Below is a method for checking a scrolling LED text display in Šibenik rather than a catalogue of features: testing legibility on the wall before you order, writing a specification whose numbers can be verified, satisfying yourself about the sealing, rehearsing a schedule out of season, running a proper handover, and knowing what happens when a defect appears after a crew has driven 651 kilometres home.
LED scrolling sign in Šibenik — manufacturing, installation, quote
Croatia · 651 km from our plant in Győr
Buying a scrolling text board is easy; proving that the one you bought does what you were told it would do is the part almost nobody plans for. In Šibenik that gap matters more than usual, because we are 651 kilometres away and a problem discovered in September cannot be argued about on a doorstep. So this page is organised around verification rather than around specification. The boards themselves are unremarkable: a ferry timetable strip at the quay for the Zlarin and Prvić services, opening hours on a Poljana frontage, a queue and department strip in the Dalmare concourse, a shift and safety line at a works gate in Šubićevac. What differs is that each of those claims - legible, bright enough, sealed, reliable - can be tested, and should be, before you depend on it.
How do you test legibility before you commit to anything?
A full-size paper mock-up, taped to the actual wall
Print your longest genuine message at the character height you are considering, tape it where the board will go, and walk to the places your readers actually stand. On the Riva that might be the far side of the promenade; at the ferry quay it is the queue rather than the ticket window; at Dalmare it is the head of the escalator. This costs an afternoon and a sheet of paper, and it has changed the specification on roughly half the boards we have supplied. It reliably reveals two things a drawing never does: that the message is too long, and that the intended position is partly obscured by something nobody had noticed.
What should the specification state about output and dimming?
Numbers you can check, not adjectives
A quotation that says a board is bright is worthless. Ask for the figure and the conditions: an outdoor unit for a position facing the Adriatic sun should be quoted at 4,500 to 5,500 nits, an indoor strip in a concourse at 700 to 800, and both should state a dimming range and whether dimming is automatic, timed or manual. Then ask how you will verify it - in practice, by viewing the board at midday and at eleven at night during the first week and writing down whether it is comfortable. That short exercise is worth more than a laboratory figure, and it is the moment to have the settings adjusted while somebody is still on site.
How is a sealing claim verified rather than believed?
Glands, drainage and where water actually enters
An IP65 rating describes a housing, not an installation, and on this coast most water ingress happens at the cable entry or because a unit was mounted so that runoff from something above lands on its top edge. So look at the physical details rather than at the certificate: are the glands pointing downwards, is there a drainage path, is there a drip detail above the unit, and are the fixings stainless. Ask to see a photograph of the rear of the unit before it is closed up. On a two-day job travelled from Győr, those checks happen while our people are still there, which is precisely why we ask clients to be present at the fixing rather than at the switch-on.
How do you rehearse a schedule before the season starts?
A week of running it while nobody depends on it
The failure that costs money is not a dead board, it is a board showing last month's ferry departures. Load the real schedule in May, before the Krka park traffic and the Children's Festival week arrive, and watch it for seven days: does the overnight item clear at the right hour, does the list roll over correctly at midnight, does anything vanish when the unit restarts after a power cut. A week of watching with no consequences attached will find every scheduling error you have made. Doing this in the second week of July, with a queue at the quay, will not.
What is actually checked and signed at handover?
A short list, a trained person and two sets of access
Our handover is a document, not a conversation. It records the commissioned brightness values and times, the network method - Wi-Fi, cable or USB - and the credentials, the controller settings, the location of the isolator, the serial numbers, the spare modules left on site, and the names of the two people we trained. Two, not one: a board whose only competent user has changed jobs is a board that will be showing the wrong thing within a year. We ask the person who will actually edit the messages to make one edit in front of us before we leave, because that is the only test of training that means anything.
What happens when a fault appears after the van has gone home?
651 kilometres, remote checks first, spares on your shelf
Most reported faults on a text board are not faults. A tripped protective device, a changed Wi-Fi password, an expired scheduled item and an unplugged controller together account for the large majority, and all four are resolved by telephone. That is why we leave the settings written down and train two people. Where something has genuinely failed, spare modules from the same batch are already on your shelf and a competent local electrician can change one under our guidance. A crew visit from Győr is planned as a two-day trip with an overnight stay, and both the travel and the daily allowance are quoted before anyone sets off. The guarantee period is one or two years, settled when the order is placed.
