A single-sided display unit includes one 57” Full HD LCD panel and a double-sided display unit includes two LCD panels respectively. Each LCD panel consists of a touch screen display, control computer, local hard drive, two cameras, an NCF/RFID reader and a loudspeaker. In addition, a display unit also includes a 100 Mbps Internet connection and access points for panOULU WLAN, panOULU BT and panOULU WSN.

The UBI displays offer a pronounced channel for presenting visual information. Large public displays have been used for commercial and informative communication for a long time now. They have typically been placed in locations where plenty of people move, for example in city centres, shopping centres, airports or roads with heavy traffic. They usually offer a one-way stream of information in the form of one application. In Ubiquitous Oulu, the large public displays are used in a new way; in addition to the traditional broadcast channel, they simultaneously offer also an interactive browsing view. This creates an interesting challenge in both realising the interactivity and dividing the dynamic display between different applications.

The UBI display is either in a passive or an interactive mode. In the passive mode, the entire screen is reserved for the UBI Channel and in the interactive mode the screen is divided between the UBI Channel, UBI Portal and a mobile application window. The UBI display transfers from the passive mode into the interactive mode when the face recognition device observes a face oriented towards the screen from the video image the cameras produce, or when a user touches the screen with her finger, or the NFC/RFID reader with the UBI identifier.

In the first phase between June and August 2009, six indoor UBI displays are installed into the public facilities of the city and six outdoor displays are installed into the city centre. The indoor displays are single-sided and the outdoor displays are double-sided.