A programmable LED text display looks like a commodity and is not one. The differences that matter are in the module count, the real brightness in the position it will occupy, the sealing detail at the cable entry, what the controller can be made to do and by whom, and what the quotation silently leaves out. Below are the six things to ask before signing anything, and the answers we give for our own equipment, from a works 360 kilometres from Sisak.
LED scrolling sign in Sisak — manufacturing, installation, quote
Scrolling text boards are the product where Sisak buyers are most likely to be comparing several written quotations, and where those quotations are most likely to be describing quite different things while looking identical. Sisak-Moslavina County and municipal bodies, the industrial employers at Caprag, pharmacies on Trg bana Josipa Jelačića, workshops and filling stations all buy this class of equipment, often through a procurement process that has to be justified afterwards. The problem is that a text board is easy to specify vaguely: a price per metre, a word about brightness, nothing about the controller. This page is therefore written as a buyer's checklist rather than a sales page - the questions to put in writing to every supplier, ours included.
Ask for the pitch, the module count and the finished size in writing
Three numbers that make quotations comparable
A price per running metre tells you nothing on its own. Require every supplier to state the pixel pitch, the number of modules and the exact finished dimensions in centimetres. Our modules are 32 by 16 centimetres in landscape orientation and are never turned, so a board is always a whole number of them wide and high, and the finished size is arrived at rather than chosen. Once those three figures are on the page, two offers that appeared to be within a few per cent of one another frequently turn out to be for boards of noticeably different size and resolution.
Test the brightness claim against the position
A datasheet figure is not a promise about your window
Ask what the operating brightness is, in nits, and then ask where that figure was measured. Outdoor equipment should be quoted at 4,500 to 5,500 nits and indoor equipment at 700 to 800; a board sold as outdoor at an indoor figure will wash out on the first sunny morning. Then ask the more useful question: what does it do at night? A board with no dimming schedule will be far too bright after dark, and in a residential street that is a complaint waiting to be made. We set the day and night levels during commissioning and write them into the handover sheet.
Have the sealing explained, cable entry included
IP65 is a claim about the whole assembly, not the front face
Most outdoor text boards that fail do so through the back. Ask specifically how the cable enters the enclosure, whether the glands face downwards, whether there is a drainage point, and where the power supply sits. In a town with the humidity of the Kupa and Sava valleys, condensation inside the case is a more realistic threat than driven rain. Our outdoor boards are sealed to IP65 with downward entries and an accessible supply position, and we will happily send a photograph of the rear of an assembled unit - a request that is worth making of every supplier you are considering.
Compare what each quotation actually includes
Controller, spares, delivery and the travel line
Put the offers side by side and look for the items that are present in one and absent in another: the controller and its licence, mounting hardware, the power supply, spare modules, delivery, installation labour, commissioning, training and travel. Foreign suppliers should show travel and any per diem as separate lines - ours does, and for Sisak it reflects a single-day journey of 360 kilometres rather than an overnight trip. An offer that is cheaper because it excludes spares and commissioning is not cheaper; it is incomplete, and the difference reappears the first time something goes wrong.
Insist on knowing how the text gets in and who may put it there
Access is the specification item people forget
Ask how a message is loaded and by whom. Our boards accept text over Wi-Fi, over a UTP network cable and from a USB stick, and all three are configured and demonstrated at handover. Ask whether the software is tied to one computer, whether it needs a subscription, and whether the supplier retains any access. Then decide internally who in your organisation holds the credentials - and make it at least two people, because the single most common cause of an out-of-date board is that the one person who knew how to change it has left.
Read the warranty clause before you read the price
What is covered, for how long, and what happens on the day
The cover is one or two years by agreement in our case, on the modules, the electronics and the assembly. The more revealing question for any supplier is procedural: what happens on the day a module fails? Ours ship with reserve tiles from the same batch, front-serviceable, so a local electrician replaces one within the hour and the distance to the works never enters into it. Ask each supplier to describe that sequence in writing. The ones who cannot are usually the ones whose equipment you would be waiting on.
