The steps below take you from deciding whether you need a board at all to having one working on a wall. They are deliberately in order: the content decides the size, the size decides the model, the model decides the mounting, and the mounting decides the fitting. At 472 kilometres the last of those steps is normally handled by a local electrician rather than by us, and that is a saving we pass on rather than keep.
LED scrolling sign in Požega — manufacturing, installation, quote
Požega generates exactly the kind of short, changeable information a text panel exists for. Shift and gate notices at the Zvečevo and Plamen works, term dates and examination notices at the Požega grammar school that has been teaching since 1699, fixture and result lines at the Grabrik hall, market prices, pharmacy duty rotas and altered opening hours in the shops around the square. All of it is currently typed, printed and taped to a door somewhere in the town. A programmable board does the same job from a desk, and it is the least expensive product we make.
List what the board will say next month
If the list is hard to write, buy a printed sign instead
This is the honest test, and it takes five minutes. Write down every message the board would carry over the next four weeks. A pharmacy fills the page: duty rotas, holiday hours, stock notices. A factory gate fills it too: shift changes, visitor instructions, safety reminders. A business whose list contains one slogan should buy a printed sign, which will look better, cost a tenth as much and never need updating. The value of a text panel comes entirely from the frequency of change, not from the technology.
Size the characters from the furthest reader
Roughly 25 millimetres of character height per ten metres of distance
Work back from the person standing furthest away who still has to read it. A serviceable rule is about 25 millimetres of character height for every ten metres of distance, so a board read from the far end of an eight-metre foyer wants characters of around two centimetres, with depth enough for two lines of them. The rule holds for a stationary reader in even light. It fails for a driver, who needs both larger characters and fewer words because the reading time collapses, and it fails in harsh side light, where the limiting factor stops being size and becomes contrast.
Resist full colour unless you will genuinely use it
Match the specification to the content you will actually write
Look at the list you have just made and ask what colour adds to it. Duty rotas, term dates and shift notices are text, and text is served best by one bright colour on a dark field: cheapest to buy, simplest to read from the far end of a corridor. If the board has to distinguish states, such as a fixture won, drawn or lost, or a machine running, idle or stopped, then three colours do that and nothing further is required. Only a board that will carry a photograph, a badge or moving footage justifies the full-colour price. It is a common sight here as anywhere: a full-colour panel that has displayed nothing but plain lettering since the week it was commissioned.
Make updating a one-minute job
Network, Wi-Fi or a memory stick, and a rehearsal at handover
A board that is awkward to change stops being changed within a month. Content reaches ours over the building network from a computer at the counter, over Wi-Fi where routing a cable would mean opening a ceiling, or on a memory stick where there is no network at all. Every message accepts a start and an end time, so holiday hours or a fixture list can be prepared weeks in advance and will appear and clear themselves. At handover we have the member of staff who will actually do this make the first change while we are standing there, which is worth more than any written instruction.
Pick the mounting before you pick the model
Behind glass, on the wall, or on a post at the gate
The position determines the specification, not the other way round. A board behind shop glazing installs in minutes and needs no external work, but loses output through the glass and competes with reflections, so it wants a brighter model than the equivalent unit outside. A board fixed to the wall gets a sealed IP65 enclosure and an ambient sensor and loses none of its light, at the cost of a fixing, a cable route and a consent conversation. A post at a factory or yard entrance is the right choice when the audience arrives by vehicle rather than on foot.
Order it configured and have it fitted locally
What 472 kilometres changes about a small product
Text panels leave us assembled, tested and already carrying your content, and a local electrician puts one up in about an hour. At this distance that is the only arrangement that makes sense for a product of this size, and the saving is yours. If a site genuinely requires our attendance, the travel, the daily allowance and any overnight appear as their own rows in the offer. Cover is a one-year or two-year term by model, spare modules and a spare power supply come in the box, and a failed unit is exchanged by carrier considerably faster than a visit could be arranged.
