Java ScoreBoard

This program runs the "electronic scoreboard" for basketball and volleyball in the Mount Olive Church Community Life Center.

SourceForge Project Page

OVERVIEW

The ScoreBoard is used to keep a countdown clock, track the score, track the fouls (basketball only), track the sets (volleyball only), play sounds, and run a slide show. There is a control window which is meant to be seen only by the operator to run the scoreboard. There is another window which is contains the scoreboard display including the slide show. The scoreboard display window is meant to be displayed on a secondary video display which is projected on the big screen. The size of the window's contents are exactly 800x600 which should display clearly on a TV or standard video display.

Included in this distribution is a file called "RUN.BAT" which is used to start the scoreboard on Wintel PCs. If you don't know what you're doing, start there and you'll be able to figure it out.

COPYRIGHT / LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

SCREEN SNAPSHOTS

The following is a snapshot of the scoreboard display in basketball mode. This is meant to be output to a second video card on the host computer which is why this snapshot is shown without the "window dressings" that the operating system provides.

The following is a snapshot of the scoreboard display in volleyball mode.

The following are snapshots of the control window in both basketball and volleyball mode (note that you will only see one of these at any time, not both). This is displayed on the desktop so that the operator can interact with it.


Basketball Controls	Volleyball Controls

CONTROLS

The control window has a variety of buttons and a few data entry fields which the operator can use to run the scoreboard. The buttons and fields are described in the following sections. Many of the buttons have both a "home" and a "guest" version to control the two sides. When this is the case, the two buttons are described in one paragraph.

Home / Guest
These buttons are used to customize the team's name in the upper text boxes on the scoreboard. Enter the team's name in the data entry field above this button, then click this button to update the scoreboard. The text fields can also be used by the operator to help keep track of the team colors.
Set Timer
This button is used to set the clock on the scoreboard. There is a data entry field above this button where the user can enter the desired time in the format Minutes:Seconds.Tenths (such as 5:00 for five minutes, or 10.2 for ten and two tenths seconds). This button is only available in basketball mode.
Home Pt+2 / Guest Pt+2
These buttons are used to add 2 to the point total on the scoreboard. These buttons are only available in basketball mode.
Start
This button is used to start the clock. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Home Pt+ / Guest Pt+
These buttons are used to increment the point total on the scoreboard.
Stop
This button is used to stop the clock. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Home Pt- / Guest Pt-
These buttons are used to decrement the point total on the scoreboard.
Poss Arrow
This button is used to toggle the position of the possession indicator. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Serving
This button is used to toggle the position of the serving indicator. This button is only available in volleyball mode.
Home Pt= / Guest Pt=
These buttons are used to set the team's score to the value entered in the text field between the two buttons.
Home Bonus / Guest Bonus
These buttons are used to toggle on and off the bonus indicator. These buttons are only available in basketball mode.
Home Set+ / Guest Set+
These buttons are used to increment the sets counters on the scoreboard. These buttons are only available in volleyball mode.
Period+
This button is used to increment the period indicator. There are 4 periods, then OT periods (OT, OT2, OT3...). This button is only available in basketball mode.
Game+
This button is used to increment the game indicator. This button is only available in volleyball mode.
Clear Team Fouls
This button is used to clear out the team foul counters. This is normally done at half-time. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Clear Sets
This button is used to clear out the sets counters. This button is only available in volleyball mode.
Period-
This button is used to decrement the period indicator. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Game-
This button is used to decrement the game indicator. This button is only available in volleyball mode.
Home Foul / Guest Foul
These buttons are used to track fouls. There is a data entry box between these two buttons that is used to enter a player number, then by clicking on the appropriate button, that team's foul count will be incremented and the "Last Foul" field will be filled in with the player number and the number of fouls that player has. This is kept in a database which is stored in memory. Use the "Clear All Fouls" button to clear out this database, use the "Clear Team Fouls" button to reset the team fouls counters without clearing the personal foul counters for each player. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Home Set- / Guest Set-
These buttons are used to decrement the sets counters on the scoreboard. These buttons are only available in volleyball mode.
Horn
This button is used to play the long horn sound that is used to indicate the end of a period.
Volleyball
This button is used to switch the mode of the scoreboard from basketball to volleyball. This will reset the fouls database and all other data on the scoreboard, so use this button only when you want to switch modes. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Basketball
This button is used to switch the mode of the scoreboard from volleyball to basketball. This will reset all the data on the scoreboard, so use this button only when you want to switch modes. This button is only available in volleyball mode.
Beep
This button is used to play the short beep sound that is used to indicate the end of a time-out.
Clear All Fouls
This button is used to clear out the fouls database completely. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Clear Points
This button is used to clear out the point counters. This is intended for use when one game completes after incrementing the sets counter for the team that won the last game. This button is only available in volleyball mode.
Start TO
This button is used to start a time-out using the value in the text box next to this button. After clicking this button, an internal timer is set and started, and the "Clear TO" button is enabled. When this timer finishes, the beep sound is heard and the "Start TO" button is enabled. The timeout timer is displayed where the bonus indicators are in basketball mode.
Clear TO
This button is used to stop a time-out that is currently in progress. After clicking this button, the internal timer is reset and the "Start TO" button is enabled and this button is disabled.
Reset
This will reset all the data on the scoreboard, so use this button only when a game has completed and when you want to start from scratch.
Undo Last Foul
This button allows the operator to undo the last foul entered. This is a single-level undo which means that you can only do one undo, then the capability is disabled. This button is only available in basketball mode.
Reset Slides
This button is used to re-read the slides and announcements.txt file. This is commonly used after a game has completed and the results are entered and saved in the announcements.txt file.
Pause Slides
This button is used to pause the slide show on the current slide.
Clear Slide
This button is used to blank out the slide area and pause the slide show.
Start Slides
This button is used to start the slide show after it has been cleared or paused. If the slide show is running, this button will move it to the next slide.

