FAQ
Questions people ask
Short answers. Each one links to the page with the detail.
About the hardware
What is an LED ticker?
A long, shallow LED display, typically 250 mm tall and any length from a metre upwards, that scrolls text, prices, headlines or simple graphics. It is built from the same LED modules as a video wall but in a single strip, so it reads as a line of moving type rather than a screen.
How long can an LED ticker be?
As long as the room. Dynamo’s PIMCO tickers were 80 m and 35 m, Bob Bob Cité’s is 77 m with corners, Barton Peveril’s is 25 m with three. Tickers are built from cabinets in 250 mm steps and the controller treats the run as one surface, so text scrolls across joins and corners.
How tall is an LED ticker?
250 mm is the standard band: at 1.9 mm it carries a logo tile and two lines of text. Taller bands are built in 250 mm steps from the same modules. Outdoor bands come in 240 mm steps.
What pixel pitch does a ticker need?
Match it to the nearest reader. Desks two to three metres away: 1.9 mm. A lobby or bar: 2.5 to 2.6 mm. A pavement a few metres back: 3 mm. Across a hall or street: 3.9 mm. Outdoors at distance: 6 to 16 mm. Finer than you need adds pixels and cost without a visible gain.
How do you work out the resolution?
Modules wide times pixels per module, by modules high times pixels per module. A 1.9 mm module is 128 × 128 pixels, so a 1 m × 250 mm band is 512 × 128. It is never a length divided by a pitch; that gives a number that does not exist.
Can a ticker go round a corner or in a circle?
Yes. Indoor cabinets join at 90° without a gap. For a radius, a halo or a wave, Dynamo builds on a flexible 250 mm band at 2, 2.5 or 3 mm on a frame made for the curve. Auto Trader’s halo is 17.92 m round; China Mobile’s ribbon runs round the whole entrance.
Can a ticker be mounted vertically?
Yes. The Harrods Brompton Road tickers stand on end so the designer’s name reads up the window. The controller rotates the content and the fixing is planned for the orientation.
Can an LED ticker go outside?
Yes. Outdoor DVO modules run at 6,000 nits and more with an IP65 front and a built-in power supply. For a ticker behind glass facing the street, the DX HB range at 3,000 nits and more holds the text in daylight.
Can a ticker run 24 hours a day?
Yes. The Harrods tickers scroll around the clock. Brightness is scheduled, bright by day and dimmed at night, and display hours can switch the band off to the minute.
How is a ticker installed, and by whom?
Dynamo’s own engineers, nationwide, usually out of hours. A band fixes to a wall rail, hangs on drop rods, sits in a housing boxed into the ceiling line, or fits inside a window. Power is 230 V single phase fed along the run; data is Cat 6 back to a controller in the comms room. Installation is £150 per square metre with a £1,000 minimum, de-rig included.
About the software
What is Dynamo Ticker?
Content software for LED tickers, written by Dynamo. It runs on a Windows PC with any wide output and scrolls live markets, news and RSS, sport, your own messages and pictures, with weather scenes, AI backgrounds and your own video behind them, scenes on a timetable, and a control panel on your phone.
Can it show live stock prices?
Yes. Pick the symbols you want from shares, indices, currencies, crypto and commodities; each shows price, change, arrow and logo, with a small chart beside it if you want. Prices update live; where an exchange delays its public quotes, the band shows what the feed sends.
Can it show our own data rather than a public feed?
Firms with a market-data platform feed the band from it, as PIMCO does. Alpha FX’s ticker was written round the client’s CRM and price feeds. Tell us where the data lives and we will say which route fits.
What does the software cost?
£250 a year per site, VAT excluded. Add-ons: AI backgrounds £100 for 50 generations, weather scenes £100 a year, remote control £75 a year. Card payments through Stripe.
Does the software need an inbound port or a VPN?
No. Dynamo Ticker makes outbound HTTPS connections on port 443 only, to Dynamo’s licensing service, the market-data feed and the news feeds you choose. Nothing is opened on your firewall. Phone control from outside the building goes out through the same connection.
What happens if the internet drops?
The band keeps playing. The software renews its licence weekly and keeps running for the rest of that week without a connection; feeds reconnect on their own and pick up where they left off. A licence problem never closes the software.
Can I try it before buying?
Yes. Download the current Windows installer, set up your content and output, and buy the licence when the band is ready. Until a licence file is in, the output shows a black band with a short notice.
Will it run on a ticker we already have?
If the ticker is driven from a Windows PC with a wide output, yes. Output position, size and folded-band mapping are set in the control window. Send us the controller and the pixel map and we will confirm.
About the price
How much does an LED ticker cost?
Height, length, pitch and brightness set it, so tickers are quoted per project with a drawing. Installation is £150 per square metre with a £1,000 minimum. We never charge freight. → Prices and quotes