new dimension in scoreboard watching - large led display

BROOKINGS, S. D. —
The seemingly endless grasslands covering this part of the United States seem unlikely to be the place to become one of the largest sports video display manufacturers, dakotelli.
After all, the recent big-
The League Stadium is a 4-
It is only an hour's drive from the town, where there are few enough residents to fill the high
The tech screen is a fixture.
But in nearly half the time
For a century since its inception, the company has become a global sports and entertainment giant, albeit quiet, tree
The streets lined up may not show up and the business is good.
Healthy growth in income.
Last year's 5% was mainly due to demand from the United Nations. F. L.
For months, on the interstate between Omaha and Fargo, the United States, hundreds of 1,600 workers in the huge Dako electronic complexD.
Huge video display has been built for N. F. L.
City team like CharlotteC. ; Cleveland;
And Jacksonville, Florida.
There, the length of a football field is installed behind the end area and will be announced this week.
Baseball, basketball and hockey home for professional and college teams will have smaller screens.
The new order is the result of a paradox: as teams get billions of dollars from television networks that carry their games with increasingly vivid details, fans have found more increases in staying at home, especially tickets, parking fees and meals.
So what makes Marshall McLuhan proud is that the team is trying to rebuild the living room experience at the stadium.
In recent years, they have installed TVs in their suites, improving Wi-
Fi and cell phone signals and created a lounge where fans can track their fantasy football team.
They are also installing high
HD video monitors made by daktrooper, Mitsubishi Motors and others provide a sensory shock that can only be appreciated in person.
"We think the living room is our biggest competitor," said Al Kurtenbach of Dako electronics.
Founder and Chairman
"Our job is to help the venue manager provide fresh content.
We can give the fans a reason to stay.
"The team has been trying to attract fans to the stadium.
They hired mascots, presented merchandise, and held free concerts and fireworks shows.
Fans can run away, throw out the first stadium, and see players and coaches.
Sports executives now generally believe that young fans who grew up on smartphones are less willing to participate in live events because they are cut off from online content that they see as attractive.
They hope that the huge scoreboard will eliminate this digital addiction while creating new advertising revenue.
They can also become attractions like the huge video screen of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, which opened in 2009.
James Ricchiuti, who is in charge of daktrooper for the investment bank Needham & Company, said, "The team does have the pressure to do something because for the big team
What they have to do at home to attract fans to the arena and the stadium.
The "wow factor" Shahid Khan thought of the idea.
After buying the Jaguar in 2011, he realized that Jacksonville was one of the smallest Jaguar in the United States. F. L.
The market is a difficult place to sell tickets.
The team has not been in the playoffs since the 2007 season, and college football is very popular there.
The floating population and the struggling local economy did not help.
As a result, Khan reduced the price of tickets, added club seats and party areas, and renovated the dressing rooms and training rooms.
This year, he and the city spent $63 million renovating EverBank Field and adding two of the largest video displays in the world, made 1,500 miles away by daktrooper
Towering in each end area, the monitor is 362 feet long and 60 feet high
It's higher than almost all the buildings in Brookings.
Fans will see them for the first time in Saturday's Fulham game.
Also owned by Khan)
An outstanding English team and D. C.
Major League Soccer held an exhibition at EverBank Stadium.
"We are upgrading the experience for our fans," Khan said . ".
"This is another step in the arms race to get fans back to the stadium.
There is no problem with the Cleveland Browns selling tickets, but they feel that their 15-year-
The old stadium needs to be upgraded.
A large part of their $0. 12 billion overhaul of the First Energy Stadium is the installation of the dakoli display, which is three times larger than their predecessor.
"We feel we have to improve the fan experience," said Alec Scheiner, president of Brown . ".
"When we do a better job in this area, we feel it will translate into more revenue as well.
Khan is very interested in the exhibition because of his main business Flex-N-
Door, manufacturing car parts, including headlights with lightsLEDs.
He visited daktroochin May and watched the exhibition being produced.
In a large showroom in a huge warehouse, Khan and team chairman Mark Lamping saw a showroom 38 feet long and 14 feet tall, it is stuffed with about 300,000 red, blue and the size of each finger nail.
The 40 th of the monitor size installed in Jacksonville, it shows the graphics of the Jaguar logo with amazing clarity.
The density of pixels is closely related to the resolution of the display.
A few years ago, the distance between pixels was usually 16mm, but now the distance between them is usually 8mm.
Daktrooper has also designed modules so it is easier to read the display outdoors.
"This display technology is really very powerful," said Mike kempney, sales manager at daktrooper . ".
"There are other technologies, but they don't give an amazing factor in that.
"In the lab near the showroom, Khan and Lamping were shown how to test the monitors to ensure they were able to withstand strong sunlight, downpours and other extreme weather for at least a decadeA 14. 4-inch-
The square module for outdoor display has been sitting in the water tank flashing for three years.
In a highly accelerated life test room, the temperature range ranges from minus 166 degrees to 392 degrees to see if the display can withstand hot and cold.
Other displays are located under the infrared light that simulates the sun's intensity in Phoenix.
Other tests were repeated with cold rain and salty fog.
"Our products have a goal, no matter where they are, to last the same amount of time," said Paul Gilk, who runs the reliability lab . ".
Eric Johns, Gilk's colleague, put it another way.
