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Creating an digital PB board

SteelCityColt

Sep 15, 2017
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Sep 15, 2017
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Hello there, complete novice looking for some advice on a project that I would like to make as a gift for someone. I’m trying to create a “PB Board” for a running friend similar to something like this:

7177a86504a4fbeb98aebda8d468dfa8--wipe-board-running-medals.jpg


But rather than it be a hand written affair I’d like to digitise the numbers to try and ape an athletics score/timing board, along these lines:

field-display-535x350.jpg


As an idea here’s a very quick outline I knocked up:

Drawing2.jpg


The design criteria so far I’ve had in my head:

  • Ideally battery powered so it can be hung on the wall without trailing power to it
  • Each timing field been controlled by simple push buttons on the side to control setting the digits, similar to setting a digital watch (Press and hold to enter “set” mode, one button moves to the next digit, one changes the digit)
  • Yellow digits to fit in with overall theme
  • In an ideal world the name at the top to be displayed electronically too, but I think this might be a step in complication too far
From reading around it sounds like the best way to achieve this would be using 7 segment LEDS (to get the “look”) and building a circuit for each timing field that are then connected in parallel to the power source. I may be way off here, but from my limited understanding I’d need a LED driver for the displays that is in turn manipulated by a PIC(?) based on the button presses. Most things I’ve read up on are controlled by an Arduino which seems overkill for what I’m trying to do.

Power wise I’m concerned this would be way too much for running off battery, in a very ideal situation I’d use some form of vane display so power is only used when the numbers are changed (backlighting wouldn’t really be required), but these aren’t readily available and would be quite bulky I imagine.

Apologies is this is very vague, as I said I’m approaching this form a zero knowledge baseline!
 

kellys_eye

Jun 25, 2010
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Jun 25, 2010
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6,514
Not an easy project for a beginner, that's for sure.

Consider getting a load of cheap digital clocks (your local supermarket probably has a gazillion) and scrapping the cases for the circuit boards. You can then use the clock 'set' buttons (wire in some external ones) to set whatever time you need (although the seconds may be harder to achieve given I haven't seen many such clocks with a seconds display) and then disable the INTERNAL clock to prevent the thing 'working'.

You could look for LCD versions - I think I recall seeing such clocks/timers as cheapo modules on eBya or such - but it may be harder to find the 'disable' pin (usually just stop the crystal oscillator but it may also be used to time the multiplexing of the digits - you'd have to experiment to find out).

The alternative is to do it from scratch which will not only be complicated but expensive. The Arduino would be the simplest method, again using multiplexed displays, but there are some I2C controlled digital displays available that could simplify things.
 

Braeden Hamson

Feb 18, 2016
240
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Feb 18, 2016
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240
Welcome to EP
Do you know any code? A raspberry pi and an old PC monitor could work well here. Then you could cut out a board so that only the sections of the screen that display info are shown. Like those phone cases with cut outs for the time.

Though I must say as a first project this will be tricky. But I don't want to underestimate you.

Also your description of your project was great.
 
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Braeden Hamson

Feb 18, 2016
240
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Feb 18, 2016
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240
Another thought what if you got plastic numbers like a fast food joint sign. You could put a number of pegs on the board and a hole in the top of each number that way your friend could simply hang the numbers. There may also be mechanical 7 segment displays as I can see you're going for an aesthetic.
 
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