Why I built Lift Displays
Thirty years on the tools, a company built and sold, and a retirement that turned into the system I always wanted on site.
Supposed to be retired
I've spent 30 years in the lift industry servicing, repairing and refurbishing lifts, and I built a lift company in the South West of England into a large business. When I sold it, the new owners kept the name, and I was supposed to retire.
Instead, I finally had time to build something I'd been thinking about for most of my career.
Most of my work was on older lifts: conversions and refurbishments in buildings that still had to keep running. New displays and push buttons have been available for years. What was missing was a system that made the job quicker to install and gave the people who use the lift more control.
What it is, and what it isn't
Lift Displays isn't a lift controller, and it plays no part in the lift's safety systems. It's the part that communicates with passengers, and it connects to the lift controller in a simple way, through conventional relays or over Modbus to a PLC. That's why it suits new installations and older lifts alike.
Five days down to two
One job sums it up. It was a six-floor goods lift with openings on opposite sides at different floor heights. Removing the old landing wiring and running new cabling took four days. With Lift Displays it's one network cable looped from floor to floor, and that job, including fitting new landing stations with displays, would have taken two.
Every landing, car and overdoor device is built on the same board. A landing device is a touch screen with two isolated opto inputs and two outputs, which can drive conventional push buttons or whatever else is connected to them. Over a door, the same board works as a display on its own, or its outputs can drive conventional LED arrows as well. The car version has 16 inputs and outputs for physical buttons and switches, with a large touch screen option for up to 40 floors. It's all one piece of software, set up in the configuration, so a site can use touch screens, traditional buttons, or both.
Watching people use lifts
In care homes I've watched staff push a trolley or a wheelchair into a car with no room to spare, then struggle to reach the car buttons. With call select, they choose their destination at the landing before they get in. A wheelchair user can also call the lift by voice from the landing.
On platform lifts with hold-to-run controls, I've lost count of the people who press the button, let go, press it again and wonder why nothing happens. So after four short presses, our system says:
Keep your finger on the button for the lift to move.
Caretakers and engineers
Taking a floor out of service used to mean a paper notice taped to the landing door, which more often than not slipped behind a panel and had to be fished out. With Lift Displays, a caretaker does it from their phone. They can take a floor out of service, set weekly opening hours, put a message on the screens, and adjust volume and brightness. Help is built into the unit, so none of it depends on an internet connection.
For engineers, every site is set up in our web-based Configurator instead of being hard-wired. Adding an isolating keyswitch is a configuration setting, not a rewire. Every button, lamp and relay can be tested from a browser during commissioning.
Designed in the UK, on the tools
Lift Displays is designed in the UK by someone who has serviced, repaired and refurbished lifts for a living. Every feature comes from something I saw go wrong on site, or something I wished I'd had in the van.
I was supposed to be retired. This is what I'd rather be doing.
Jonathan, founder
Got a refurbishment coming up?
Talk to us about fitting Lift Displays to the lift you've got.