** UPDATE: You can buy this kit from the CodeSingh shop **
Keep an eye on your teams score without having to constantly refresh your mobile by building this live LED Football (Soccer) scoreboard.
Inspired by this post by u/LobsterThief on Reddit.com and special mention to /u/RiffnShred for the original idea
Hardware
- Raspberry Pi Zero WH
- 64x32 indoor RGB full color led display screen (buy here affiliate link)
- Adafruit RGB Matrix Bonnet for Raspberry Pi (buy here affiliate link)
- 5 amp power supply. (I got one from a local mobile phone shop)
- 16 GB MicroSD.
Software
- Raspberry Pi OS Lite https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/
- Rpi-rgb-led-matrix https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix
- Rpi-led-scoreboard https://github.com/CodeSingh/rpi-led-scoreboard
Construct and Install Software
Firstly go through points 4 to 6 from Learn how to build your own NHL Game Day Scoreboard using a Raspberry Pi and LED panel!Keep the micro sd in your computer
Create an empty file called ssh (no extension just ssh) and copy to the sd card
Create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdevReplace WiFi SSID with your wifi network name
update_config=1
country=GB
network={
ssid="WiFi SSID"
psk="WPA/WPA2 passphrase"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}
Replace WPA/WPA2 passphrase with your wifi network password
Replace GB with your two letter country code if you are not in the UK
Save wpa_supplicant.conf
Copy over wpa_supplicant.conf and ssh files to micro sd card
Insert micro sd card into raspberry pi zero
Leave for a few minutes to let everything start up correctly.
Download Advanced IP Scanner and set it to scan your network for devices.
If everything goes ok then you should see an ip address labelled as Raspbery Pi Foundation
Download and install Putty
Enter the Raspberry Pi's ip address into the Host Name and open
Log in with the username: pi and password: raspberry when prompted.
Enter the following commands to update the list of install packages and then upgrade all install software.
sudo apt-get updateEnter the following command to install git
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install git -yEnter the following command to download scoreboard code and
git clone https://github.com/CodeSingh/rpi-led-scoreboard.gitEnter the following commands to go into the scoreboard directory and make the install file executable.
cd rpi-led-scoreboard
sudo chmod 777 install.sh
Run the install file
sudo ./install.shI have used the flicker-free setting by following these instructions as they make the scoreboard display a lot better but it requires a modification on the bonnet. If you don't do the modification then you will need to make the following changes in the display.sh file.
From
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/rpi-led-scoreboard/image_viewer.py --led-cols=64 --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat-pwm --led-brightness=40 &
To
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/rpi-led-scoreboard/image_viewer.py --led-cols=64 --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat --led-brightness=40 &
Reboot the Raspberry Pi
sudo reboot
Configure
The default configuration will show Manchester United games in the English Premier League. If they don't have a game today then it will show their up coming games or just the time, depending on what the BBC website is showing today.In the unlikely event that you want to use the scoreboard to see another teams matches you can change the configuration using the built in web configuration page.
The configuration page can be accessed by browsing to the Raspberry Pi's ip address in your favourite browser.
You will be greeted by a magnificently basic webpage with all scoreboard settings.
The configuration page has following features:
- Reboot button. Used to restart the scoreboard
- Status: Used to turn the LED panel off and on
- Team: This is where you can choose the team to show on the scoreboard. Please note: You can select All to show all todays matches on a 30 second rotation.
- Live Score Type: Used to choose between English Premier League and English FA Cup
- Weather API Key: This is an external API key used to retrieve weather information from https://openweathermap.org/. You can obtain a free weather API key using the Get API Key link.
- Weather API Units: Used to choose centigrade or fahrenheit for the temperature display.
- Weather Location: If you want to change the city used for the weather information then type in city, country here.
Notes
- Scores and weather information are updated every minute on a cronjob
- I use flask to create the webpage
- The weather icon sometimes shows a white background. I'm not sure why this happens.
- I haven't managed to create a case for this yet.
- I scrape BBC Sport website so the system may stop working if BBC Sport change their website. To combat this I have tried to make the score scraping system modular, so adding different score scraping sources to the system is possible.
- If you aren't inclined to make this yourself I can make it for you (for a small fee)
- If you want any particular customisations then let me know in the comments