Digital LED Billboards Luminance Measurement

Various kinds of advertising medium are used for outdoor and one such medium is the digital LED billboards. Contrary to the traditional static billboards which uses the light from the sun to make its displayed image visible and readable during daytime, digital LED billboards requires a high level of brightness to be legible. The brightness level necessary to be legible when exposed to direct sunlight can be many thousands of candela per square meter (cd/m²) or nits.

If that same level of brightness is used during night time, digital LED billboards, especially those located near the roads, can pose potential threat to driver’s visibility and traffic safety. In addition, it also wastes electricity and can cause unnecessary wear on the display due to increased heat generated. To address these concerns, luminance measurement of the digital LED billboards using a luminance meter would be helpful.

To identify a billboard maximum luminance, we need to measure the luminance of the white area of the billboard with its power adjusted to the maximum. As billboards often display images with several colors simultaneously, certain colors like white can appear brighter than colors such as red or blue. To measure the overall luminance of a billboard, we can either measure each area of color separately and find their average or measure the luminance of multiple areas of color all at the same time.