hall on Ljubljanska cesta with a fixture list, a pharmacy on Adamičeva cesta with a duty rota. None of that needs video. It needs a legible line of text that somebody can change from a desk in ninety seconds.
Character height and the speed of the reader
Sizing text for a forecourt or a corridor
Text on a board is read in a fixed window: the seconds a person is within range and looking. Indoors, in a corridor or a waiting area, characters of six to eight centimetres are read comfortably at ten metres. Outdoors, facing a carriageway, the same message needs characters of sixteen centimetres or more, and it needs to be short enough to be finished before the reader is past. The practical constraint is the number of characters that fit on a line at that height. We work backwards: you tell us the longest message you will realistically send, we tell you the board width that carries it in one legible line rather than in a scroll that nobody follows to the end.
Scrolling against paging, and why paging usually wins
How the message is presented
A scrolling line looks lively and reads badly. The eye has to track movement, latecomers join the sentence in the middle, and comprehension falls with the speed. Paged text - a short static frame, held for four seconds, replaced by the next - is easier to read, easier to photograph and easier to write for. We set both up and let you compare on the finished board. In practice almost every customer who tries paging keeps it, and reserves scrolling for the one case where it belongs: a long list that genuinely has no natural break, such as a fixture card.
Monochrome, tricolour or full colour
Choosing the cheapest thing that works
A single-colour amber or white board is the most legible per euro spent, and for a duty rota, an opening time or a departure note it is entirely sufficient. A tricolour board adds the ability to mark something as urgent without changing the wording. Full colour is only worth the money if you intend to show a logo or an image, and most text boards never do. We ask what you will actually send in the first six months. If the answer is words and numbers, a monochrome board bought now beats a colour board argued about for a year.
Mounting, weather and the socket you already have
Where the board goes and what it needs
An outdoor board is the weatherproof class, fixed to a wall or a post, and it wants a supply and a mounting point that already exist rather than a new civil works project. Indoors the constraint is usually the ceiling void and the plasterboard behind the fixing, not the electricity. The useful preparatory step is a photograph taken from where the reader will stand, with something of known size in it. From that we can tell you whether the position works before anybody quotes for a bracket, and at 421 kilometres we would much rather find the problem in a photograph than on the day.
Updating the board without leaving the office
Network, Wi-Fi and who holds the password
Boards are updated over an ordinary network connection or over Wi-Fi, so a display on a wall at the far end of a building does not require a data cable pulled to it. The interface is a short form: type the message, choose how long it holds, save. There is no reason for this to be a specialist job, and we set it up so that two named people can do it rather than one. That last point matters more than it sounds. The commonest reason a text board goes stale is that the only person who knew the password has left. We hand over written credentials and a one-page instruction at commissioning, and we keep a copy so that a lost password is an email rather than a site visit.
Delivery, service and 421 kilometres for a small device
Why most of it never needs a visit
A text board is small enough to be shipped and hung by a local electrician working from our fixing drawing, and for a good proportion of orders that is exactly what happens - the journey is not built into the price because the journey does not take place. Where you want us to install and commission, the trip and the crew's time are itemised with the kilometres named, separately from the goods. A text board is covered for one or two years, and a spare module for it is a small thing to keep in a drawer rather than a call-out. Any content the board carries about people or premises is yours; we do not need access to it after handover, and we ask for site photographs and dimensions only to do the work you have asked for.