CONFIGURATION

There is a file called "ScoreBoard.txt" which can be used to configure a variety of parameters are available to be configured. As is comes, it should work without any changes to this configuration file. To get an idea of the things that can be changed here, all the available parameters are shown below:

maxPeriods
Sets the number of regulation periods used for the basketball mode. Default is 4.
bgColor
Sets the background color of the areas of the scoreboard where text is displayed. This is a 6-digit hexadecimal representation similar to the color specifications in web pages. Default is 000000 which is black.
timeColor
Sets the color of the timer text. Default is ffff00 which is yellow.
timeFontSize
Sets the size of the timer text. Default is 100.
lastMinuteTimeColor
Sets the color of the timer text when the clock is under one minute. Default is ff0000 which is red.
scoreColor
Sets the color of the score. Default is 00ff00 which is green.
scoreFontSize
Sets the size of the score. Default is 90.
textColor
Sets the color of the other text such as team name, etc. Default is ffff00 which is yellow.
fillColor
Sets the color of the area around the text areas. Default is c0c0c0 which is a light gray.
bonusLightColor
Sets the color of the bonus indicator. Default is ff0000 which is red.
possesionArrowColor
Sets the color of the possession arrow (or serving) indicator. Default is ff0000 which is red.
preferredFont
Sets the font used for the scoreboard. Default is Helvetica.
slideShowDir
Directory where the slide show GIF files are stored. There is no default value, but this is usually set to "./slides/".
numSlides
Number of slides in the slide show directory. Default is 3. The slide files are stored in GIF format and must be named Nslide.gif where "N" is the slide number. Such as: 1slide.gif, 2slide.gif, 3slide.gif
slideDelay
This selects the amount of time in seconds to display each slide. Default is 10 seconds.
framePositionX
Selects the left-to-right position of the scoreboard window. Depending on the configuration of the two monitors, this could be a negative or positive value. The value of this field depends on how the two monitors are setup. If the main screen is to the left, then this will be a positive value about 4 less than the width of the main screen. If the main screen is to the right, then this will be a negative number about 4 more than the width of the window (804, that is). The default is 340 which normally places it on the same screen as the control window.
framePositionY
Selects the top-to-bottom position of the scoreboard window. Depending on the configuration of the two monitors, this could be a negative or positive value. The default is 0 which normally places it at the top of the screen.

SLIDES

The slides displayed below the scoreboard display are GIF format files which can be replaced, modified and/or added to in order to suit your needs. The files are 800 by 245 pixels (72 dpi). These images can be created by a graphics program. The slides are named Nslide.gif, where "N" is the number of the slide. There can be any number of slides, the parameter numSlides is used to determine how many slide files to look for. If the slides are not desired, then create a single slide file (1slide.gif) which is all black, and set the numSlides parameter to 1. A few sample slides have been included in this distribution. Below is a sample slide.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

In addition to the slides, a text file called "announcements.txt" can be used to display a series of text messages as part of the slide show. This file is located in the same folder as the slides. This file can contain any number of messages each with a title and up to 4 lines of text. Each message contains a specific time value to control how long the message is displayed. Below is an example of the "announcements.txt" file.

TITL=This is the title of the first announcement
MSG1=This is the first line of text
MSG2=and the second
MSG3=and the third
MSG4=and the last
TIME=7

TITL=Second Slide
MSG1=This is the first line of text
MSG2=and the second
TIME=10

A maximum of 50 announcement "slides" can be created in this file. If more are included, they will be ignored.

SOURCE CODE

The source code is included as part of this distribution. You are asked to feed back any changes to the author so that they can be included in future releases of this program.

TECHNICAL

This program is written in Java and requires the appletviewer application which is only included with the Java 2 SDK. You can obtain this freely from http://java.sun.com/. This has been tested using the Java2 1.4.2_19 SDK installation on a PC running WinXP, although the development was done under Linux (Fedora 7) with the Java2 1.4.2_19 SDK.

CONTACT

Contact Bery Rinaldo at beryrinaldo at yahoo dot com if you have any questions or problems.