Assignments Goals

• Propose a final project that integrates a range of units covered
• Summarise and communicate the essence of the project

What will it do?

A thin, lightweight, colorful and fabbable electronic scoreboard!

My final project is aimed at the design, development and build of an electronic scoreboard for my amateur volley ball team. I had this idea in mind for quite a lot of time, but I haven't time and all the skills needed to create it. So now it's time to get on with it!

The idea started as a simple led board to display some kind of numbers on it. During the weeks attending the Fab Academy I came up with new ideas and new features I wanted to add to my Scoreboard, and now the concept idea is full of different pieces and bits.

There are a lot of electronic scoreboard all around the web but I wanted to make something different, more customizable, fully "Fabbable", and cheap.

Moreover the main reason I came up with this idea is because when I practice with my team mates, usually there's no one to keep scores, so I thought to add some kind of wireless communication to it: in this way even someone that's playing can use the scoreboard to update the scores during the exercises/games.

Who has done what beforehand?

Surely there's plenty of commercial electronic scoreboards all around the world, but they are all extremely expensive, bulky and little customizable. A lot of them are fixed in sport arenas, because they're NOT lightweight and portable.

After browsing a bit, I found a THIS web page, that have a product much like to I would like to build BUT exploring the pages, seems that there's just a concept yet. The team behind the portable scoreboard is still developing the thing, and the latest post in the News section (dated January 19, 2014 - we are now in 2016) states that Portable Scores it's officially declared to be in zombie state.

I found a couple of DIY projects (HERE, HERE and HERE) for electronic scoreboards, based on 7-segments digits, but according to me they lack customizability, and are really too small to be used in a real sport arena, or simply they can be improved to add new features!

Architecture Preliminary Analysis

After a lot of brainstorming with... well, just myself, I came up with a lot of ideas on how to build the scoreboard, and how to make it useful and feature rich. So this images summarizes them, and how I intend to proceed, answering the questions

• what parts and systems will be made?
• what materials and components will be required?
• what processes will be used?
• how much will it cost?

Sandwich Frame

To make the frame lightweight and thin, I will use a "sandwich" technique, with a base, a middle section that can accomodate the electronics and the wirings,a top cover to show only the digits and possibly a fabric diffuser on top of it. Moreover, I intend to design the frame so that it could be easily opened to check and fix the electronics in case of need. Maybe hold the parts together with magnets, removing the need of specialized tools.

Colorful Digits

I want to make the scoreboard customizable and RGB leds can be just what I need. Since the scoreboard will be quite big, I have to use a lot of leds, but multiplexing techniques tend to increase complexity the more elements you use. So I want to try and use "intelligent" pixels like WS2812B (more on this in Week 13 assignment). Moreover their size keeps the scoreboard extremely thin.

Wireless Controlling

To make the scoreboard remote controllable, I want to use some cheap and easy to find 2.4GHz radio modules. No problems with the frequency used, because it falls in the ISM Bands (more on this in Week 15 assignment). Moreover, to be able to control it with a mobile Android APP, I intend to use a SPP (Serial Port Profile) Bluetooth Module.

Embedded Controller

To control the logic, the communication and the leds I want to design and build my own embedded controller, based on a cheap 8-bit AVR microcontroller. I think it could be useful to develop the controller as the sum of multiple interconnected modules (ex. power management, central unit, signal distribution, etc...) so that it could be extensible and easy to repair without the need to substitute all the electronics in case of faults.

Android Mobile APP

For official matches, it could be useful to provide some kind of Graphical Interface to control the scoreboard, so that the scorekeeper could update the score easily from his post.