LED boards
ArenaDirector controls two kinds of LED installation and treats each one as an ordinary canvas.
A perimeter board is the long, low line of LED beside the playing area, such as the advertising boards along the edge of a pitch or court. An LED wall is a flat grid of the same hardware, in rows and columns, like a video wall.
Both use the same technology and differ only in shape. Each is made of cabinets and described by a surface, and each receives one rectangular picture.
Cabinets
A cabinet is the loading area of one receiving card, meaning the block of pixels that one card controls. ArenaDirector counts in cabinets.
Take the pixel size from your commissioning software rather than measuring the physical panel, because a cabinet is not always one panel. The software usually lists it as the size of the receiving card.
What happens inside a cabinet is up to the LED processor. ArenaDirector does not model modules.
Sections
A section is a named line of cabinets, such as one side of a perimeter ring or one area of a wall. You give each section a name and a size in cabinets.
The surface counts its cabinets separately from its sections, so a cabinet can belong to no section. Those cabinets play the content of the whole surface. A new surface with no sections therefore plays one picture across all its cabinets, and you can add sections one at a time.
Other parts of the product use sections to address part of a board. A rotation keeps an item list for each section, and a hot button or a sequence can target one section, several sections, or the whole surface.
Each section has its own items. A wide centre section can loop a sponsor video while the end sections cycle through smaller logos. A rotation can also couple an item to several sections, and the item then plays on all of them at the same time.
A section with zero cabinets is valid: that side is in the description but has no boards.
You can rename a section safely, and its content keeps playing under the new name.
When you delete a section, its cabinets stay on the surface and belong to no section. They lose their own target and play the content of the whole surface. An item list that was for the section stays, flagged to tell you it cannot play.
Sending cards and folding
A sending card is the unit that sends the picture to your boards. It accepts a picture of a fixed size, and a perimeter ring is almost always wider than that.
Folding fits the ring into that size. You tell ArenaDirector how many cabinets go in each row, and it divides the strip into those rows before sending the picture to the card.
Your canvas stays one continuous strip, so a sponsor animation still moves across the whole ring as one picture. Folding is the usual configuration for a perimeter ring.
Division of work
For a clean picture, each side should handle only its own part of the job:
| ArenaDirector sends | The control system does |
|---|---|
| One rectangular picture at the exact size of the surface | It divides the picture across the physical panels |
| A stable, correct frame rate | It sets the panel order and wiring, which includes zig-zag layouts |
| Standard colours without changes | It sets the brightness, the colour calibration and the gamma |
So do not arrange content for the panel layout before you send it, and do not darken it for the camera. Send an ordinary picture at full size.
Control systems
The manufacturer of your board supplies a control system that makes the board look like an ordinary screen to your computer. Whatever picture goes to that screen, the board shows.
The control system comes with setup software. You use it once, to map and calibrate the panels, and not during an event. To connect a board, see Connect an LED board.
A perimeter board plays different content on each section, but an LED wall currently plays one picture across its whole surface. If you want separate areas of a wall with their own content, give each area its own canvas.