This page treats a scrolling LED text board as an experiment with a result, not as a decoration. It sets out how to state what the board is for, how to record a baseline before it is switched on, what single figure it is meant to move, how to specify the letter height and the content so the test is fair, who is allowed to change the text during the trial, and what to do at the end of the season with each of the three possible outcomes.
LED scrolling sign in Slovenj Gradec — manufacturing, installation, quote
Slovenia · 314 km from our plant in Győr
In a town of this size, a moving text display is a visible purchase. People notice that a business bought one, and they notice when it still shows last winter's opening hours in June. That visibility cuts both ways, and it is the reason this page is organised around a single question that almost nobody asks before ordering: how will you know whether the board did anything? Slovenj Gradec, tucked into the Mislinja valley, is small enough that the answer is actually obtainable. A shop on Glavni trg or a counter near the hospital sees a countable number of people a day, which means an effect, if there is one, can be measured rather than assumed.
The claim the board is being bought to test
Write one sentence, and keep it
Every text board is bought on an unstated belief. Common ones: that passers-by do not know we are open on Saturday mornings; that people walk past because they cannot tell what we sell; that the queue would be shorter if waiting times were displayed. Write yours down in a single sentence and date it. It takes two minutes and it changes everything that follows, because a board bought to fix Saturday awareness is a completely different specification from one bought to shorten a queue. If the sentence cannot be written, that is a finding in itself. In perhaps a third of the enquiries we take, the honest conclusion after this exercise is that the premises need better static signage, or longer opening hours, or nothing at all. We would rather reach that conclusion with you before an order than have equipment switched off within a year.
A fortnight of baseline figures before anything is switched on
You cannot detect a change you did not measure
For two ordinary weeks before installation, record the one thing your sentence is about. Saturday morning transactions. Telephone enquiries asking a particular question. People who look at the window and walk on. Nothing sophisticated is required: a tally sheet by the till is enough, and it costs nothing but the discipline of doing it. Avoid weeks that are not ordinary. A fortnight containing a town event on Glavni trg, a school holiday or a hospital open day is not a baseline, it is noise. If the only available window is atypical, record it anyway and note why, so that whoever looks at the numbers in six months understands what they are seeing. The value of this fortnight is entirely in its dullness.
The single figure the board is supposed to move
One number, chosen in advance and not changed afterwards
Choose the figure before the equipment arrives, and choose only one. The temptation once a board is running is to point at whatever improved that quarter and credit the display, which is how businesses end up buying a second one on the strength of an unrelated coincidence. A number nominated in advance is protected against that. Set a threshold too, and be modest. A reasonable expectation for a text board outside a small business is a change measured in single-digit percentages, not a transformation. If your sentence was about Saturday mornings and Saturday transactions rise by six per cent and stay there, the board has done its job. If nothing moves at all over a full season, that is a genuine answer and it is worth knowing, because the alternative is paying for electricity and attention for a decade on faith.
Letter height and wording set so the test is honest
An illegible board tests nothing
A test only measures the idea if the equipment is not the limiting factor. Character height governs legibility, and character height on a text board is governed by the number of pixel rows and the pitch. For a strip read by pedestrians at ten to fifteen metres on Glavni trg or Ronkova ulica, a pitch in the P4 to P8 band with enough rows for capitals of eight to ten centimetres is the working range; behind glass at three metres, a finer pitch and a much smaller board does more. A position facing Celjska cesta, read from a moving vehicle, is a third case again and needs capitals roughly twice that height. Content discipline matters as much as hardware. One idea per item, three to eight items in rotation, scroll speed slower than feels natural to the person who typed it, and no item left running once it is untrue. A board carrying fourteen items each of two lines is not a fair test of anything except patience. Fix the wording at the start of the trial and leave it alone, because a board rewritten weekly cannot be evaluated.
Who may change the text while the trial is running
Two people, three routes in, one written record
The controller takes content over Wi-Fi, over a UTP network cable and from a USB stick, so no single failure closes off access. During a measured trial that flexibility needs a rule attached to it: name one person who may change the schedule and one deputy, and log every change with its date. An undocumented edit halfway through a season is what turns a clear result into an argument. This is also the moment to decide what the board shows when it has nothing to show. A blank display, a held logo and a rotating pair of evergreen items are all defensible; a stale offer is not. Set the default state deliberately at commissioning rather than discovering it accidentally at the end of the first week.
The review at the end of the season and its three outcomes
Keep it, move it, or admit it did not work
Put a date in the calendar at the time of purchase, roughly one season out, and compare the figure with the baseline. Three outcomes are possible and all three are useful. The number moved and held: keep the board, and now consider whether a second position warrants one. The number moved and fell back: the novelty was doing the work and the content needs rewriting rather than the equipment replacing. The number did not move: consider whether the position is wrong before concluding that the idea is, because a board on the wrong side of a doorway, or facing away from the flow arriving from Šmartno pri Slovenj Gradcu, can fail entirely for reasons that have nothing to do with the message. None of these outcomes needs us to be present. The board is warranted for one or two years, spare modules travel with the delivery, and the diagnostic work is a photograph and a telephone call. The 314 kilometres between the workshop and Slovenj Gradec is exactly why the equipment is built to be assessed, adjusted and repaired by the people who own it.
