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 uses, whether they take turns or appear together, and how to switch on the weather in the board header. All of these 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 settings live in three places. The language list and the switching interval are on the Behavior tab. How several languages are shown is set in Design → Languages, which also shows which languages are selected and offers a shortcut to the Behavior tab. The weather now sits in Design → Header, under the sub-heading Weather. Nothing is saved as you click: a bar at the bottom of the page says "You have unsaved changes." with Discard and Save, and a running board picks up a saved change within about 20 seconds.

Choosing the languages

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

How many languages you may use at once depends on your plan:

The order matters. The first language in your selection is the primary one: the board starts in it after a reload, and bilingual mode uses it as the main language. The others follow in the order you added them. If your plan allows fewer languages than you have selected, for example after a downgrade, the editor tells you so and the screen uses only the first ones.

Taking turns: how fast the board switches

With more than one language selected, the board takes turns by default. The Language Switch Interval field appears as soon as a second language is chosen. Anything from 10 to 600 seconds is accepted, and new displays start at 60 seconds. Sixty seconds is a sensible default, because a guest scanning for one flight number needs a few moments to find the row, and a board that changes faster tends to switch mid-read.

The active language is shown in the board footer as a flag together with the language's own name, and it changes along with the board. There is no way to switch the language by hand on the screen. If you want the board to hold still, select a single language or use bilingual mode.

Showing two languages at once

From Pro, a board can show two languages at the same time, the way many airports do. In Design → Languages, set Several languages to Bilingual and choose the Second language; it can be any of the 42 board languages and is English unless you change it.

The board then stays in its primary language and adds a smaller, muted second line in the second language under its fixed wording: the column headings, the departures or arrivals title and subtitle, the flight status, the departures and arrivals tabs, the footer label and notices such as "No flights scheduled in the next hours" or the offline badge. Running texts such as the countdown or the leave-hotel-by time stay in the primary language only, so the rows do not become crowded. An own subtitle or a custom column label is a single text and has no second line.

In bilingual mode the language rotation stops and the footer no longer shows a current language. If the second language is the same as the primary one, no second line appears. On Premium you can still keep a longer language list for later; bilingual mode only ever uses the first language of the list together with the second language.

Right-to-left languages and a steady layout

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

On a board that takes turns between, say, English and Arabic, that means the layout flips every interval. From Pro, Keep layout direction in Design → Languages prevents this. The layout then stays in the direction of the first language in your list, and the right-to-left text still reads correctly inside each field. In bilingual mode the layout always follows the primary language, and the second line keeps its own writing direction.

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.

If you choose one of the curated fonts in Design → Type & rows (Pro), it applies to Latin text. Scripts that font does not cover, such as Arabic, Chinese or Thai, keep the board's own Noto fonts, so every language stays readable.

What is translated and what is not

The board translates its own wording: the departures and arrivals labels, the column headings, the 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 comparing the board with 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.

Turning on the weather

The weather now lives in Design → Header, under the sub-heading Weather. Switch Weather on and a small °C / °F control appears next to it. Weather needs Pro; on Basic the switch is disabled and shows an upgrade hint.

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.

In the standard header, the weather appears in the middle, between the hotel name on the left and the clock on the right. By default 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 a low for each day. The icons are drawn in the board's own style and are not animated.

Weather styles and details

Once the weather is on, three further controls appear below it, all available from Pro:

Weather descriptions are translated along with the rest of the board, using a table of 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 the 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, which is why several displays at the same airport receive 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 the 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 returned with the display, and there is a separate weather endpoint per airport code. See API access for details.

Troubleshooting

The weather is missing on a tablet. In touch and website mode, the weather block is hidden below a fairly wide screen width, because the header has no room for it next to the hotel name and the clock. On a tablet-sized screen it will not appear, even with the switch 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 that Weather is on in Design → Header 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 to a missing key rather than a bad forecast.

The board is not changing language. Confirm that more than one language is selected and saved, that Several languages is not set to Bilingual, and that you have waited a full interval. With the default of 60 seconds, a quick glance proves nothing.

The layout jumps from side to side. The board is taking turns with a right-to-left language. Switch on Keep layout direction in Design → Languages, or use bilingual mode.

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 something here does not match what you see, write to info@lobbyflight.com. Support is available Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 CET.