Sign Buyer's Guide to Digital LED Electronic Message Centers

LED Digital Electronic Message Centers are also known as LED Signs, Display Signs, Jumbotron Signs, Changeable Signs, Changeable Letter Signs, Scrolling Signs, Marquee Signs, and Readerboard Signs, among others.

Electronic message centers help your business many ways:

• They allow real-time communication with potential customers.  With almost 20% of the US population moving in a year, new potential customers of varying demographics are always viewing your signage.  What is effective now may not be effective later…or after lunch.

• They attract attention through animation and brightness so they increase awareness of your business location and your products.

• Your message is not limited by the size of your reader board.

• Your advertising dollars are invested in selling in your trade area, preventing excessive advertising expenses.

• Changing your message, any time you wish, is as easy as typing.  It can be done often and safely.

• Quality electronic message center displays are readable from a further distance, especially is poor lighting.

• You increase your employee's safety vs. conventional letter-changing poles and plastic letters.  Walgreen's Drug Stores changed from manual readerboards to Electronic Message Centers partially for employee safety.  We were an expert witness in one such tragedy leading to this change.

Research shows that you have about 3 seconds to attract a passer-by’s attention and communicate your message to him.  We have exact data on this on our "Letter Visibility Chart" page under "Design and Marketing."

An electronic message center will make your message stand out from the crowd of signs around you.  Even displaying the time and temperature can give a viewer valuable information which they will associate with your business.  Combining that capability with animated messages, possibly in color, can really drive your sales up, 15% to 150%!

Even the Federal Government has determined that signs containing electronic message centers are safety enhancing devices, not traffic hazards!  This is why they are used on federal roadways to communicate with drivers.

Read what the U. S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has to say about the effectiveness of electronic message centers at http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/index and type "emc" in the "search" window.

Modern electronic message centers are illuminated using LED’s.  This lowers their operating cost by 80+% over older, incandescent systems.  If the system is properly designed the bulbs are part of a modular display board that is easily removable and changeable, thus helping to control service costs.  The “pitch” or spacing of the LED’s greatly affects the appearance of the display, and the cost of the unit.

In almost all instances an electronic message center is built into or attached to additional signage that contains your name and other permanent information.  You need to work with a sign manufacturer, not just an electronic message center salesman.

Arrange an on-site demonstration today!

View the importance of what we discuss on this website.

Interested in the concept of electronic message centers, but unfamiliar with their cost?

Click on the "Pricing" tab to the left, then the "Cost" tab, to obtain general pricing and cost information on various sizes and types of LED Electronic Message Centers.

The detailed construction and installation information below, and to the left, is very important in developing a sign that will accomplish your goals.

Many companies manufacture LED’s.  There are over 5,000 varied LED’s available, and they vary greatly as to brightness, lux, light-dispersal (viewing) angle, useful lifetime, and lifetime.

Some are very cheap, some are quite expensive, but all cost more than neon for equal illumination.

Signs Manufacturing only uses Solarbrite™ LED’s that are rated to retain 80% of their brightness for 60,000+ hours.  These are the most expensive, but highest value, LED’s.  Our selection of LED’s is what makes our signs brighter, and last longer.

As an example, a White Solarbrite™ LED is 280 lux, compared to our BrighterSigns™ neon's 235 lux, or standard neon's 140 lux.

A Solarbrite™ LED incorporates a new kind of chip, different from all other LED's.  Signs Manufacturing is an industry leader in the implementation of new technology in advertising.

Solarbrite™ LED’s utilize military specification coatings on the circuit boards the LED’s are attached to, preventing corrosion and electrical problems.

Like neon, LED’s are also affected by voltage.  For instance, an LED will also burn nearly 100% brighter if you double the power feeding it.  The LED will last about 1/6 as long, however, making this alternative quite expensive in total cost.

We power our Solarbrite™ LED’s properly, and offer a 5 year warranty on the LED’s in our lighted signs.

Monochrome (one color) displays are available in “Red” or “Amber (Yellow).”