"We are trying to break their weaknesses," he said . ".
Heavy work on manufacturing modules
Components of the display-
Occurs in adjacent buildings.
Daktrooper received all the big orders with the production line in 2 10-
One hour shift per day. The 13-
The steps to make the module start with millions of red, green and blue diodes.
When the LED display came out about 20 years ago, the cost per diode was about $1.
Now, sports teams have been able to buy larger, more advanced displays at a lower price.
To generate additional revenue, daktrooper and other manufacturers have been developing software for the team to use on their monitors.
In addition to creating tailor-made
Daktrooper holds workshops for programmers who run scoreboard in Major League Baseball and nbaF. L. stadiums.
Without hundreds of modules that go online every day, scoreboard is impossible.
The process of making the module starts with a blank circuit board that runs through machines that connect drives, chips, resistors, capacitors, and other components.
Three radial machines insert red, green and blue diodes. (
The factory used about 3.
On average, there are 9 million LEDs in a week. )
After soldering the led to the circuit board, manually insert the signal connector, capacitor, coil and other components and then weld.
The plates are cleaned and dried to remove contaminants and placed in a hard plastic case.
The module for any led failure is fixed.
Silicone is used for module waterproofing and the module is dried in the oven for 6 minutes.
The robot drives the screws into the module and adds power.
All in all, it takes about 30 minutes to build a module, and one module goes offline every 65 seconds.
Precision and speed are the result of a major overhaul that has occurred in production in recent years.
Neil Andal, who is in charge of improving the production process, said: "Our customers want to do bigger and better things, so we can't keep up if we don't improve manufacturing.
No one ever said I wanted a smaller scoreboard. ’”Bigger Is . . .
BiggerThe process based on many Japanese technologies is much more efficient than Kurtenbach and an electrical engineering professor in nearby South Dakota when they founded the company in 1968.
They are more interested in biomedical instruments than scoreboard.
But an early investor at the company, active in college wrestling, asked Kurtenbach to design a new scoreboard.
Kurtenbach and his partner set up a four with the help of the studentssided, four-foot-
A tower with incandescent lamps.
With the arrival of the order, Kurtenbach realized that there was also a market for other scoreboard.
Daktrooper produced voting counting boards for almost all state parliaments across the country, and then for high schools and universities.
Later, they made scoreboard with basic video displays made by Sony, Mitsubishi Electric and other companies.
To offset the unpredictable nature of the sports market, Daco Electronics expanded its business to traffic signs, commercial displays and other more stable businesses.
The company scored scores for many projects at 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Y.
But it did not enter the professional sports market until 1988.
That year, Daco made a scoreboard for Buffalo Bisons, an AAA baseball club.
In a game in beisen, courtenbach met Joe Spier, the architect of the stadium, who invited him to work at a New Stadium in Baltimore.
Camden Shipyard opened in 1992, triggering a building boom that emphasizes retro design, better sight and fans
Friendly concessions and scoring cards in prominent positions.
Large influx of orders, overseas sales expanded. Daktronics —
A mixture of Dakota and electronic words --
Listed on NASDAQ in 1994.
Almost every N today. F. L.
There are some Daco electronic equipment in the stadium, and the company's scoreboard is very good in many ways.
Famous venues including Madison Square Garden and Citi Stadium.
University stadiums are also a growing opportunity, especially at first-level universities where wealthy donors are willing to pay for the show.
One reason Daco electronics is booming in an appointment town is that it is close to the Brooklyn state of South Dakota.
At any time, about 300 students work in the company as engineers, marketing and sales, as well as in graphic arts and other departments.
Kurtenbach recognizes the importance of hiring students to train the next generation of workers without having to convince people elsewhere to move to South Dakota.
"They are suppliers of our talents," Kurtenbach said . " The School of Engineering is located in the Hall of dakotelli. David L.
Chicoine, president of the University, said: "It's great to give students a choice.
When I go to school in South Dakota, you have to leave if you have a technical background.
"In the market of about $0. 8 billion, Mitsubishi Electric, the closest competitor to Daco electronics, has focused on a key position.
Designed in Japan and assembled in Pittsburgh, Mitsubishi's advanced technology provides a higher resolution and seamless display.
It's on display at Yankee Stadium, AT&T Stadium outside Dallas, and elsewhere.
"We focus on the high-end market," said Todd Stich, national sales manager at Mitsubishi Electric's scoreboard division . ".
"Tiffany is still going to sell the best.
"The workers could not argue in Dako.
They fixed the module to metal.
Frame cabinet, 8 feet cm 4 inch cm high 7 feet cm wide 2 inch cm.
The fan is attached to the rear and the module is running hard for an hour to ensure that no LEDs burn out.
There is a fully installed cabinet going offline about every five minutes.
The main Scheduler, Amber Peper, said: "The monitors are too big to build them at once because they won't be installed at once.
The Jacksonville exhibition requires 416 cabinets.
The crates of eight cabinets have shrunk.
Package and load onto the flat track that stops at the loading dock before they are four years old
A day trip to EverBank Field.
Each crate weighing about 2,800 pounds is numbered to indicate its position in the monitor frame.
Before he left, Khan got a Sharpie and was asked to sign a cabinet numbered 53313.
"We are here," he wrote. A OK.