Outdoor Digital Signage in Calgary

Canadian outdoor advertisers Pattison Outdoor have announced a mass replacement of many of their existing outdoor adverts with modern outdoor digital signage in the Canadian city of Calgary.

Armagard LCD enclosures

A spokesman for the company, who are the leading outdoor advertisers in Canada, said: ‘We’ve taken existing billboards in some of our favorite locations and exchanged the old technology of paper and glue for the new technology of LED digital, which allows crystal-clear, beautiful images that change regularly.’

Calgary is an interesting location for the use of outdoor digital signage as it experiences an extreme range of weather fronts. Famed for its use as a winter Olympics location, Calgary experiences dramatic shifts in temperature throughout the year.

As Calgary is highly elevated, winters can be extremely cold, falling to a record low of -45 degrees centigrade, while in the summer highs of 30 degrees centigrade are not uncommon.

Calgary is not alone in having this wide range of extremes in temperatures throughout the year, and locations like this can pose problems for outdoor screens.

In the summer any outdoor digital signage screen needs to be kept cool. Overheating is an all too common problem with outdoor screens in hot weather, not forgoing the facts that the screen itself generates a fair amount of heat, and when this is compounded by bright sunshine and high temperatures, the screen can easily overheat and fail.

Freezing temperatures such as those experienced in Calgary during the winter are also able to disable an outdoor screen. Frozen temperatures can lead to permanent damage of components so during winter, the screens need to be heated or insulated to prevent freezing.

While it is unknown what types of screens are being deployed by Pattison Outdoor, at Armagard we have had many projects in locations similar to Calgary. Outdoor digital signage is popular in ski-resort locations because of the sheer number of people around, and the difficulty in communicating with them.

Many screens installed in these locations are placed inside an Armagard type LCD enclosure. LCD enclosures contain all the thermostatic systems to ensure the internal temperature inside the enclosure doesn’t exceed or fall below the optimum. These systems include insulation, heaters, cooling fans and even air conditioning, ensuring the screen will continue to function regardless of what the ambient conditions are.