Cricket scoreboard

[nbw]

My 5-yr old son is really into cricket at the moment. We play in our back yard, he can send a tennis ball right to the end of the lawn, sometimes over the fence.

I found an old 40X lying away and 6 nice big LCD digits, so made a little scoreboard for outside seeing as the little guy is so enthusiastic (plus it keeps him away from TV)

The top row is for his score, the bottom for mine. Each button going left to right is 1,2,3,4 runs plus 6 for the white. The black button on the side takes 2 runs off, if we hit it in to the carport near dad's car. Knocking over dad's beer is -50 runs.

You flick the switch on the left to swap between top and bottom.

It runs off 5 x recharg AAA batteries - the LCDs draw 9/10th of not much current. I drive them a nice sq wave from one of the picaxe out pins - it does the mainloop pretty fast, so you don't get flickering. Each display is controlled by a 4543 BCD driver, so the 40X needs 6 outlines for the 6 digits, plus 4 for the BCD to the relevant IC.

Pretty simple!

His role was to pick the colour spray can.

Except he gloats when he gets more runs than me .........

 

[BeanieBots]

Where did you get those nice big displays from?

 

[nbw]

I got about 200 of them in an auction here in NZ for about $15 (about 5 squid). I couldn't resist, I'm a sucker for cheap LCDs and LEDs - my wife calls me a cheap Optoelectronics Whore; I'll pay anything for a decent display.... LOL (but let's not go any further with that).

Just finished 2 innings with my son - he got 61 and me 59. I give him 3 wickets each innings to my 1, but even so... little blighter

 

[hippy]

Those are nice displays - I was expecting something tiddly and consequently functional but not overly impressive ! You certainly got a bargain there.

Good choice of paint colour too. That's a very nice looking unit.

 

[nbw]

Thanks Hippy. I had a little bit of processing power left over - originally I had a 555 sending out a sqwave. Of course, (I read somewhere in X2 chip release) - that functionality is now available in the picaxes.

Yep - my son now has the red mp3 player box, the blue cricket scoreboard, and I think he wants a RGB LED game thing made for him - prob green or yellow LOL. That's the hardest part of these projects - him deciding which colour he wants and then waiting while someone from the store finds the key to unlock the paint (NZ Law... can't buy spraypaint if you're under 18, and they need to keep them locked to hinder shoplifters)