I constructed a tiny ESP32 scoreboard that pushes stay NFL and fantasy scores to my desk

Keeping on prime of NFL scores can really feel like a full-time job. If you are in a fantasy league, it may be arduous to know the way nicely you are doing with out consistently checking your telephone. I made a decision to construct a scoreboard utilizing an inexpensive ESP32 board to maintain me knowledgeable whereas I’m at my desk.

A Cheap Yellow Display makes the proper scoreboard

You can purchase the touchscreen show for round $15

A Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is an extremely versatile little system. It’s an ESP32 microcontroller with a built-in shade touchscreen show. You can purchase a CYD for $15 or much less, and whereas the touchscreen responsiveness is not something to put in writing house about, it is greater than adequate for lots of makes use of.

I typically use CYDs in my sensible house tasks. I take advantage of a CYD to assist me uncover nice new music, to maintain me from sitting down for too lengthy, and at the same time as a mood ring that reacts to the weather and upcoming occasions.

It felt prefer it was the proper instrument for serving to me hold observe of NFL scores, because it may show key data on the display, and utilizing the touchscreen, I may swipe by means of to see different screens if I wanted to.

Getting stay scores onto the CYD

Home Assistant handles the information, and ESPHome will get it to show

The first problem was to get stay NFL scores to look on the CYD. ESPN offers a publicly accessible NFL scoreboard knowledge feed, and though this is not a correct public API, it returns structured JSON containing details about present and upcoming video games.

I arrange a small Python service working on my house server that periodically requests the ESPN knowledge, extracts the fields I want to point out on the scoreboard, and organizes them into a particular format. This ensures that I’m solely working with the information I would like relatively than the a lot bigger set of knowledge that ESPN offers.

The processed data is handed to Home Assistant, which acts because the hyperlink between the Python service and the CYD. Home Assistant sends the information to the ESPHome firmware working on the CYD, which redraws the related components of the display to point out any up to date data.

The Python service solely requests knowledge each few hours when there aren’t any video games in progress, however as soon as a sport is because of begin, it polls extra continuously, in order that the data on the show is not too far behind what ESPN is publishing. When the rating modifications in a sport, the CYD updates to point out the brand new rating in addition to exhibiting which staff scored and the way the factors have been gained.

Sleeper lets me observe my staff with out touching the app

The CYD does extra than simply present the present scores. It can present the present state of my fantasy soccer matchups, too.

I take advantage of the Sleeper fantasy sports activities platform, which has its own API that enables purposes to retrieve publicly out there league and matchup data. Using the league and roster IDs, the Python service retrieves the present NFL week and the league’s matchups.

Home Assistant as soon as once more shares this knowledge with the CYD, so I can swipe by means of to a devoted display that exhibits the rating of my present matchup. During stay video games, the fantasy scores are checked continuously, so I can see the present matchup rating. It would not present different data akin to particular person participant performances or projected factors; I nonetheless want to make use of the app to test these out.

I can regulate scores with out pulling out my telephone

The touchscreen lets me swipe to the data I would like

The fantastic thing about my tiny ESP32-based scoreboard is that it makes conserving tabs on video games extremely simple. If I need to see the present NFL scores, I can look on the display. If I need to see the stay rating updates for a particular sport, I can swipe by means of to that sport, and if I need to see how my fantasy matchup goes, I can entry that display, too.

In the previous, this could have concerned pulling out my telephone and checking the related apps. My CYD scoreboard retains the data on the display always, and there aren’t any different distractions like there are with my telephone. If I’m doing a little work, I can regulate the scores with a fast look, with out happening a rabbit hole of doomscrolling as soon as I open my telephone.

A tiny display with massive concepts

It’s actually spectacular what you are able to do with a CYD. ESPHome and Home Assistant make it comparatively simple to get data to look on the display, which opens up a planet of potentialities. While the tiny display is not preferrred for all the pieces, for displaying small quantities of knowledge akin to sports activities scores, it is the proper system for the job.