The modern office is designed to make work easier and more comfortable. One tool that has become increasingly popular in offices is the room display panel.
These cool devices, mounted on walls or placed outside meeting rooms, provide important information about room availability, scheduled meetings, and other relevant details. Employees can even use these to book meeting rooms then and there.
The global market for room display panels is expected to reach $10.2 billion by 2025. The Asia-Pacific region is the largest market for room display panels, accounting for over 40% of the global market.
While the result of having a meeting room display panel provides a great user experience, productivity boost, and a modern and futuristic outlook, mounting the device can be a complex task.
It requires effort in understanding the office layout, the cabling, and the aesthetics that go into deciding how and where to mount the tablets. In this article, we cover some of the basics that you should consider:
Type of Display Panel
The type of device you choose will depend on the cabling, casing, and mounting. You can choose commercially available tablets such as Apple’s IPAD, Windows Surface tablets, Samsung’s Galaxy or Note tablets.
The other option is to go for industrial-grade purpose-built devices. These usually run on either the Windows environment or Android. Both of these serve the purpose of showing meeting details outside the room.
The difference between commercially available devices and purpose-built devices is that the purpose-built devices come with NFC/RFID card readers, built-in LED lights, Ethernet/LAN connectivity, and even a USB thumb drive while commercially available devices do not have these features. Moreover, some purpose-built devices have no built-in battery which makes them lighter and less prone to heating up.
Casings & Mountings
If you choose commercially available tablets, then you will need to purchase the casing for these tablets separately. These casings range from cheap enclosures that solve the mounting problem to more advanced, designed casings that are more expensive.
While commercial devices do not have the necessary features such as Ethernet/LAN capability, LED lights, and NFC/RFID scanners, these features come with some of the casings. You can get similar functionality to a purpose-built device albeit at a much higher price point.
If you choose to explore purpose-built devices, then they mostly come with the casing built into the device enclosures as well as the mounting kit. So, there is no need to purchase these additional items separately. The total cost of ownership may be lower.
Power Cable Layouts
Most devices will require power to run them. In that case, there are two options. One is a direct cable for power supply and the other is through Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). When considering using power, in most offices, there must be overhead cables that run above the false partition and in some cases, under a false flooring (like in data centres).
You will need to get hold of your office schematics to determine where the cables run and the branching points.
In cases where the meeting room has card access or a magnetic door lock, chances are there is a power cable already running on the top/bottom towards the door. To mount the display panel, you will need to draw another parallel line to the location of the mounting.
Power-over-Ethernet (PoE)
In situations where your device uses Power-Over-Ethernet, then the ethernet RJ-45 cable also doubles up as a power line to power your device. In this case, you will need to again determine where the branching is and where the switches are.
If your switch/router is PoE enabled, then great. If not, you may have to buy a switch or router that is PoE-capable.
Moreover, PoE is limited by the length of the cable due to loss of power as a result of attenuation. The normal rule of thumb is that a PoE cable should not be more than 70m to 100m long. The length is determined by the voltage, the type of cable, and some other factors. Even if you increase the length of the cable, you will still be restricted by the data signal attenuation.
Wi-Fi Connectivity
If your device does not have PoE (Like most commercially available tablets such as Apple iPADs and Samsung Tablets), then you will have to rely on a Wireless network. If you rely on such networks there are two things to consider. Dead zones where there is limited or poor Wi-Fi signal and bandwidth.
Dead zones can result in intermittent loss of connectivity leading to all sorts of problems such as the inability to show timely meeting schedules and failed bookings when done through the device.
If you use the devices in the same Wi-Fi network as your office LAN, then bandwidth will be taken up by these devices that will need connectivity and synchronization between the device and the central server. The devices should have a Wi-Fi network to support the loading. This is especially needed when you are running more than 20 display panels in your office.
Aesthetics
When choosing a room display panel, inputs such as the look and feel and how the device fits in with the overall office theme are important. Factors such as the colour of the walls and lighting come into play.
Whether the device is put flush with the walls, partially protruding, or fully mounted outside depends on the space availability, the type of wall, and the ability to service the devices. While partial and flush mounting can be done on partitions, they can’t be done on concrete walls.
In most implementations, a white casing goes against a white wall while a black casing goes well with a wooden wall. Again, this depends on your corporate office theme.
Mounting Surface
The type of mounting space will help decide how you are going to mount the device. A glass wall in most meeting rooms requires industrial-grade adhesives to stick the casing onto the glass.
Partitions and concrete may require screws to harness the casing. Note that when mounting on partitions, the thickness of the partition matters. You are better off using adhesive when the partition is not thick enough.
Concluding
In conclusion, mounting a room display panel in the office requires careful consideration of various factors. The type of device, the casing, the cabling works, the kind of wall, and the aesthetic look and feel all form an important component when deciding to select and mount the panel.
You can use this article as a guide when embarking on putting display panels outside your meeting rooms.
