The full tour
A split-flap board is an attention instrument: when the flaps move, people look up. This page is what we've taught it to say once they do — and the honest math on what that's worth to a business.
Sixty seconds
Watch the board introduce itself.
The whole pitch, one minute, no talking — the board does what it does best and says it in flaps.
Take it with you: the video · animated GIF · the two-page PDF
Running right now
That was the pitch. This is the actual board.
Not a recording and not a mock-up — this is the Snoqualmie board as it stands this minute, on the same feed as the screens in the valley. If the pass is closed, it says so here too.
Sound is off in the frame — open the full board to hear the flaps. Want it on your own site? We'll give you the embed code.
Why a flap board and not a slideshow
The screen on the wall has physics, and most signage loses to them.
The research on public screens is humbling. Measured dwell on digital signage runs well under a second, and people have learned to expect advertising on a glowing rectangle and route their eyes around it — the effect researchers named display blindness, after finding that what an audience expects a screen to show predicts whether they look at it at all. Three things beat that reflex, and this board is built on all three.
Sound only when something changed
The board rotates silently most of the day. The full clatter is saved for a real change — a pass closing, a severe weather alert, a name going up. When you hear it, something happened. Constant animation gets tuned out; a discrete mechanical clack gets looked at.
It says things about here
Screens hold attention when the content is about the viewer's own life — their bus, their kid's game, their road home. That's the whole editorial policy. No stock photos, no national news wallpaper.
The strongest attractor is yourself
The single best-performing thing a public screen can show is the people looking at it. Shoutouts, game winners, Speaker's Corner — the board puts real names and faces up, on purpose, with human and AI moderation in front of every one.
The channels
Thirty-six channels, and the screen fills itself.
This is the difference between a board and signage software. Signage hands you an empty canvas and makes filling it your job forever. This board arrives already full — live sources found, connected, and kept alive by us — and you switch on the ones your room cares about.
Seasonal channels appear when the valley needs them — a Boeing Classic week board with a countdown to the jet flyover, election countdowns that become live results at 8 PM on election night — and step aside when the moment passes.
New this month
The board learned to answer back.
The TV shows a QR; scanning it puts the same board on a phone. That second surface turned the board from a bulletin into a conversation — and August was the month it found its voice.
The town's stage, safely
Anyone can post a selfie and a short statement from their phone. Two independent AI screeners check it in seconds, clean posts air on the TV as a Towne Crier postcard — announced by a handbell — and every post retires itself after an hour.
A ritual, with a sponsor line
One local question a day, answered from phones, revealed on the board, streaks kept — with a weekly freeze token for the days life gets in the way. Local businesses can present it for a day — a sponsorship people actually notice because it's attached to the thing they came back for.
Reasons to come back
A weekly town poll with a live results graph, Name That Business with a new letter every hour, Closest Guess, rivalry pick'em, and a Five Districts passport stamped by checking in at real counters around town.
A world map of viewers
The board shows where it's being watched — country-level and privacy-safe, with a consent-only city map. Operators get the same map with real audience counts in the panel — and the controls speak English, Español, 中文, and Français with one tap.
Pulse
A news engine that reads eleven local feeds, splits stories into individual claims, and runs each through sixteen gates before a human sees it. It publishes nothing yet — it's in a 30-day proving run first, because a town board has to be right before it's interesting.
Original, Satin, Neon Nights
The classic station board, a satin industrial finish, and a neon night mode — plus your brand colors mixed into the flap wheel itself, so a customized board reads as yours from across the room.
Who it's for
Any room where people wait, gather, or work.
The same engine wears different content. These are the rooms we've built it for — each one a TV you probably already own, pointed at a URL.
The front of house
- Hotel & lodge lobbies — welcomes by name, today's events, shuttle and road conditions; the reader board reborn, photographed by guests
- Taprooms, cafes & restaurants — today's special, what's on the bar, tonight's band, and a board that knows right now whether the kitchen is still open (see both reels)
- Clinics & waiting rooms — occupied waiting feels shorter; ER waits, pharmacy hours, health notices, calm content with no cable news
- Retail & farm stores — hours, seasonal availability, "the flowers came in," a product board with a QR to buy
- Short-term rentals — Wi-Fi, house rules, checkout, and the valley's live conditions as the welcome screen
The back of house
- Offices & coworking — the ambient front page of your intranet: calendar, wins, new faces, the daily question at the coffee machine
- Shift operations — schedules, status, and safety notes for people who will never open a mid-shift email
- Schools, clubs & churches — this week's events, volunteer needs, recognition by name, family-friendly mode on
- Front desks — one glance answers "what's happening today" before anyone asks
The honest math
What it's worth, without the marketing weather.
Payback in customers, not impressions
- A restaurant: one new monthly regular is ~$45/month of gross — a single converted regular nearly covers the slot; three cover it comfortably on margin
- A salon: one retained client is worth $200–$800 a year — two a year and the slot is profitable
- A taproom: three or four extra tabs a month covers it; one new weekly regular exceeds it
- Anchors: little-league banners run $75–$400 a season; a typical local sponsorship ~$750; chamber dues $300–$400 a year with no daily screen
We won't promise attribution — nobody scans a coupon off a flap board. This is high-frequency presence at banner prices, with a real airing count instead of modelled reach.
Two audiences, one screen
- Your staff: Microsoft's Work Trend Index found 63% of frontline workers say messages from leadership don't make it to them — 9,600 workers across eight industries — because most of the workforce is deskless and email-poor. A board where they already stand is a channel with no login
- Illustrative: 20 staff each saving ten minutes a week of "what's happening today?" is roughly $3,400 a year at $20/hour — several times the subscription
- Your customers: occupied waiting feels shorter than unoccupied waiting — queue psychology's oldest, sturdiest finding — and an engaging room measurably nudges satisfaction and spend
- Your till: with the Sponsor Suite, a venue reselling eight $50 slots grosses more than the board costs — the screen becomes media you own
Compared honestly
What you'd pay elsewhere, and what you'd get.
Sources: Vestaboard published pricing · Split-Flap TV published tiers (Economy €19.99, Business €36.99, Cockpit €49.99 — live data on Cockpit only) · published per-screen pricing for Yodeck, OptiSigns and ScreenCloud · Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report, fieldwork by Edelman Data x Intelligence, 9,600 frontline workers across eight industries and eight markets · Müller et al., “Display Blindness: The Effect of Expectations on Attention towards Digital Signage” · Maister, “The Psychology of Waiting Lines”, for occupied vs unoccupied waiting. Competitor prices move; these were checked in August 2026.
Where they beat us, plainly: a real Vestaboard is a physical object with physical sound, and nothing on a screen fully replaces that. Signage software is cheaper per screen if you already employ someone to feed it. Everyone else is renting you a canvas. We're the only one selling the board already full of your town — with an audience that can answer back.
Next step
See it, then decide what your room would say.
The valley board runs right now, all day — open it on any screen and watch a rotation. Then fifteen minutes on the phone is enough to sketch what a board for your business would carry: your content, your colors, your hours, the live channels your room cares about.