Keep a Display Running Around the Clock

A lobby board runs unattended for months, and after a while two questions come up: is the picture kind enough to the panel you bought, and what happens when the screen goes dark at night. This article answers both from the LobbyFlight side. It does not tell you what to set in Android, on the TV or in your kiosk browser; those settings belong to the device, and its manual is the authority on them. It does tell you which LobbyFlight settings change what is on the glass, which protection the board brings along, and how the portal reads a screen that stops reporting.

What already moves on the screen

Several things keep the picture from standing still, and they work independently of one another. Most of them sit under Displays → open the screen → Design → Motion.

Alternating between departures and arrivals happens when the board shows both directions. A one-column TV board then always alternates; other layouts have a switch for it.

Your own slides (Pro) join the cycle after every flight view.

Scrolling or pages move long lists. Auto-scroll is set on the Behavior tab; paging (Pro) turns the list page by page instead.

New flight data changes the rows at an interval that depends on your plan: hourly on Basic, every 30 minutes on Pro, every 5 minutes on Premium.

The details, including how long each view stays up, are in Configure display rotation. Note that header, logo, column headings and footer stay in place whatever the list does. That is what the protection in the next section is for.

Protection built into the board

Under Design → Screen the board has its own settings for screens that run all day. The short version is here; Screen care explains each one in detail.

Pixel shift (every plan) moves the whole picture by one pixel every 15 minutes along a small loop, never more than 2 pixels from its original place. Nobody notices it, and it keeps sharp edges such as the header and column lines from sitting on exactly the same pixels for months. It is off by default and switched on in all the new styles from the style gallery. We recommend it for every screen that runs around the clock.

Night mode (Pro) changes the board during the hours you choose, for example 23:00 to 06:00 in the board's local time. It can dim the board, reduce it to a large clock with the next three flights, or show a black screen.

Safe margin (every plan) adds a border of 2.5 % or 5 % for TVs that cut off the edges of the picture.

Whether a static picture is a risk at all depends on your panel, and its manual is the place to settle that. These settings reduce how much of the picture stays put; they do not replace the care advice of the manufacturer.

Pick colours that suit the panel

The palette also decides how bright the screen is for most of the day. Under Design → Colours & template there are 14 palettes. Five come with every plan, among them the dark Modern Dark and Graphite, the light Minimal Light and High Contrast. Pro adds nine more, and Premium lets you fine-tune every colour yourself, as described in Customize Colors. If your panel's documentation asks you to avoid large bright static areas, choose one of the dark palettes. That decision is made here, not on the device.

Screensavers, nightly restarts and the twelve-minute rule

A LobbyFlight display sends a heartbeat every five minutes while it is open. The portal treats a display as offline once twelve minutes have passed without one. That is two missed beats plus a little slack, so a single dropped request or a page reload does not raise a false alarm. When a display crosses that line, its tile on the dashboard shows it as offline and the dashboard warns that the display appears offline, together with when it was last seen.

Anything that stops the browser from running stops the heartbeat with it. That gives you a clear rule for the measures people set up on the device.

A restart from the kiosk app, from the device or by cutting power with a smart plug goes unnoticed in the portal if the display is back within twelve minutes.

A screensaver that blanks the screen for longer than twelve minutes will be read as an outage, because the page behind it stops. Expect the offline warning, or use night mode instead.

A screensaver that only dims while the page keeps running has no effect on the heartbeat.

Night mode behaves differently from a screensaver. Even with a black screen the board keeps running in the background, keeps its data current and keeps sending its heartbeat, so the portal never reports it as offline. If LobbyFlight releases an update and Automatic updates is set to At night (or When nobody is using it) in Design → Screen, the board also uses the night hours to reload itself.

A restart does not fetch fresher flight data than your plan allows. The board keeps a short copy of its last state, so after a restart it shows the last flights (up to 30 minutes old, marked as possibly delayed) until the next refresh; What happens when a display loses its connection explains the details.

Night mode is not the same as switching off

A black picture is still a switched-on TV. The panel stays powered, and depending on the technology the backlight may keep running. Night mode is about what guests see at night; it does not save much energy. If the goal is to save power, use the on and off timer of the TV or the media player. Keep in mind what that means for the portal: when the device switches off, the board stops, and after twelve minutes the dashboard shows the screen as offline until it is back in the morning. Also check that the device opens the board again by itself after switching on; that is a setting of the kiosk app or the device, covered in Activate Kiosk Mode for 24/7 Operation.

Choose one approach knowingly, so that nobody at the front desk spends a morning chasing a warning that your own night schedule produced.

Switching a screen off in the portal

For a screen that is genuinely out of service, such as a board in a room being renovated or a second display you only run in season, use the switch in the portal. In the header of the display editor, next to the display's name, a button reads Active or Inactive; the Displays list has the same switch as a power icon. A switched-off screen shows the notice "This screen has been switched off in the portal." and loads no flight data. It keeps checking its settings, so it comes back by itself once you switch it on again. The dashboard shows it as switched off, not offline, and raises no warning. The switch does not turn the panel off; the hardware side is still yours to handle.

Troubleshooting

The dashboard reports a screen offline every night. A device timer or a screensaver switches the screen off for longer than twelve minutes. Use night mode if the TV may stay on, or accept the warning as part of your night schedule.

The screen goes black at night although nobody set a timer. Check whether night mode is on under Design → Screen and which mode it uses. A blank screen is one of its options.

The picture looks slightly shifted towards one edge. That is pixel shift at work. The board moves by at most 2 pixels and returns to its original place within two hours.

The edges of the board are cut off. The TV enlarges the picture. Switch the TV to its full-picture setting if it has one, or use Safe margin under Design → Screen.

When a screen goes dark unexpectedly. Start with the dashboard: the time the display was last seen tells you a lot. A display last seen twenty minutes ago is a different problem from one last seen at 4:00 in the morning, right when your restart runs. From there, Fix a Display That Won't Load covers the causes worth checking.

Next steps

Screen care explains pixel shift, night mode, safe margin and upright screens in detail.

Configure display rotation goes deeper into alternating, paging and the refresh interval.

Activate Kiosk Mode for 24/7 Operation covers getting the board to open full-screen and stay there.

Understanding Feature Limits lists which plan includes slides, night mode and the shorter refresh intervals.

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.

Keep a Display Running Around the Clock