A running-text board shows one line of characters, legibly, from the far side of a street, and it is updated by whoever is on the counter. This page covers what these boards are good for, how to size the characters for the distance you actually have, the difference between the single-colour and full-colour versions, and how a board bought in Virovitica is updated and supported from our workshop.
LED scrolling sign in Virovitica — manufacturing, installation, quote
A county seat produces a steady stream of short, perishable notices, and Virovitica produces more of them than its population suggests. Office hours at the county administration change around public holidays; the market has its days; the pharmacies rotate duty; the county hospital has visiting times that people forget; the Viroexpo hall on Trg Ljudevita Patačića posts a different event every other week; a bank branch on Trg kralja Tomislava wants today's rate on the glass rather than on a printed card that goes out of date by lunchtime. All of that is a single line of text, read from the pavement, replaced in under a minute. It is the least fashionable product we make and the one clients keep using for a decade.
What should go on a text board, and what should not?
Perishable information beats decorative information
The content that justifies a board is the content that changes: a duty rota, a closure, a delivery day, a queue number, a price that moves, a set of opening hours that differ this week. Content that never changes belongs on a printed sign, which costs a fraction as much and needs no electricity. The businesses that get least from a text board are the ones that install it, load a greeting, and never touch it again; within a month customers stop reading it, and after that it is furniture.
How far away is the reader standing?
Character height first, character count second
Legibility comes from the size of the characters, so the order of decisions matters. Pace out the distance from the reader's actual position, whether that is the opposite pavement on Stjepan Radić street, a queue inside the door or a car waiting at a junction on the D2, and choose the character height that carries that distance comfortably. A ten centimetre character is readable to roughly thirty or forty metres in normal light and less against low sun. Only once the height is fixed does it make sense to ask how many characters fit on a line, and to check that your longest genuine message still fits.
Is one colour enough, or do you need the full-colour board?
The price gap is large and the visible difference is not
A single-colour board in amber or red is the brightest per unit of cost and completely adequate for text. Two colours let you flag one line as urgent, which earns its keep on a duty rota or a closure notice. A full-colour board is really a small video display running text, and it costs several times as much; it is worth it only if you will genuinely show graphics or a logo animation. We routinely quote all three so the decision is made against numbers rather than against a photograph in a brochure.
Behind the glass or out on the wall?
The cheap option and the visible option
On an older frontage near the Pejačević park a board inside the window is often the only realistic option, and it needs no weather sealing, no external cable and no facade fixing, and it can be installed by anyone competent in an afternoon. It has one weakness, which is reflection: it must sit back from the pane and out of direct sun or the passer-by reads the street instead of the message. A board mounted on the elevation is sealed, considerably brighter, visible from a wider angle and readable at the roadside, but it is an external fixing with a weather-sealed cable route and it is priced accordingly.
How does the message get to the board?
A phone on the shop network, or a schedule loaded once
The controller joins your network over Wi-Fi, so no data cable has to reach the board once it has power. Staff type the line on a phone or a desktop and it appears within seconds. Anything predictable is better set as a schedule: a full month of duty rotas, seasonal hours, or messages that change by hour and by day of the week, all loaded in one sitting and then left alone. Where there is no usable network the content can be carried across on a memory stick, which suits a board that is changed only a few times a year.
What happens when something fails?
Spares on the shelf, and a technician who is not far away
These boards are simple and they fail rarely, and when they do it is normally a power supply or one module. We supply the spare supply and the spare module with the board and show your staff the two-minute replacement at handover, so the common faults never need a visit at all. Anything beyond that is a day return from the workshop rather than an expedition, which is one of the practical advantages of the 291 kilometres. Warranty is one or two years according to the build, and the spare parts stay with you either way.