Color displays are either RGB (Red, Green, Blue) or RGBW (Red, Green, Blue, White.)

The more colors, the more LED lights in each pixel, the larger each pixel, the further back from the sign you must be so that the sign is not “grainy.”

Because the intensity of a LED light can be changed by increasing or decreasing the voltage to it, the better monochrome displays can feature over 4000 shades of Red or Amber.

Good color displays (RGB) can display over 260,000 color variations; exceptional units 6 million.

We have units available with 256/4,000/26,000/6,000,000 and 281,000,000,000,000 shades/colors.

An electronic message center is in many ways a large computer screen.  The screen is illuminated by turning many individual lights, or pixels, on/off (or varying the voltage to them.)

Tighter spacing between pixels allows more data to be displayed and makes the sign look better but increases cost.

How far the pixels are from one another is called “pitch” and is usually expressed in millimeters (mm.)

The pitch must be small for a display not to appear grainy up close.

Color displays, because each pixel is actually 3 or more different colored LED’s, cannot have as small a pitch as a monochrome display.  Therefore they must be viewed from a greater distance to have a quality appearance.

Monochrome displays are available in 9mm, 19mm, 25mm, 35mm, 46mm and larger, some very larger pitches.

The tightest pitch for a quality RGB color display is 17mm.

Some electronic message center manufacturers try to overcome inferior LED’s (which are greatly less expensive) by adding more than one LED of the same color to each pixel.

This makes the pixel larger, which makes the pitch larger, which increases the minimum viewing distance.  It also uses more electricity.

As an automobile driver drives toward an electronic message center which is installed on a 20’ tall pole his vertical viewing angle increases from near 0° to almost 90° as he passes under the sign.  As the viewing angle increases the intensity of the display decreases.  The vertical viewing angle of the LED’s used in the display plays an important role in the usefulness of the display.

As a driver drives toward an electronic message center installed on the side of a road his horizontal viewing angle increases from near 0° to 90° as he passes beside the sign.  As the viewing angle increases the intensity of the display decreases in this direction also.  The horizontal viewing angle of the LED’s used in the display also plays an important role in the usefulness of the display.

It is important to understand the vertical and the horizontal angle that the display will be viewed from.

LED lights are directional.  High quality LED’s can be viewed by as much as 140° horizontally and 40° vertically and still observe over 70% of the lumen potential.  Some LED’s lose all of their light at angles over 45°

Less-expensive signs must be viewed nearly straight-on to be legible.

Glare shields keep the sun from illuminating the display, making your message unreadable.

The minimum viewing distance is the point at which the display loses its graininess.  This can vary depending on the message being displayed.

The maximum viewing distance is the point at which the smallest character which the display can generate becomes unreadable.  A potential solution is to generate larger characters; this may increase the minimum viewing distance.

Seven (7) pixels high for the alphabet in most letter styles. 

A 19mm display can display a 5” minimum character.

How many pixels wide and high the display is, which determines how many of what size letters can be displayed at one time.  Most matrix dimensions are in multiples of 8 pixels.

Heat is the enemy of LED’s.  All quality electronic message centers have ventilation fans.  Larger units incorporate air conditioners into their design.  Excessive heat can shorten LED life by up to 80%.

Decreasing pitch, increasing the size of pixels, or over-driving LED’s with higher-than-required voltage to increase their brightness, increases heat, shortening the life of the unit.

120 volt single phase service is normally required because these displays do not consume a great deal of energy.

Remember, however, that other parts of the sign will have electrical requirements also.

This varies by the message displayed, and how long the electronic message center is on.  That said it is uncommon for ANY electronic (LED) message center to use over $1.00 in electricity in a day.

Some electronic message center manufacturers, more interested in the sale than the needs of the customer, overdrive their LED’s to make them brighter (usually because they are using inferior LED’s.)

Besides shortening the lifetime of the display to 1/6 of a properly manufactured display it wastes energy.

