Most outdoor LED projects in India go wrong before a single cabinet is manufactured. The buyer decides the size from a photo of somebody else's building, asks three vendors for an LED video wall price per square foot, and picks the cheapest number. Six months later the screen is washed out at 4 pm, the bottom two cabinets have water ingress, and the electrician has run a 6 kW load off a lighting circuit. None of that is a product failure. It is a site-survey failure. Here is how we survey a location in Bengaluru, Mumbai or Delhi before we quote, and how you can do the same walk-through yourself this week.
Start with the viewer, not the wall
The first two numbers that matter are dwell time (how many seconds a person can actually look at your screen) and minimum viewing distance (how far the nearest viewer stands). Everything else — pixel pitch, brightness, content length, even cabinet size — falls out of these two.
Stand at the exact spot your audience will be. On Outer Ring Road or at Silk Board, that is a vehicle stopped at a signal; Bengaluru junction cycles typically run 90–150 seconds, so a 15-second creative loops cleanly and a 45-second brand film does not. On a high street like Indiranagar 100 Ft Road or Jayanagar 4th Block, the pedestrian gives you 5–20 seconds while walking past — short, high-contrast, text-light content.
The pitch rule that actually works
The old thumb rule — pixel pitch in millimetres roughly equals comfortable viewing distance in metres — still holds for outdoor. P10 looks clean from about 10 m onwards, P6.67 from around 7 m, outdoor P4 from 4 m. Going finer than your site needs is the most common way Indian buyers overspend: a facade whose closest viewer is 25 m away gains nothing visible from P4 over P8, but the cost, power draw and data load all climb.
| Location type | Typical dwell | Nearest viewer | Suitable pixel pitch | Brightness needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic junction / flyover-facing facade | 60–150 sec | 20–40 m | P8 – P10 outdoor | 6,500–8,000 nits |
| High-street showroom facade | 5–20 sec | 5–12 m | P3.9 – P6.67 outdoor | 5,000–6,000 nits |
| Mall entrance / porte-cochere | 10–30 sec | 4–8 m | P2.5 – P4 | 2,500–5,000 nits (semi-outdoor) |
| Indoor lobby / atrium video wall | 15–60 sec | 3–6 m | P1.8 – P2.5 | 800–1,200 nits |
| Stadium, ground, large event | 30 sec+ | 30–80 m | P6.67 – P10 | 5,500–7,000 nits |
Which way does the screen face?
Take a compass reading. A west-facing facade in Bengaluru takes direct sun from roughly 3 pm to 6.30 pm — precisely your highest-footfall evening window. That is a 6,500–8,000 nit specification with a black-face LED lamp and a louvre/mask design for contrast, not a 4,500 nit budget panel. A north-facing wall or a screen under a deep cantilever can often be done at 5,000 nits and save you both capital cost and running power.
Also check what is opposite the screen. Glass towers on the other side of the road bounce glare straight back onto the display surface and flatten your contrast. In those cases we angle the structure 3–5 degrees rather than mounting dead flat — which, conveniently, also helps with rain.
Monsoon-proofing is a mounting decision, not just an IP rating
Every outdoor cabinet in the market claims IP65 front / IP54 rear. What separates a screen that survives five Bengaluru monsoons from one that fails in the first is how it is installed:
- Forward tilt of 3–5° so water sheets off the face instead of pooling on the module ledges.
- A top hood or drip edge extending 150–250 mm, which also cuts direct sun on the top rows.
- Cable entry from below with downward-facing glands — never a top entry, never a taped joint.
- Bottom drain holes kept open. Installers routinely silicone them shut "to stop water". They are there to let condensation out.
- Receiving cards and power supplies on isolated, ventilated mounts, with cabinet gaskets inspected before the first rains each June.
- Structure galvanised or epoxy-painted, not primer-and-enamel MS that rusts by the second season and streaks the screen face.
Wind load matters too. Design for 120–150 kmph on coastal Mumbai and Chennai installations, and insist the fabricator provides base-plate and anchor-bolt details for the parapet or column you are loading.
Power: settle this before you sign
Outdoor LED averages roughly 350–500 W per square metre in normal content, with peaks of 800–1,000 W/m² on full-white frames. A 6 m × 3 m facade screen (18 m²) therefore needs a sanctioned capacity comfortably above 15 kW, even though it will typically draw 7–9 kW while running.
Three things to confirm with your electrician during the survey:
- Three-phase availability at the mounting point, with balanced distribution across phases inside the screen.
- A dedicated MCB/RCCB and earthing pit — earth resistance under 5 ohms. Shared earthing with the building's lift or HVAC is a recurring cause of flicker and card failure.
- Voltage stabilisation. Many Indian commercial feeders swing between 190 V and 250 V. A servo stabiliser sized for the screen protects your power supplies and is far cheaper than replacing them.
On running cost: multiply your average kW by daily operating hours by your commercial tariff. Scheduling brightness in PixelOS — 100% from 10 am to 7 pm, 55–65% after dark — typically trims 20–30% off the monthly bill and extends LED life, because nobody needs 7,000 nits at 9 pm.
Service access: the question nobody asks on site
Walk behind the proposed wall. Is there 700–800 mm of clear working space and safe access? If yes, rear-service is fine. If the screen sits flush against a parapet, a lift shaft wall or a neighbouring building — which is the norm on tight Bengaluru commercial plots — you need front-serviceable panels, where modules and power supplies come out from the face with a magnetic tool. Getting this wrong turns a 20-minute module swap into a scaffolding job with building-society permissions.
Permissions, GST and a quote you can actually compare
Self-advertisement on your own premises is treated very differently from third-party hoarding under most municipal advertisement bye-laws. In Bengaluru, check current BBMP rules and any applicable advertisement fee before finalising size; in Mumbai and Delhi, the local body and, for road-facing installations, the traffic police view on brightness and animation both matter. Get this in writing early — it can change your permitted dimensions.
On pricing, LED displays attract 18% GST. Ask every vendor for a quote that separately shows panel area and cabinet count, pixel pitch and brand of module and driver IC, receiving/sending cards and processor, structure fabrication, cabling and stabiliser, installation and commissioning, plus warranty terms in writing. A per-square-foot number with no HSN code, no module brand and no structure scope is not a quote — it is a placeholder that grows later. PixelSpot publishes live, transparent pricing on pixelspot.in so you can size and budget before anyone visits your site.
Your 12-point site survey checklist
- Nearest and farthest viewer distance, measured, not estimated
- Dwell time at the viewing spot (time one signal cycle or one walk-past)
- Compass direction and hours of direct sun on the face
- Glare sources opposite the screen
- Mounting surface: RCC, brick, ACP facade or independent structure
- Wind exposure and height above ground
- Rear clearance → front-service or rear-service decision
- Power point distance, phase availability, sanctioned load headroom
- Earthing pit location and resistance
- Data run length from control room to screen (over 100 m, plan fibre)
- Rain water path, existing drainage and overflow points above the screen
- Municipal advertisement permission status and permitted size
Do this walk once with photographs and measurements, and you will get quotes that are genuinely comparable instead of three numbers that mean three different things.
Get a site-specific quote
PixelSpot manufactures in Bengaluru and ships factory-direct across India — Hikvision and Qiangli modules, PixelOS CMS, front-serviceable outdoor cabinets, free installation and a 2-year pixel-to-pixel warranty. Send us your location photos, viewing distance and rough size on WhatsApp and we will come back with a specification and a transparent, GST-inclusive quote for your actual site — whether it is a showroom facade, a junction-facing wall or an indoor lobby video wall.