Set the languages and the weather for a display

Set the languages and the weather for a display

This article explains how to decide which languages a board shows, how quickly it moves between them, and how to switch on the weather in the board header. Both settings belong to a single display, not to your account: two screens in the same hotel can run different languages and one can show the weather while the other does not. Everything below happens in the display editor, which you reach through Portal → Displays → open the display.

The editor is split into tabs: General, Appearance, Behavior, Content (from Pro), White-Label (from Premium) and Preview & URL, which only appears once the display is active. Languages live under Behavior, weather under Appearance. Nothing you change is saved as you click. As soon as anything is edited, a bar docks at the bottom of the page saying "You have unsaved changes." with Discard and Save; the board only picks up the change after you save.

Choosing the languages

Open the Behavior tab and find the Language Settings section. Your current selection sits at the top as removable chips, each with a flag and the language's own name. Below it, Add gives you a search field and the full list; click a language to add it. The counter in the section header shows how many you have selected against your limit, and once you are at the limit the remaining languages are greyed out. At least one language always has to stay, so the last remaining chip cannot be removed.

How many you may select depends on your plan:

You can move up a plan at any time under Portal → Billing.

The order matters: the first language in your selection is the primary one and is the language the board starts in after a reload. The rest follow in the order you added them, and the cycle repeats.

How fast the board switches

The Language Switch Interval field appears only once you have picked a second language, because with one language there is nothing to switch between. It is a free number field, not a fixed set of steps: anything from 10 to 600 seconds is accepted, and new displays start at 60 seconds. Sixty seconds is a reasonable default because a guest scanning for one flight number needs a few seconds to find their row, and a board that flips faster than that tends to change under them mid-read.

There is no way to switch language by hand on the board, and no way to turn the rotation off while keeping several languages. If you want the board to hold still, select a single language.

The active language is shown in the board footer on the right, as a flag together with the language's own name — "🇩🇪 Deutsch" rather than a two-letter code. It changes along with the board.

The 42 supported languages

English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Português, Polski, Čeština, Slovenčina, Magyar, Slovenščina, 简体中文, العربية, 日本語, Русский, 한국어, Nederlands, Türkçe, Ελληνικά, Română, Українська, Svenska, Dansk, Norsk, Suomi, हिन्दी, ไทย, Tiếng Việt, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, 繁體中文, עברית, فارسی, Hrvatski, Български, Српски, Lietuvių, Latviešu, Eesti, Filipino, বাংলা and Kiswahili.

Arabic, Hebrew and Persian are right-to-left, and the board actually turns around for them: when one of those languages is active, the whole layout mirrors, so the columns, the header and the footer read from the right.

What is translated and what is not

The board translates its own wording: the departures and arrivals tab labels, the column headers, the flight status badges, the weather labels such as "Feels like", and the footer text. The header clock and date also follow the active language, so date formats change with it.

What comes from the flight data stays as it is: airport names, airline names, city names, and gate and terminal numbers are passed through untouched. That is deliberate — a guest matching the board against a boarding pass needs the same spelling that is printed on it.

Your own info slides are a separate case and can be multilingual. Under Portal → Content a slide can be translated automatically into the languages you use, and you can correct the generated text by hand before saving it. The editor tells you how many languages the slides will rotate through and how long each one is shown.

Turning on the weather

The weather sits under the Appearance tab, in the On the board section, as the Weather field. Switch it on and a small °C / °F control appears next to it. On Basic the toggle is disabled and shows an upgrade hint; weather is available from Pro upwards.

The unit control affects the temperature and the wind speed, which switches between km/h and mph along with it. There are no other unit settings.

The weather appears in the middle of the board header, between the hotel name on the left and the clock on the right. It shows the current temperature, a short description with an icon, the feels-like temperature, wind, humidity, and a two-day forecast with a high and low for each day. The icons are drawn in the board's own style and are not animated.

Weather descriptions are translated along with the rest of the board, using a table of about twenty common conditions such as "clear sky", "light rain" or "fog". An unusual description that is not in that table stays in English.

Where the data comes from

Weather is fetched from OpenWeatherMap for the airport this display is assigned to, using that airport's coordinates. Each display has exactly one airport, so the weather never changes on its own — only the flights and any info slides rotate.

Current conditions are refreshed every 30 minutes and the forecast every 60 minutes. The result is cached per airport code, both in the application and at the CDN, which is why several displays at the same airport are served the same data rather than each triggering its own lookup.

If your hotel also runs the concierge guest page, note that it has its own weather switch under Portal → Concierge → Settings. Turning weather off on a display does not turn it off there.

If you use the public API, a display's languages, languageSwitchInterval, showWeather and weatherUnits are all returned with the display, and there is a separate weather endpoint per airport code. See API access for details.

When something looks wrong

The weather is missing on a tablet. In the touch and website display modes the weather block is hidden below a fairly wide breakpoint, because the header does not have room for it next to the hotel name and the clock. On a tablet-sized screen it will not appear at all, even with the toggle on. This is the most common reason for weather that is switched on but not visible.

The weather is missing everywhere. Check the plan first, since Basic has no weather, then confirm the Weather field on the Appearance tab is on and that you saved the change.

The temperature looks invented. If no OpenWeatherMap key is configured for the installation, the board falls back to generated sample values instead of showing nothing. Numbers that look plausible but never match reality point at a missing key rather than a bad forecast.

The temperature is slightly behind. Cached data can be up to 30 minutes old by design. Waiting for the next refresh is the fix.

The board is not changing language. Confirm that more than one language is selected and saved, and that you have waited a full interval — with the default of 60 seconds, a quick glance at the board proves nothing.

A label is in English inside another language. Anything the board has no translation for falls back to English. Reloading will not change that, so report the specific label to support and it can be added.

Next steps

Support

If you are stuck, email info@lobbyflight.com or call +43 650 753 1811.