Important
If you are upgrading from v7 to v8, please be sure to read the Usage section, as the startup commands have changed!
An LED scoreboard for Major League Baseball. Displays a live scoreboard for your team's game on that day.
Requires a Raspberry Pi and an LED board hooked up via the GPIO pins.
Currently supported boards:
- 32x32 (Limited number of features)
- 64x32 (the most supported)
- 64x64
- 128x32
- 128x64
If you'd like to see support for another set of board dimensions, or have design suggestions for an existing one, file an issue!
Pi's with known issues
- Raspberry Pi Zero has had numerous reports of slowness and unreliability during installation and running the software.
- Features
- Installation
- Usage
- Personalization
- Sources
- Wiki
- Help and Contributing
- Licensing
- Other cool projects
It can display live games in action, and optionally rotate every 15 seconds through each game of the day.
The board refreshes the list of games every 15 minutes.
If a game hasn't started yet, a pregame screen will be displayed with the probable starting pitchers.
It can display standings for the provided division. Since the 32x32 board is too small to display wins and losses together, the wins and losses are alternated on the board every 5 seconds. You can also specify "NL Wild Card" or "AL Wild Card" as a 'division' to see the top 5 teams in each league's wild card race.
See the wiki page for the original project for a step-by-step guide. This README is primarily focused on the MLB software, but for those coming here from Reddit or elsewhere never having built things with a Raspberry Pi, this should help get you going.
A sample bill of materials (BOM) is located here
You need Git for cloning this repo and PIP for installing the scoreboard software.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git python3-pip
This installation process will take about 10-15 minutes. Raspberry Pis aren't the fastest of computers, so be patient!
git clone https://github.com/MLB-LED-Scoreboard/mlb-led-scoreboard.git
cd mlb-led-scoreboard/
sudo ./install.sh
This will create a Python Virtual Environment and install all of the required dependencies. The
virtual environment will be located at mlb-led-scoreboard/venv/.
This will install the rgbmatrix binaries, which we get from another open source library. It controls the actual rendering of the scoreboard onto the LEDs. If you're curious, you can read through their documentation on how all of the lower level stuff works.
It will also install the following python libraries that are required for certain parts of the scoreboard to function.
- tzlocal: Timezone libraries. These allow the scoreboard to convert times to your local timezone
- feedparser: Used to fetch and parse RSS feeds. The scoreboard uses this to show news headlines.
- pyowm: OpenWeatherMap API interactions. We use this to get the local weather for display on the offday screen. For more information on how to finish setting up the weather, visit the weather section of this README.
- MLB-StatsAPI: The main library that fetches and parses all of the actual MLB data being displayed
- RGBMatrixEmulator: The emulation library for the matrix display. Useful for running on MacOS or Linux, or for development.
Additional flags are available for customizing your install:
-a, --skip-all Skip all dependencies and config installation (equivalent to -c -p -m).
-c, --skip-config Skip updating JSON configuration files.
-m, --skip-matrix Skip building matrix driver dependency. Video display will default to emulator mode.
-p, --skip-python Skip Python 3 installation. Requires manual Python 3 setup if not already installed.
-v, --no-venv Do not create a virtual environment for the dependencies.
-e, --emulator-only Do not install dependencies under sudo. Skips building matrix dependencies (equivalent to -m)
-d, --driver Specify a branch name or commit SHA for the rpi-rgb-led-matrix library. (Optional. Defaults may change.)
-h, --help Display this help message
The installation script is designed for physical hardware. When attempting to install it on other platforms, you should not use sudo to install the dependencies. In addition, you can pass the --emulator-only argument to skip installation steps that aren't required.
sh install.sh --emulator-only
- Run
git pullin your mlb-led-scoreboard folder to fetch the latest changes. A lot of the time, this will be enough, but if something seems broken:- Re-run the install file. Run
sudo ./install.shagain. Any additional dependencies that were added with the update will be installed this way. If you are moving to a new major release version, answer "Y" to have it make you a new config file. - Check your custom layout/color files if you made any. There's a good chance some new keys were added to the layout and color files. These changes should just merge right in with the customized .json file you have but you might want to look at the new .json.example files and see if there's anything new you want to customize.
- Re-run the install file. Run
That should be it! Your latest version should now be working with whatever new fangled features were just added.
You can check the version information for your installation of mlb-led-scoreboard by running python3 version.py.
The latest version of the software is available here.
Make sure your Raspberry Pi's timezone is configured to your local time zone. They'll often have London time on them by default. You can change the timezone of your raspberry pi by running sudo raspi-config.
The installation script adds a line to the top of main.py to automatically pick up the virtual environment.
This means re-activating the environment (source ./venv/bin/activate) is not a requirement.
sudo ./main.py Running as root is 100% an absolute must, or the matrix won't render.
Adafruit HAT/Bonnet users: You must supply a command line flag:
sudo ./main.py --led-gpio-mapping="adafruit-hat"
See the Flags section below for more flags you can optionally provide.
