Renovating an Old Baseball Score Board

Using Arduino Project Guidance
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I want to run this project by the Wise Ones while I'm still in the planning stage. I am looking at renovating and upgrading an old scoreboard. At this point I have not had a chance to even look at the existing controls and hardware so this is somewhat theoretical.

What I know:
The unit has a remote control which tells me it's not as old as I was led to believe, but who knows. It uses incandescent light bulbs to form the digits. It has some kind of controller base unit. From the press box to the board has to be 300+ feet as the crow flies, so likely 400+ if the conduit/cables go along the outside of the field.

What I don't know:
What kind of controller and how does it manage/communicate with the board. What is the voltage at the board, high or low voltage. Is the source of that voltage at the board or does it go through transmission of some kind. What kind of communication cabling is there, number of conductors to repurpose.

What I'm thinking of doing:
The plan right now is to convert from bulbs to these 12VDC LED modules. Then use an Arduino, MAX7219CNG, eight 16ch Multifunction RS485 Relay Boards with RS485 switch boards.

I will write the sketch to control increment and decrement of the various digits/LED's as well as a simple count down minute timer. I'd like to retain the use of the remote since I know that's not difficult to do, but I'd also like to make a control base with buttons.

By my count, using three LED modules per segment and one per individual count, I'll need:

8 - 8 channel relay boards; using 59 of the 64 relays driving 162 LED modules. Each segment made of 3 LED modules in series, triggered by one relay.

Board
Board1056×685 203 KB

Relays
Relays480×670 17.6 KB

Initial concerns:
Communication. I think I'll need RS485 due to the possible transmission distance. That being said, which end of the comm line do I put various components? Keep the Arduino and remote sensor in the control base, communicate to the MAX7219 in the score board over RS485 and and have local relay board management in the scoreboard itself? Or do I put the MAX7219 in the control base and it communicates to the relay boards over RS485?

Layout
Layout1056×590 267 KB

My primary concern right now is the communication between controls and score board.

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Do you happen to know the make and model of the scoreboard or controller? I have worked on scoreboards by All-American, Nevco, Fair-Play, Sportable and Daktronics, dating back to incandescent and early "Low-Power" alternatives such as "Flip-Digits", "Flap-wheel digits", "glo-cube digits", etc. What part of the scoreboard do you want to keep?

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Great to hear of your experience. I really know nothing about the old board right now. I hope to get out to the field this week. It's a 40 mile round trip for me to get to it so I have to plan for the trip.

The best I can do right now is a screen shot of the board from Google Street View.

image

You can see there isn't a set of digits for time, I intend to add that later.

Without knowing more about the board and controller I can't say yet what I want to keep. I certainly want to keep the board it self and I hope there is a way to make the LED modules work with the existing bulb structure. I'm guessing there's some sort of tube that helps manage the light and make it more of a "dot". If there is, then I'd like to figure out a way to get the LED module to use the same tubes.

If the controller is working, which I'm being told it isn't, then I have to decide how much of this I'm going to keep or not. In the end, I really want to get the lights converted over to LED's the most. The controls and all of that is more of an eager opportunity to use my Arduino's as a real world solution.

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I would be interested in knowing how those commercial controllers communicate with their score boards. The boards at our local complex use an old 1/4" headphone jack so there must be 2 or 3 conductors. That could be RS232 (no need for return signal) or RS485 or something I'm not even familiar with.

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Are you meaning mechanically? Are you meaning drive LED's using the incandescent circuitry? The electronics for incandescent bulbs are very different. It was all triacs and now it's all transistors. It was all AC and now it's all DC at a much lower voltage.

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No, I mean the mechanical structure that the bulbs are in. I'm sure the voltage is not 12VDC.

image

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it is something akin to TTL, but usually 24 Volts DC.

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24VDC must be how they account for the transmission distance then, huh?

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https://manualzz.com/doc/6325549/operating-instructions-and-service-manual this should give you some idea. You can compare that to DAKTRONICS BA-515 INSTALLATION, MAINTENANCE, AND SPECIFICATIONS MANUAL Pdf Download | ManualsLib which is a much more modern approach. When you have the make and model the discussion is a lot less general.

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Despite how it was done, I'd look at replacing this with a couple of XBee radios. They work in application transparent mode, like ttl, you would just need to do some level shifting. Although, like most electronics right now, supplies are limited.

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If they are sub-miniature bulbs like 939s, they can be 24VAC, 12VAC, 9VAC or 6VAC depending on the make and model. If they are larger, they could be high-voltage. If they are high-voltage, I'd consider replacing all the electronics so you don't have problems with the authorities having jurisdiction.

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I can't understand how you plan to connect these things together, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to work. Max7219 is a multiplexed led driver and relays will not be able to keep up with its switching speed. Even if they could, they would wear out in minutes! You cannot use relays with a multiplex driver.

I would suggest using tpic6a595 chips. Each chip can control 8 LED segments. You can connect a large number of these chips in a chain, so only 3 Arduino pins will be needed.

EDIT: sorry, forget that idea. I realise now that you plan to use 3 modules per "light", so the current will be too much for tpic6a595.

You can use MOSFETs to drive each group of LEDs, such as irlz44. 60 in total I think. You need a digital pin to control each MOSFET, so you could use 8x 74hc595 in a chain connected back to 3 Arduino pins.

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Leased-line, Fibre, even dial-up (on two hard-wire circuits) MODEMs would get the information "out there" at 56k bps and higher.

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Then solid state relay boards?

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Most solid state relays (SSRs) are designed for AC and won't work with DC. Some are designed for DC but check the specs.

But SSRs are likely to be bulky and expensive. Making a few boards with 74hc595, MOSFETs and a few sundry components could be cheaper, more compact and interesting.

Here's a thought. There was a forum member who designed boards similar to what I'm describing. Unfortunately he died, but his wife said she would continue to sell the boards he designed. I'll find a link and post it here.

EDIT: Here it is. It's the "32 channel N-MOSFET board" on this page:

http://www.crossroadsfencing.com/BobuinoRev17/

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This is great that this post is active. I too am trying to control a scoreboard with an arduino. My benefit is that I do have a controller and maybe we can figure this out together. Here is photos of my system. Lets do this together.

673795001
6737950011200×1600 467 KB

IMG_4366
IMG_43661200×1600 248 KB

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Your board and controller are much newer than the one I’m working with so I would think the board controls may be different. Also looks like the board is already LED? If it is then you are way ahead of my project, which is converting 120VAC bulbs to LED.

Either way, you’ll need to decide how you are going to control all of the segments of the numbers. My board is stuffed full of relays so I planned to switch those to power MOSFET boards and use two MAX7219CNG chips to drive those boards. Fortunately, a referral from this thread about CrossRoads boards panned out. Robert’s wife Kathy is still shipping these boards and she does have some in stock.

image
image1242×630 124 KB

At the moment my project is stalled. My customer is not sure if he wants to convert his board now. I’ll post here if it gets moving again.

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