What follows is the reasoning we apply to a continuous LED surface for a client in the Dakovstina: arriving at the finished dimensions, matching resolution to the position, weighing a wheeled unit against a fixed structure, and pricing a 381 kilometre journey from our Gyor workshop honestly enough that nobody is surprised by the invoice.
LED wall in Đakovo — manufacturing, installation, quote
Seen as a place to put a large display, Dakovo is unusual: the settlement itself holds 16,875 people while the wider town area comes to roughly 23,600, yet its centre is dominated by a single building of national significance. The cathedral basilica of St Peter, raised between 1866 and 1882 under Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, sets the scale of everything around it, and Strossmayerov trg in front of it is among the largest squares in Croatia. That combination changes the brief. The question a client here brings us is rarely whether a screen would be noticed - it would - but whether it belongs at all in the sightline of the cathedral, and where the alternatives are.
The Dakovo siting problem
Cathedral square, Korzo, sports hall, industrial zone
Four kinds of position come up repeatedly, and they behave differently. Strossmayerov trg and the Korzo - the pedestrian run that carries people from the cathedral down to the church of All Saints - are townscape of the highest order, and any proposal there is judged on how little it intrudes rather than on how bright it is. The Gradska nastavno-sportska dvorana on Matije Gupca, opened in 2004 with around 1,500 seats, is the opposite: an interior with controlled light where a screen is simply equipment. Strossmayer Park behind the cathedral, where the stage for the Dakovacki vezovi stands each July, is seasonal ground. The industrial zone on the eastern side of town, three kilometres from the A5 and served by rail, is where nobody objects to a large surface and where the practical projects usually land. We say this early because it saves money. A client who arrives asking for a nine square metre facade screen on the Korzo and leaves with a four square metre interior wall in a showroom on the industrial estate has not been talked down; they have been steered towards the version that will actually be switched on.
Module geometry and the finished size
The grid your dimensions have to land on
Every panel we fit lies flat, its long edge horizontal at 32 centimetres and its short edge vertical at 16. Nothing is cut down, so a completed surface is simply a count in each direction: widths step in 32 centimetre increments, heights in 16, and no value between two steps exists. That grid is fine enough to be forgiving. Between 3.52 and 3.84 metres of width there is a single decision to take, and the surrounding trim swallows whatever remains against a real opening. Where it bites is a brief written backwards - a screen ordered to fill a recess measured to the millimetre once the joiner has left. If your Dakovo position is a bay in a shopfront or a section of wall inside the sports hall, give us the opening at enquiry stage and the panel count will be chosen to sit within it.
Resolution and the nearest regular viewer
Three bands, and the cost of ignoring them
One measurement settles the resolution: how close the nearest habitual viewer gets. Inside about three metres - a counter, a shop interior on the pedestrian run, a display cabinet - the tighter products between P1.5 and P2.5 hold small type together. From three out to eight metres, which covers a showroom or spectators in the sports hall, the P2.5 to P4 range earns its price. Further out, and for a surface taken in across the square or from a car on the D7 towards Osijek or the D46 towards Vinkovci, the coarser P4 to P8 products deliver the same apparent image for considerably less. Specifying tighter than the measurement calls for is the easiest way to overpay, because the additional detail sits below what the eye can separate at that range. Exterior work adds two requirements settled independently of resolution: an IP65 housing, and daylight output that holds up under a Slavonian July sky, for which we specify around 4,500 to 5,500 nit. Panels for a room run well below those levels, since daylight output indoors is uncomfortable to sit near and consumes service life for nothing.
The wheeled LED poster
Illuminated area 640 by 1920 mm, 201 cm of frame, 45 kilograms to move
Not every display in Dakovo ought to be bolted to something. The LED poster stands on castors and carries a tall, narrow image: the lit area runs 640 millimetres wide by 1920 high, the frame reaches 201 centimetres from the floor, and the complete unit comes to 45 kilograms. It arrives as a finished object, is rolled to where it is wanted, stood square and taken to a wall socket. Nothing is drilled, nothing is suspended, no access equipment turns up, and no engineer is asked to certify anything about the building, since the unit carries itself on its own base. At 381 kilometres that distinction decides projects. A mounted wall commits you to a survey trip, an extra day of preparation and a night's accommodation for the crew before a picture exists at all. A poster ordered for the reception at Hotel Blaza, a counter position in a branch on the Korzo, or the visitor entrance at the state stud farm is unpacked and running within the week, handled start to finish by your own people. Judge it not against a video wall but against the printed placard or roll-up banner it displaces, which is what it is actually competing with.
The approval route and the limits of our role
Paper from us, judgement from the town
Dakovo protects its historic core, and displays placed on or beside it fall under rules; the same attention reaches anything within sight of the cathedral precinct or the bishop's palace grounds. How any particular proposal is assessed is entirely a matter for the authority, and we will not pretend to know the answer ahead of time. Our contribution is documentary. We prepare the elevation with the surface set out in position, the fixing arrangement together with the forces it introduces into the structure, the electrical demand and its point of supply, the enclosure rating, and the output figures with the timetable by which brightness falls after dark. Presenting all of that at once tends to move a submission along faster than answering queries in instalments over several weeks.
The cost of 381 kilometres
Survey day, build day, and afterwards
Our workshop in Gyor lies 381 road kilometres from Dakovo. A survey fits inside one long day there and back, because the run south through Hungary onto the A5 corridor is uncomplicated. An installation does not fit: we allocate two days, set off the previous afternoon, and put the crew up locally so that assembly begins in the morning instead of after four and a half hours at the wheel. Travel across the border is quoted in the open. Distance, subsistence and any hotel night each carry their own figure on the offer and sit outside the equipment price, which lets you judge whether to pair the trip with another Slavonian date in the same week. Consignments include replacement panels for you to keep on the premises - deliberately so, because at this range a spare in your storeroom and a spare in Gyor are seven days apart. Guarantee cover runs to one year, or two on the higher build, and the term applying to your configuration is printed on the offer.
