Israeli Start-up Demo’ing Full Color Highway Billboard Tech That Uses Almost No Power

October 10, 2024 by Dave Haynes

An Israeli company is doing a demo next week in New York of billboard technology that you might think is what would happen if color e-paper and electro-mechanical technologies snuck off to a hotel room and ended up with a baby.

The product developed by KA-Dynamic Color uses a distinct type of reflective display tech (not E Ink’s) and a loose variation on the split-flap display boards you used to see at big rail stations and airports, before LED displays were really a thing. The net result is a new kind of outdoor billboard technology that is full color, digitally updated and only uses power when the visuals change.

The company is doing a demo next week in New York City with a partner based in the city, Sign Expo. It will be in a park at the corner of Barclay Street and West Broadway, Tuesday and Wednesday from 10-4. You can see the invite page here …

I can’t go, but was very curious about what was up with this … so I had a call with founder and CEO Arnon Kraemer, who has one of the more interesting Linkedin profiles I’ve come across. He is an industrial engineer by training, has an MBA from Israel’s top tech school, was an F16 fighter pilot for the IDF, and has been a commercial pilot for El Al for 20 years.

Kraemer says the technology he guided development on was inspired by the way chameleons use pigments to change color and be reflective. The key innovation with KA is using pigments on thin, flexible filters that float in silicon oil. By moving these filters, the technology can achieve endless combinations of colors.

Like E Ink and similar display products, this is reflective – meaning it is not artificially illuminated by man-made lights (like LEDs), but is lit up instead by the sun. At night, as is the case with paper and vinyl billboards, the ad displays are illuminated by modest overhead lighting.

The pitch has at least a couple of key components:

1. Like e-paper products, energy is only required when the visuals change, so the energy needed to run these billboards would be minimal, and could be done for night lighting just off solar arrays or small wind turbines at the billboard site. It would also nullify what could be big costs and complications of getting power run to a site on a roadside;
2. Unlike color e-paper products coming on the market, which can be muted by a filter and support a limited color range, there are no compromises on color reproduction. These things support 650,000 “pigmented pixel” colors and each pixel is addressable and managed.

The tech is specifically aimed at the highway billboard market – displays viewed at considerable distances, with visuals roughly equal to a 10mm outdoor LED display. Kraemer says years of testing and R&D have him comfy the units will run happily in the field without incident.

That’s important, because the core of how these things change visuals is akin to split flap and flip disc signs – using what KA calls a “patented electro hydraulic system.” The displays are similar in form, and how they come together, to conventional LED displays. There are tiles that equate to LED modules, and the tiles roll up to make cabinets or housings that are then stacked and lined up to make larger displays. The pixels, from what I can see of the visuals on the website, are a bit reminiscent of colorful fish scales in how they look in these cabinets.

A mechanical system a bit like split flap systems manages the rapid changes of the color flaps, with a 0.3 sec refresh rate. The system has what is described as a “progressive-learning capability” and an auto-correction function.

Like low rez LED boards, they might look a little funky up close, but the visuals all pull together when seen, as intended, at a distance.

The company’s roadmap and rollout were all but halted by COVID, but Kraemer says things are now rolling again. The demo next week will be a sizeable display unit, and by Q1 2025 he expects to be able to build a full reference display. With contracts and tooling by a contract manufacturer, he says the hope and plan it to have product ready to ship by early 2026.

While Europe seems a high opportunity market because media companies there are focused on energy usage and sustainability, Kraemer says his focus is on the US market because of scale and the proliferation of highway billboards. While green issues are not top of mind (yet, things like Hurricane Milton can adjust thinking), billboard operators do look at their operating costs and would be very happy to have units that sip power instead of guzzling it like college freshmen at frat house rush party.

This hits me as one of those you need to see it in person situations, and at some point I will. If you are in NYC next week, and have time to check this out, let me know.