Soccer Ticker for Matrix LED Displays with Controlling APP

A Christmas present for my son Moritz.:grinning:

This ticker app retrieves soccer data from https://www.football-data.org and displays scores and standings on a matrix LED display.

It is based upon a Raspberry Pi. I used a Revision 2 Model B with only one USB and a Edimax WLAN module. You may as well use other Raspberry Pi hardware.

The display is a 32x8 LED BTF-LIGHTING WS2812BECO from Amazon.

The application uses the following third party software:

• Raspberry Pi OS Lite 32 Bit from https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
• JQ a JSON parser
• Lighttpd web server
• rpi-ws2812-server display driver service

Please make shure to read and accept the licence conditions of each third party prodcut.

The WebAPP

Once you installed the application on your Raspberry Pi you can open a WebAPP to select and configure the soccer leagues to display.

The WebAPP offers several options as you can see on the screenshot.

Enable lets you switch a league on or off

Speed lets you select one of 4 different ticker speeds

Mode lets you select 4 different modes which are:

• ?:? Games of the day only
• ?/2:3 Games of the day or games of gameday (which may cover more than one date)
• ?+2:3 Just the Games of gameday
• 1,2,3... Games of gameday or standings

Color lets you select the color of the ticker text

Hardware setup

Parts

These are the parts that comprise the soccer ticker. Basically a Raspberry Pi with power adapter a WLAN Module and of course the Matrix display. The power adapter should have 2 Amps to run the display properly.

Display

I built a housing with acrylic panels.

Wireing

The matrix display comes with 3 wires.

Ground  (WHITE)
+5V     (RED)
Data In (GREEN)

The data in goes to PIN 18 on the Raspberry.

Software installation

• Install the Pi OS
  • Create a boot SD-Card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite 32 Bit from https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
  • Connect a monitor, a dual USB hub and plug the keyboard and the edimax WLAN stick to the Raspberry Pi
  • Insert the SD-Card
  • Power the Raspberry Pi
  • Wait for the end of the setup process of the Raspberry Pi OS Lite 32
  • When asked enter exactly "pi" as user
  • When asked enter a passwort of your choice
  • Enter sudo raspi-config
  • Activate WLAN
  • Activate SSH
  • Expand the filesystem
  • Set the hostname to your choice or use "sportticker"
  • Enter sudo reboot
• Access the Pi with SSH
  • Check your router if Raspberry connected the WLAN
  • Open a terminal window on windows or iOS
  • Enter ssh pi@sportticker or ssh pi@[THE WLAN IP]"
  • Enter your passwort
  • You may now switch off the Raspberry, disconnect the keyboard and the monitor, leave the WLAN stick and switch the raspberry on again.
• Install the rpi-ws2812-server
  • Log in again via terminal window and SSH
  • Go to https://github.com/tom-2015/rpi-ws2812-server and follow the instructions
  • Do NOT install the service
  • Make shure the LED Matrix data in is connected with pin 18
  • Test the display
  • Go to the rpi-ws2812-server directory
  • Start the display driver with sudo ./ws2812svr
  • Enter

    setup 1,10,3 
    init 
    fill 1,006600 
    render
    

  • You should the the first 10 LEDs lighting
• Install JQ
  • Enter sudo apt-get install jq
• Install the ticker service
  • Go to the home directory with cd $HOME
  • Install the ticker with git clone https://github.com/youminds/youminds-sportticker.git
  • Obtain an ID from https://www.football-data.org in order to use the soccer API.
  • In the $HOME directory create a file "fdid" with the ID using nano fdid
  • Test the ticker
  • Change into the youminds-sportticker directory
  • Start the ticker with bash tickerloop.sh
  • You should see the ticker running on the display
  • Interrput the ticker with CTRL+C
  • Install the ticker service with sudo bash tickerinstall.sh
• Configure the ticker service
  • You may now configure the ticker by editing the configfiles in the /conf subdir
  • The syntax is: [LEAGUEID];[COLOR];[SPEED];[NAME];[MODE]
  • Where MODE is one of the following values: todayonly | todayorgameday | gamedayonly | gamedayorstandings
• Or you may install the Web App for convenient configuration
  • Install lighttpd with sudo apt-get install lighttpd
    • Open a browser and type "http://sportticker" you should see lighttpd main page
    • Enable cgi with sudo lighty-enable-mod cgi
    • Restart lighttpd with sudo service lighttpd force-reload
  • Install the web app
    • Go to the directory /cgi-bin
    • Enter bash build.sh
    • When the build finishes type "http://sportticker" again into a browser
    • You may now use the web application to configure the ticker
    • Changes will only take effect after the ticker has finished one round with all configured soccer data
• HAVE FUN