The scoreboard can run on other platforms by means of software emulation via RGBMatrixEmulator. When running via the emulator, you do not need to prepend your startup commands with sudo:
./main.pyYou can also force the scoreboard into emulation mode by using the --emulated flag:
./main.py --emulatedWhen running in emulation mode, you can continue to use your existing command line flags as normal.
See RGBMatrixEmulator for emulator configuration options.
A default config.json.example file is included for reference. Copy this file to config.json and modify the values as needed.
"preferred": Options for team and division preference
"teams" Array An array of preferred teams. The first team in the list will be used as your 'favorite' team. Example: ["Cubs", "Brewers"]
"divisions" Array An array of preferred divisions that will be rotated through in the order they are entered. Example: ["NL Central", "AL Central"]
"news_ticker": Options for displaying a nice clock/weather/news ticker screen
"always_display" Bool Display the news ticker screen at all times. Supercedes the standings setting.
"team_offday" Bool Display the news ticker when your prefered team is on an offday.
"preferred_teams" Bool Include headlines from your list of preferred teams. Will only use the first 3 teams listed in your preferred teams.
"display_no_games_live" Bool Display news and weather when none of your games are currently live.
"traderumors" Bool Include headlines from mlbtraderumors.com for your list of preferred teams. Will only use the first 3 teams listed in your preferred teams.
"mlb_news" Bool Include MLB's frontpage news.
"countdowns" Bool Include various countdowns in the ticker.
"date" Bool Display today's date to start the ticker. This will always be enabled if no other ticker options are.
"date_format" String Display the date with a given format. You can check all of the date formatting options at https://strftime.org
"standings": Options for displaying standings for a division
"always_display" Bool Display standings for your preferred divisions.
"mlb_offday" Bool Display standings for your preferred divisions when there are no games on the current day.
"team_offday" Bool Display standings for your preferred divisions when the one of your preferred teams is not playing on the current day.
"display_no_games_live" Bool Display standings when none of your games are currently live.
"rotation": Options for rotation through the day's games
"enabled" Bool Rotate through each game of the day according to the configured `rates`.
"scroll_until_finished" Bool If scrolling text takes longer than the rotation rate, wait to rotate until scrolling is done.
"only_preferred" Bool Only rotate through games in your preferred teams.
"only_live" Bool Only rotate through games which are currently playing. Can be composed with `only_preferred`.
"rates" Dict Dictionary of Floats. Each type of screen can use a different rotation rate. Valid types: "live", "pregame", "final".
Float (DEPRECATED) A Float can be used to set all screen types to the same rotate rate.
"while_preferred_team_live": Options for rotating between screens while one of your preferred teams is live
"enabled" Bool Enable rotation while a preferred team is live.
"during_inning_breaks" Bool Enable rotation while a preferred team is live during an inning break.
"weather": Options for retrieving the weather
"apikey" String An API key is required to use the weather service.
You can get one for free at Open Weather Map (https://home.openweathermap.org/users/sign_up).
"location" String The `{city name},{state code},{country code}` according to ISO-3166 standards (https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search).
Check out the OpenWeather documentation (https://openweathermap.org/current#name) for more info.
Ex: `"Chicago,il,us"`
"metric_units" Bool Change the weather display to metric units (Celsius, m/s) instead of imperial (Fahrenheit, MPH).
"time_format" String Sets the preferred hour format for displaying time. Accepted values are "12h" or "24h" depending on which you prefer.
"end_of_day" String A 24-hour time you wish to consider the end of the previous day before starting to display the current day's games. Uses local time from your Pi.
"full_team_names" Bool If enabled on a board width >= 64, displays the full team name on the scoreboard instead of their abbreviation. This config option is ignored on 32-wide boards.
"short_team_names_for_runs_hits" Bool If full_team_names is enabled, will use abreviated team names when runs or hits > 9 to prevent overflow of long names into RHE.
"scrolling_speed" Integer Sets how fast the scrolling text scrolls. Supports an integer between 0 and 6.
"preferred_game_update_delay_in_10s_of_seconds" Integer Sets how long to wait before updating the preferred game. Must be positive.
"pregame_weather" Bool If enabled, will display the weather for the game's location on the pregame screen.
"debug" Bool Game and other debug data is written to your console.
"demo_date" String A date in the format YYYY-MM-DD from which to pull data to demonstrate the scoreboard. A value of `false` will disable demo mode.
- The "preferred_game_update_delay_in_10s_of_seconds" will delay the update of your LED board to allow you to synchronize with the boroadcast feed.
- You can only delay the board in 10 second increments, so a value of 3 coresponds to 30 seconds, 5 to 50 seconds etc.
- There appears to be a lot of variability in broadcast delays across networks/teams/CDN's.
