Portable scoreboard
About 15 (or more...) years ago my daughters were on a softball team and due to the starting times I was usually never there at the start of the game. It seemed as though there was never a working scoreboard at any of the fields so coming in late my first question was always "What's the score?" or "What inning?". I'm sure a lot of you parents out there with children in sports can relate to this.
So I decided what was needed was a portable scoreboard. One that could be just hung onto the back stop fence and ran on batteries. I was always intrigued with those electro-magnetic flip digits that I used to see along the highways on information displays or construction signs so I sought out after the manufacturer and acquired some. They were rather expensive at the time. They were made by a company called Staver / Signalex. They held the exclusive patent on these and at the time seemed to be the only manufacturer of these type displays. They have since been bought out by Scoretronics I believe.
This was my first attempt at designing my own circuit board using ExpressPCB. I used a PIC chip for the micro along with a ULN2003 driver. Routing to the digits I used a ribbon cable and a set of berg jumpers to "address" each digit. That way all the signals were on one cable.
The case measures about 37" wide by 26" high. It is made from polyethylene (melted milk jugs). I cut the outer case pieces on a table saw and cut grooves in them to accommodate the 3 plexiglass panels. It runs on a bunch of C batteries as you can see in the picture. They last forever as the most current draw is when a digit segment is flipping otherwise the micro is idle and draws virtually nothing. There are 2 hooks on the back to allow it to be hung on any back stop fence and there is a carrying handle on the top.
You control the scoreboard by a long corded 3 button pendant. There's a button for "Home", Guests", and "Outs". I found that anytime I had this at the ball park there was never a problem finding a young child that "wanted to keep score". A single momentary press will increment the number and a long press will cause it to count backwards as long as you hold it down with it stopping at zero. The outs counter counts like this- 0 - 1 - 2 - 0 - 1 - 2 - then increments the inning counter and starts the outs counter at 0 again. Holding the "Outs" button down also causes it to count backwards along with the innings. I installed a jumper in the cord plug that turns the power on when plugged in. When the scoreboard starts up it flips all the digits to 8 as a test then presets the scores and outs to 0 and the inning to 1.
It has been in storage for many years in my garage and today I decided to dig it out and "Propellerize" it. I am also going to install a bluetooth module and devise an Android app to control it along with some other "unique" features. So stay tuned for the progress....
Here's a few photos of it.
So I decided what was needed was a portable scoreboard. One that could be just hung onto the back stop fence and ran on batteries. I was always intrigued with those electro-magnetic flip digits that I used to see along the highways on information displays or construction signs so I sought out after the manufacturer and acquired some. They were rather expensive at the time. They were made by a company called Staver / Signalex. They held the exclusive patent on these and at the time seemed to be the only manufacturer of these type displays. They have since been bought out by Scoretronics I believe.
This was my first attempt at designing my own circuit board using ExpressPCB. I used a PIC chip for the micro along with a ULN2003 driver. Routing to the digits I used a ribbon cable and a set of berg jumpers to "address" each digit. That way all the signals were on one cable.
The case measures about 37" wide by 26" high. It is made from polyethylene (melted milk jugs). I cut the outer case pieces on a table saw and cut grooves in them to accommodate the 3 plexiglass panels. It runs on a bunch of C batteries as you can see in the picture. They last forever as the most current draw is when a digit segment is flipping otherwise the micro is idle and draws virtually nothing. There are 2 hooks on the back to allow it to be hung on any back stop fence and there is a carrying handle on the top.
You control the scoreboard by a long corded 3 button pendant. There's a button for "Home", Guests", and "Outs". I found that anytime I had this at the ball park there was never a problem finding a young child that "wanted to keep score". A single momentary press will increment the number and a long press will cause it to count backwards as long as you hold it down with it stopping at zero. The outs counter counts like this- 0 - 1 - 2 - 0 - 1 - 2 - then increments the inning counter and starts the outs counter at 0 again. Holding the "Outs" button down also causes it to count backwards along with the innings. I installed a jumper in the cord plug that turns the power on when plugged in. When the scoreboard starts up it flips all the digits to 8 as a test then presets the scores and outs to 0 and the inning to 1.
It has been in storage for many years in my garage and today I decided to dig it out and "Propellerize" it. I am also going to install a bluetooth module and devise an Android app to control it along with some other "unique" features. So stay tuned for the progress....
Here's a few photos of it.
1024 x 768 - 79K
1024 x 768 - 75K
1024 x 768 - 78K
1024 x 768 - 117K
1024 x 768 - 116K
Comments
Good luck!