The steps below are the order in which we work through a permanent LED display in Karlovac: establishing the flood and damp history before choosing a mounting height, converting an elevation into whole tiles, taking the pitch from the radial sightline, deciding whether a rolling LED poster is the better purchase, sorting the power and the signal, and planning a 365-kilometre job realistically.
LED wall in Karlovac — manufacturing, installation, quote
Croatia · 365 km from our plant in Győr
Karlovac was laid out in 1579 as a six-pointed star fortress, and the Zvijezda still has that plan: a hexagonal core with streets running straight from the central Trg bana Josipa Jelačića out to the ramparts, now a green promenade ring. For a permanent display this geometry has an immediate consequence - inside Zvijezda a frontage is either read straight down a radial street from two hundred metres away or it is barely seen at all. The second thing that shapes every installation here is water. Karlovac sits where the Kupa, the Korana, the Mrežnica and the Dobra come together, and the ground-level history of this town includes serious flooding. Outside those two constraints the city behaves normally: the brewery, the industrial estates, the Dubovac side, the corridor towards the A1 and the through-roads that made Karlovac a junction long before the motorway existed.
Establish the water history of the site before choosing a mounting height
High water, river fog and ground damp
Begin with a question no catalogue asks: how high has the water been at this address, and how wet does the ground get. In a town at the confluence of four rivers this determines where the electronics live. We place power supplies, controllers and terminations above the highest level anyone can remember rather than at a convenient working height, bring cable down to the unit from above so that a flooded duct does not become a path into the enclosure, and treat any base-mounted structure near the Korana or the Kupa as needing a plinth. None of this costs much at the design stage. All of it is expensive to retrofit.
Convert the elevation into whole tiles before anyone draws a picture
32 centimetres across, 16 down, and nothing in between
Measure the opening you actually have, then divide. Every wall is built from tiles 320 millimetres wide and 160 millimetres tall, always in that orientation, so a display grows in 32-centimetre steps horizontally and 16-centimetre steps vertically. A 3.5-metre width does not exist; 3.52 metres - eleven tiles - does, and so does 3.20. Do this arithmetic before the graphic designer starts, because a layout drawn to an impossible aspect ratio has to be redrawn, and because the tile count is what drives the frame, the power budget and the price. Send us a measured opening and the possibilities come back the same day.
Take the pitch from the radial sightline, not from the pavement width
Zvijezda is read down a straight axis
In most towns the useful measurement is how far back you can step. In Zvijezda it is how far down the street somebody first sees the wall, and on a radial running from Trg bana Josipa Jelačića to the ramparts that can be a very long way. Measure the true first-sighting distance and the nearest standing position, then choose for the pair: P1.5 to P2.5 where readers are within a couple of metres, P2.5 to P4 across a courtyard or a sales floor, P4 to P8 for a wall met from a vehicle on a through-road or the approach to the motorway. Specifying a fine pitch for a long axis is money spent on detail the eye cannot resolve.
Decide whether a rolling LED poster does the job before designing a structure
45 kilograms on wheels, and nothing fixed to the building
Ask this before the frame is drawn, because inside the star-fort core it is frequently the better answer. The LED poster is a portrait display standing on its own wheeled foot: a 640 by 1920 millimetre picture, a 201-centimetre frame, 45 kilograms, set up by your own staff with no access platform, no facade fixing and no structural opinion required. In the shops along the radial streets it replaces the printed poster in the window; at the Aquatika visitor entrance or a brewery reception it does what a mounted screen would do without touching a protected frontage. Because the controllers chain, several units run as one continuous picture - so begin with one and extend. Indoor builds run at 700 to 800 nits; a P2.5 outdoor cabinet on the same frame reaches 4,500 to 5,000 nits. At 365 kilometres from Győr a fitted wall is still perfectly practical here, so choose the poster on its merits rather than out of logistics.
Specify the enclosure for river fog, then plan the supply and the signal
IP65, condensation and a route the picture can take without a trench
Outdoor units are IP65 and run at 4,500 to 5,500 nits, but in this valley the recurring problem is not rain, it is days of saturated air followed by a frost. Sealed entries pointing downwards, drainage that leads water away from the frame, and no cavity where condensate can stand are what actually decide the lifespan. Power should come from a dedicated circuit with its own protective device, sized for the peak rather than the average. The signal is the easy part: a live picture over HDMI from a nearby source, or scheduled content over the building network, from a USB stick, or over Wi-Fi - which is what saves you cutting a route across a finished interior.
Plan the 365 kilometres as a survey day and a fitting day
What the distance genuinely costs, itemised
Karlovac is 365 road kilometres from our workshop. A survey or a fault visit is a long single day, and we do them that way. An installation involving an access platform, a road closure or scaffolding is planned as two days with an overnight stay, because a crew that has driven four hours should not then be working at height against the clock. Access equipment is booked locally so it is standing at the address on arrival. Reserve tiles from the same production batch come with the delivery, warranty runs for one or two years as agreed, and the travel and the crew's daily allowance appear as their own lines on the quotation rather than inside the price of the wall.
