Devices

turnda needs no special hardware. The lobby TV and the kiosk are ordinary web pages, so any screen with a modern browser can show them. This page says which devices to buy, which to avoid, and what each one needs to behave.

The editor shows this guidance itself, under Whole board → Screen → What can I plug in?. It sorts devices into three groups.

A board is read from across a room, so the right size depends on how far the back row sits from the screen. turnda works it out from two things you set on the Whole board tab: the screen's size (a list from 22 to 85 inch, or Exact size, if yours isn't listed from 15 to 120 inch) and How far away do people stand?.

• The rule it uses: about an inch of letter height for every 22 feet (6.7 m) of viewing distance. If the smallest numbers would come out smaller than that, the editor warns you — it never blocks you.
• If you leave the distance empty, it guesses from the screen size: about 37% of the screen's diagonal, counted in feet. A 43 inch screen is guessed at 16 ft (4.9 m); a 55 inch screen at 20 ft (6.1 m).
• Distance matters more than screen size. If a queue won't fit, split it over two pages instead of shrinking it.

The same numbers, for every size on the list, are in the editor under What size screen do I need?. The table above is worked out from them.

• See it on other screens shows your board on a 22 inch wide, a 46 inch wide and a 32 inch upright screen at once, and says in words whether its smallest numbers still read from your distance.
• The editor tells you the most rows and columns it recommends for your screen, because more than that stops being readable.
• Screen size S, M, L or XL on the screen's own settings is a rough size. Only S changes anything: it shows about a quarter fewer rows so the rest are bigger. See Device settings & scheduling.

Those three were measured in a desktop browser at those sizes, not on a TV. Any resolution works, because the board is drawn to fit whatever it is shown on.

Fit or Fill. In a screen's settings, How the board sits on this screen offers “Fit — show it all” and “Fill — cover the screen”. “Fit shows the whole board, with bars if the screen is a different shape. Fill covers the whole screen and may trim a sliver at the edges.” A screen only a few percent away from the usual shape is filled edge to edge anyway; that is Odd-shaped screens that still fill on the Whole board tab. For the bars' colour see Board look & sound.

• Telling the screen which way it hangs. In a screen's settings, Rotation offers 0°, 90° or 270°. Rotate the picture there rather than turning the TV's own setting.
• If you design a wide board and hang the TV upright, the screen shows a small note: “This screen is upright, but this design is built for a wide one — a Tall screen design would fill it. Switch it in Devices.”
• Switching twins. A board that started from a layout made for the other way round offers Use the … layout. It asks “Switch to the … layout?” and says “This replaces the panels on this board with that layout's panels. Your wording, colours and sound settings stay.” Press Switch layout to go ahead or Keep what I have to stay as you are.
• A board squeezed too small is replaced by “This board needs a bigger screen.” The limit is about 620 pixels, which is what a wide board gets on a phone.

Mounting tips. Hang it where the back row can see it without turning, at or just above eye height for the people standing nearest, and away from a window that puts glare on the glass. We have no measurement behind these three, they are ordinary good practice.

Below those, nothing crashes but the page looks flatter and plainer: shadows, gradients and some effects stop being drawn. That is a floor set by the styling tools the product is built with, not something we can lower. A TV or stick whose browser cannot be updated past that point will not look right.

Kiosk mode. A tablet at the counter should stay on the kiosk page. turnda keeps the kiosk screen awake and restarts it when frozen, but it cannot stop a visitor leaving the page. For that, use the tablet's own locking feature: Guided Access on an iPad, or screen pinning on an Android or Fire tablet. These are your device's features, we have not tested them on a real tablet, and the product's own advice is simply “use the tablet's own guided-access or kiosk mode”.

A call can flash only, play a chime, or say the number. The settings are in Board look & sound. What a device does with them:

A board shows the live queue, so it needs the internet. It asks for updates every 30 seconds, and also keeps a live connection open so changes arrive at once.

• It comes back by itself. A board that has lost the internet keeps trying and recovers on its own once Wi-Fi returns. No one needs to touch it.
• It tells the room the truth. The numbers on the wall keep showing the last known queue, and the band tells everyone exactly how old they are.
• The Devices list marks a screen offline when it has not checked in for about a minute and a half.
• The kiosk keeps a visitor's details if the connection drops mid-join (“You're offline … We've got your details. We'll finish this as soon as you're back.”) and finishes the join when it returns.

• Re-pairing. A screen showing “Re-pair to monitor” just needs pairing once more. Unpair frees the device for a different TV and keeps the setup. Remove screen deletes it.
• Several screens. Add as many as you need. Add another screen adds one to the same line, and the product sets no limit on how many screens a line has. Each has its own settings, its own board and, if its line has two or more counters, its own Show calls for choice, so a screen on each room's door shows only that room.
• One TV, more than one board. A schedule can swap boards through the day.
• On the TV itself, tap or press any key to show the controls. Identify this screen shows which screen this is, Refresh reloads it, Re-pair this screen goes to the connect page, and Diagnostics shows the connection, whether live push is working, and an app version.
• Run self-test inside Diagnostics reports “Reachable” with a time, or says it failed.

• What to use. A spare tablet or an old phone, left open on the kiosk page. In the line's Share / Get found panel choose Kiosk tablet and press Open on this tablet.
• Touch. The Join button and the fields measured at least 44 pixels tall in our own check, and the kiosk's text starts one size larger than the join page because people read it standing up.
• Language. The tablet shows your shop's language, not the tablet's own.
• Privacy. The screen wipes everything a visitor typed the moment it resets, with no history and no back-button trail. Details are in Running the counter tablet.
• Tamper. The board and kiosk addresses are public and read-only. Nobody can change the queue from them. Passers-by can use the on-screen controls on a board, so mute and turn are saved per device, but nothing there changes what you set. Re-pair this screen still needs a fresh code that only you can show.
• Cleaning. Clean the glass as the maker advises. A wipe can register as a tap, so do it between visitors; the kiosk clears itself after each person.

If you try a device and it works, or does not, tell us from Contact us. The more we learn from real shops, the more of this list can move to Tested.

Related: Pair a screen / device · Connect a TV (pairing) · Device settings & scheduling · Readability on the TV · The lobby board is blank or offline