A thermometer installs on the sign cabinet and plugs into the sign computer in systems set-up for this feature.

With this option, and a temperature sensor, the controlling computer can have the display flash, scroll, or constantly display time and temperature.  The best systems display “atomic” time and self-adjust for daylight savings time.

The system should have easy to use control software with built in features such as scrolling and blinking messages and a time and temperature display.  It should also allow you to preview both individual messages and your whole display queue without forcing you to show the world your half-finished ads by running them on the display.  The message should be able to be changed from inside your business, or the system should be configured so that “headquarters” can change the message at each store.

Learning how to program an electronic message center is not hard.

Most good manufacturers have teaching CD’s in addition to Technical Assistance.

Many have telephone training included as part of their package.

Signs Manufacturing is particularly adept at these systems, and helps our customers until they no longer need us.

Then we come back when they find they were premature.

Some units can only display text, some must display text as a graphic (drawing), some can display both text and graphics.

Ours display both.

On monochrome units (one color) graphics are displayed in 256 shades of the one color.  Full-color units display 281,000,000,000,000 separate shades.

Many varied letter-styles (fonts) are pre-programmed in all our units.

Our units can also automatically place text over graphics pictures.

Some units can only display fixed messages; some can “scroll” a message or display.

Some units can show a display, such as a cartoon, with character movement, for instance.

Twenty frames per second is common but some systems support 60 frames per second.  Fifteen per second is the minimum acceptable for animation.

Our units support 60 frame per second animation.

We also include pre-programmed clip-art.

The more sophisticated electronic message centers can display pre-programmed messages and pictures in a slideshow format, much like a screensaver slideshow.

Ours do this.

The more sophisticated units can display varying length videos.

Ours do.

Automatically schedule various messages for varied times.

Optical Fiber.  Run underground from the sign to the controlling computer, usually inside the building.  This fiber must be run in separate conduit, but it can be buried in the same trench as the electrical supply.

Phone Control.  The unit can have a cell phone number and a modem.  Simply call the sign from the controlling computer and tells it what to do.  The internal memory of the electronic message center repeats these instructions until they are changed.

RF Wireless Modem Communications.  An antenna is placed on the sign, and on the building, which is hooked to the controlling computer.

It is possible to have one computer control multiple of our electronic message centers (all Long John Silver’s are, for example.)

Most up-to-date computers, purchased within 2 years, have enough memory to create control programs.

It is usually NOT necessary to buy a separate/additional computer to control an electronic message center.

Most important in an investment of this size is product support.  The electronic message center manufacturer must be large and dedicated enough that they will continue to support their products with parts.  Technical support must be easily available and there must be no limit to your access to it.  Even after you have become an expert, and years later, you might have difficulty programming a new-look message.  Make certain your electronic message center manufacturer and installer will be there to help you 24 hours a day.

The quality suppliers get their product to us in 4-8 weeks.

Since most electronic message centers are built into or installed as part of additional signage we need time to fit the parts together.

Read about our Pole and Pylon, Monument, and Cabinet/Wall Signs to discover how we build the rest of the sign – the part that contains the electronic message center or the electronic message center is attached to.

Our signs are built to last and to continue to look good.  We do many things to make this happen; applying all of the latest technological advances, all of which are detailed in the Sign Buyer's Guide.

As detailed there, everything will be done to make your sign look better, and last longer, guaranteed.

The good electronic message center manufacturers warrant their parts for 5 years.

Signs Manufacturing warrants replacement parts for one year, we have a lifetime warranty on service.

It's terrible to pay over $70,000 for an electronic message center, then not be able to get parts for it 2 years later.  Thank Goodness we didn't sell it!

"Our electronic-message-centers were nightmares.  Even though they were only 2 years old the manufacturer refused to service them.  Your new signs, and your service, have been exceptional."

Major Vincent, Salvation Army

Signs Manufacturing is a recognized leader in the installation and maintenance of EMC signage.  Our electrical, electronic, computer programming, and IT backgrounds often prove invaluable to our customers.