Take the decisions below as steps rather than as topics, and take them in order. Each one narrows the next, and by the last of them the specification has written itself. The rolling LED poster gets a step of its own, because in a town 472 kilometres by road from our plant near Győr, the difference between a product you can have delivered and a project that needs a crew on site is the difference that decides most orders.
LED wall in Požega — manufacturing, installation, quote
Požega sits in a closed valley between the Psunj and Papuk ranges, which is pleasant to look at and awkward to supply. The town of 22,294 people supports a genuine manufacturing base of its own, with the Zvečevo confectionery works that began life in 1921 and the Plamen iron foundry founded a year later, and it has no motorway of its own: everything arrives along the D51 from Nova Gradiška or the D38 through Pleternica. For a display buyer that geography matters twice, first because the local market is compact enough that one good surface is noticed, and second because anything that has to be brought here by a crew is a longer undertaking than the map suggests.
Begin with the valley, not with the building
Where a surface will actually be seen in this town
Požega concentrates its foot traffic in a small number of places, and a display is worth what those places are worth. Trg Svetog Trojstva is where people gather, where the cathedral of St Teresa of Ávila stands and where the town's events are held. The Orljava promenade carries walkers in the evening. The Grabrik sports hall gathers a crowd on match nights. The factory gates gather several hundred people twice a day at shift change. Rank your own audience against that list first; a surface in the fourth-best position at twice the size is still the fourth-best surface.
Convert the size you want into whole tiles
A module a third of a metre wide and half as tall again in height
Our walls are built from one tile, a third of a metre across and half that from top to bottom, laid flat and never rotated. Width therefore advances in whole tiles and so does height, one direction in 32 centimetre increments, the other in 16, with no stopping points between them. A surface of 2.56 metres by 1.44 metres, which suits the end wall of a shop or a meeting room, is eight tiles across by nine down. Do this conversion on the drawing before a figure reaches a budget, because a rounded number in a budget almost never falls on a step, and reconciling the two afterwards costs either money or picture area.
Set the pitch from the closest viewer, then stop
Under three metres, three to ten, and beyond ten
The nearest person who will genuinely read the surface fixes the pitch; the average distance across the room is a distraction. Inside three metres, at a counter or a shop window, the fine bracket is worth its price and anything coarser begins to show its own structure. From three metres out to about ten, where most interiors sit, the middle bracket does everything the eye can use and leaves money for a larger surface. Past ten metres, at the seats in the Grabrik hall or across a yard, the coarse bracket is simply correct, because no viewer can resolve a finer grid at that range and paying for one buys nothing visible. In our notation those three brackets are P1.5 to P2.5, P2.5 to P4, and P4 to P8.
Weigh a rolling poster against a built surface
Seven hundred to eight hundred nits, and why that is the right level indoors
A poster in this sense is a free-standing digital placard rolling on castors, and the version that suits most interiors in this town is driven at 700 to 800 nits. That figure looks modest beside an outdoor number, and it should. Interiors are lit to a small fraction of daylight, so a surface pushed much harder becomes uncomfortable to stand beside, crushes its own dark tones and wears on the staff sitting next to it all day. At the right level the unit reads cleanly from a metre away in a pharmacy, at a branch counter, in a hotel foyer or in a showroom on the square, and it still copes when the door opens onto a bright afternoon. Set against a fitted wall it also deletes the entire installation trade from the job, and over this distance that is the larger half of the argument.
Route the power and the picture before the plaster goes on
One protected way, and a picture that need not arrive by cable
Decide two routes while the wall is still open and both become cheap. The first is electrical: a dedicated way back to the board, protected, with a local switch the staff can reach, which matters in a centre where many boards were arranged around lighting and a till and nothing else. The second is the picture, and it need not be a route at all. A source in the room can feed the screen directly, the building network can carry scheduled material, a stick can be walked to it, or the controller can take its content wirelessly so that nothing is pulled through the ceiling. Leaving a spare conduit and a back-box behind the screen position during the works costs almost nothing and saves a chase being cut later.
Price the journey separately, then compare quotations
472 kilometres, a preparation day and an overnight stay
Požega lies 472 kilometres away by road, the longest of the runs we make regularly into Croatia. A fitted installation is therefore planned as two days on site with a night between them, not as one heroic drive, and that is stated in the quotation rather than discovered together on the morning. Mileage, the daily allowance and the hotel are itemised and kept out of the rate per square metre, so a Croatian competitor's figure can be set against ours honestly. Spare panels from the same batch as the wall travel in the crate. Cover is written for one year or for two, set by what is built.
