Common questions
Interactive species displays for zoos & aquariums
The product
What is Slate?
Slate turns every wall in your venue into an interactive species display: real animals, real science, moving on screen and ready to explore by touch. Visitors scan a QR on any screen to carry the whole guide in their pocket, no app, no account. Behind it sits one CMS that runs every screen, a marketing engine for promotions, and analytics that tie it all to revenue.
Do we have to create the content?
No. We build and maintain the species library for you, drawn from trusted sources, the IUCN Red List, GBIF, OBIS, WoRMS, iNaturalist and the WDPA, and each animal's conservation status refreshes automatically. You can add your own copy, campaigns and branding on top, but you don't start from a blank page.
What can visitors do on the screens and in the app?
Explore any species at three reading levels (General, Kids, Expert), hear pages read aloud, switch language, and scan to continue in their browser. The free companion app gives them the whole library; the optional Explorer upgrade adds AR collecting, quests, collectible cards and narrated tank tours, with a share of every subscription going to conservation.
Pricing & ownership
How much does it cost?
Pricing is tailored to your venue, the number of screens, the mix of sizes and mounts, and whether you buy or lease. Tell us about your site and we'll send a quote, usually within a working day. You can also model your likely return first to see the commercial picture on your own figures.
Buy outright or lease?
Both. Buy means you own the screens as a long-term asset and license the software, lowest long-run cost. Lease & go bundles hardware and software into one bill with no upfront capital, so you go live in days and keep pace with screen tech as it's refreshed. Either way you get the CMS & analytics, the visitor companion app, the species database and updates, and ongoing support, monitoring and remote management.
Hardware
What screens do you use?
Durable commercial-grade displays built for years of public hands: flagship RK3588 silicon driving 4K, tempered glass as hard as quartz (Mohs 7), 500-nit brightness for bright gallery lighting, 10-point capacitive touch, etched anti-glare panels, and fully-sealed IP68 builds on option for splash zones. Wall display, floor totem or touch table, any size, portrait or landscape, plus custom builds when the exhibit demands one.
How do screens get set up?
You prepare each screen as a slot in the CMS, species, campaigns and schedules, before the hardware even arrives. When it lands, it boots straight to setup: enter your site PIN on the glass, pick the slot you prepared, and it's live. No laptop, no installer visit. Most screens go from power-on to live in a couple of minutes, and a venue can be running in days.
What happens if a screen loses internet?
Screens run offline and heal themselves: content is cached on the device, so an outage doesn't blank the glass. They reconnect and resync automatically when the network returns.
Integrations & data
Does it integrate with our other systems?
We build to fit your stack. Common connection points are ticketing, point-of-sale, membership/CRM and your analytics, tell us what you run and we'll scope it. If you'd like a specific integration, raise it with us early and we'll confirm what's possible.
What analytics do we get?
Impressions, QR scans and attributed revenue per campaign, species and screen, with live dashboards, anomaly alerts and scheduled reports. Most venues can't measure screen-driven engagement today; Slate gives you the numbers to take to a board.
What visitor data is collected, and is it private?
The free companion app needs no account and asks for no personal details: a visitor just scans and browses in their own browser. Analytics are aggregate (counts of impressions, scans and attributed sales), not individual tracking. The Explorer subscription, which is optional, holds an account; how we handle that is set out in our Privacy Policy. Hosting, data processing and GDPR specifics are covered there too, and we're happy to complete a security questionnaire for procurement.
Accessibility & languages
Is it accessible?
Accessibility is built in: a high-contrast mode, read-aloud audio on every species, and three reading levels so the same exhibit works for a child, a casual visitor or an enthusiast. Touch tables are angled for small hands and busy learning spaces.
What about non-English speakers?
Screens offer on-screen translation across 60 languages, and reset to your default for the next guest. The companion app travels in the visitor's own language too.
Onboarding & support
How long until we're live, and who does the work?
We handle the heavy lifting: the species library is preloaded, screens claim themselves on the glass, and you can build campaigns and schedules in the CMS before hardware arrives. A typical venue is live in days, not months.
What support do we get afterwards?
Ongoing support, fleet monitoring and remote management are included with every Slate deployment. You can see every screen as a live tile, push content, and manage brightness, volume, schedules and restarts from one dashboard, or hand it to staff on the glass itself. If a panel needs attention, you'll know.
Conservation
How does the conservation funding work?
A share of every Explorer subscription goes to conservation, a recurring contribution that grows as your visitors engage, at no cost to you. We'll confirm the conservation programme and reporting with you as part of onboarding.