This operational digital signage module has been frozen in a block of ice to test how completely its inner components are protected against the elements.
The science of reliability
While digital displays may occasionally need repairs just like any other electronic technology, their users expect a high level of reliability given the importance of the investment. Many of today’s retailers, after all, use digital signage as their primary marketing tool.
To increase reliability, hardware engineers have improved the design of next-generation displays, based on data collected from the field, including information about the root causes of chronic issues. In the future, a greater number of manufacturers will also maintain in-house labs where technicians can test components and completed products by pushing them to their limits, using testing equipment similar to that of the automotive and aerospace industries.
All of this effort will help engineers design and build more dependable products. Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT), for example, generates data about component performance in extreme weather conditions, using a special chamber that combines intense temperature changes—from -110 to 200 C (-166 to 392 F)—and extreme mechanical vibrations—up to 5,000 Hz—to stress a product until it reaches complete failure.
This information can be used to better protect digital display components against corrosion and other effects of the elements. Some manufacturers have even gone on to freeze an operating digital signage module within ice, to demonstrate how completely its inner components have been protected against outside forces.
Limitless design
Hardware engineering also comes into play in the process of designing more distinctive displays. A standard rectangular display cabinet need not place limits on a sign company’s expertise and creativity, in terms of shapes and materials.
Curved screens are one example of unusual digital signage structures that can be integrated into a building’s architecture.
In the recent past, sign companies have built all sorts of creative and unusual structures for digital displays, including blade-shaped monuments, structures that resemble giant video games and curved-screen installations. Not all of these are necessarily high-end projects, either. A regional bank, for example, recently had a local sign shop design and install a simple, circular LED array around a cube-shaped static sign.
As designers further integrate digital signs into buildings, a sort of ‘mediatecture’ trend is emerging. Dynamic signs may be installed throughout the different levels of a building’s façade, for example, while shopping centres are building interior walls with displays of various sizes. The technology lends itself well to these new and exciting uses.
