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Eggcrate Scoreboard Raspberry Pi

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chris319:

--- Quote from: GSRebich on May 08, 2025, 03:31:56 AM ---Does anyone know how to make an eggcrate scoreboard with LED modules and Raspberry Pi?

--- End quote ---

How authentic do you need it to be?

You need to settle on the type of lamp to use. This will determine the voltage used to drive the lamps. LED's would be best but will be expensive. The original readouts used type 1820 lamps driven at 28 V and were WAY TOO BRIGHT and were usually on a rheostat. The characters were formed by a diode matrix.

From memory I can tell you the holes for the lamps were 5/8" in diameter with about 1/16" between holes.

The readouts used on Twenty One present an interesting case because solid-state diodes did not exist yet. You could use a 12-position rotary switch and hard-wire the character forms to the lamps.

Have a look here:

https://www.golden-road.net/index.php/topic,31538.0.html

I'm not sure Raspberry-Pi is the right device to use for this.

clemon79:

--- Quote from: chris319 on May 31, 2025, 05:58:51 PM ---I'm not sure Raspberry-Pi is the right device to use for this.

--- End quote ---

It isn't; it's way too much machine, unless you're talking about something like a Pico, and even then I suspect it's too much, although at $10 why the hell not. You could probably get away with something ESP32-based considering you're effectively talking about controlling either a) a series of 35-light long LED strips (and white LEDs would be plenty bright even with 3D-printed diffusers in front of them) or one single strip that is 35 x (however many digits you want it to be) lights long that you would need to inject power into at intervals. (If I can run a 6,144 light matrix (really three 2,048 strips, effectively) off of one ESP32, an eggcrate should be no problem.)

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