- Please note, that if restarting the service with a delay, it will take the value of cycles set for the board to be in sync. If you set the value to 3, it will take 30-40 seconds for the buffer to fill and the board to delay.
-
Runs/Hits/Errors - Runs are always shown on the games screen, but you can enable or adjust spacing of a "runs, hits, errors" display. Take a look at the coordinates readme file for details.
-
Pitch Data - Pitch data can be shown on the game screen, See the coordinates readme file for details. In addition, the
shortandlongpitch description can be changed in data/pitches.py -
Previous Play Data - Data for the previous play can be shown on the game screen. See the coordinates readme file for details. Long and short play descriptions can be changed in data/plays.py
- NOTE: Because play result data is ephemeral, not every play result will be displayed. Situations like a mound visit, injury, or other timeout immediately following a play often cause the play result to be immediately replaced on the MLB API.
You can configure your LED matrix with the same flags used in the rpi-rgb-led-matrix library. More information on these arguments can be found in the library documentation.
--led-rows Display rows. 16 for 16x32, 32 for 32x32. (Default: 32)
--led-cols Panel columns. Typically 32 or 64. (Default: 32)
--led-chain Daisy-chained boards. (Default: 1)
--led-parallel For Plus-models or RPi2: parallel chains. 1..3. (Default: 1)
--led-pwm-bits Bits used for PWM. Range 1..11. (Default: 11)
--led-brightness Sets brightness level. Range: 1..100. (Default: 100)
--led-gpio-mapping Hardware Mapping: regular, adafruit-hat, adafruit-hat-pwm
--led-scan-mode Progressive or interlaced scan. 0 = Progressive, 1 = Interlaced. (Default: 1)
--led-pwm-lsb-nanosecond Base time-unit for the on-time in the lowest significant bit in nanoseconds. (Default: 130)
--led-show-refresh Shows the current refresh rate of the LED panel.
--led-slowdown-gpio Slow down writing to GPIO. Range: 0..4. (Default: 1)
--led-no-hardware-pulse Don't use hardware pin-pulse generation.
--led-rgb-sequence Switch if your matrix has led colors swapped. (Default: RGB)
--led-pixel-mapper Apply pixel mappers. e.g Rotate:90, U-mapper
--led-row-addr-type 0 = default; 1 = AB-addressed panels. (Default: 0)
--led-multiplexing Multiplexing type: 0 = direct; 1 = strip; 2 = checker; 3 = spiral; 4 = Z-strip; 5 = ZnMirrorZStripe; 6 = coreman; 7 = Kaler2Scan; 8 = ZStripeUneven. (Default: 0)
--led-limit-refresh Limit refresh rate to this frequency in Hz. Useful to keep a constant refresh rate on loaded system. 0=no limit. Default: 0
--led-pwm-dither-bits Time dithering of lower bits (Default: 0)
--config Specify a configuration file name other, omitting json xtn (Default: config)
--emulated Force the scoreboard to run in software emulation mode.
--drop-privileges Force the matrix driver to drop root privileges after setup. (Default: true)
If you're feeling adventurous (and we highly encourage it!), the sections below outline how you can truly personalize your scoreboard and make it your own!
You have the ability to customize the way things are placed on the board (maybe you would prefer to see scrolling text for a pregame a bit higher or lower). See the coordinates/ directory for more information.
You have the ability to customize the colors of everything on the board. See the colors/ directory for more information.
This scoreboard will use a weather API to gather weather information at various times. This information is displayed on your teams' offdays for your area and also displayed during each game's pregame information. The weather API we use is from OpenWeatherMaps. OpenWeatherMaps API requires an API key to fetch this data so you will need to take a quick minute to sign up for an account and copy your own API key into your config.json.
You can find the signup page for OpenWeatherMaps at https://home.openweathermap.org/users/sign_up. Once logged in, you'll find an API keys tab where you'll find a default key was already created for you. You can copy this key and paste it into the config.json under "weather", "apikey".
You can change the location used by entering your city, state, and country code separated by commas. If you wish to use metric measurements, set the "metric" option to true.
This project relies on two libraries: MLB-StatsAPI is the Python library used for retrieving live game data. rpi-rgb-led-matrix is the library used for making everything work with the LED board.
The scoreboard updates frequently, but it cannot retrieve information that MLB has not yet made available. If something is odd or it seems behind, the first suspect is the MLB web API.
If you run into any issues and have steps to reproduce, open an issue. If you have a feature request, open an issue. If you want to contribute a small to medium sized change, open a pull request. If you want to contribute a new feature, open an issue first before opening a PR.
Dependencies requirements are managed using pipreqs. If you are adding or making a change to a dependency (such as updating its version), make sure to update the requirements file with pipreqs:
# If not already installed
pip3 install pipreqs
pipreqs . --forceThis project as of v1.1.0 uses the GNU Public License. If you intend to sell these, the code must remain open source.
The original version of this board
Inspired by this board, check out the NHL scoreboard 🏒
