Need help designing hockey scoreboard circuit(s)

[Arthur Yasinski]

I have very basic knowledge of electronics, and could use the assistance of experts to come up with the best approach to designing a hockey scoreboard. I have stumbled on to the Maxxtronics kits, and since my expertise with circuitry may be lacking, I am leaning towards kits that are foolproof and that provide the functionality vs building it from scratch myself.

Here is what I had in mind. There will be two discrete elements to the scoreboard:

• Controller - I plan to have a controller housed in a keyboard enclosure, which will house the specific circuits, any small LED displays for the operator, and the necessary switches
  • I anticipate needing 4 circuits for this: 1 timer/countdown circuit with 4 digits that will count-down from 20:00 to 0:00 with an alarm/horn sounding at 0:00; 3 counter/count-up circuits with 1 digit...one for home goals (0-9), one for away goals (0-9), and one for the period (1-4)
  • this will include a power supply
• Scoreboard - the scoreboard will be a big external box (4' x 3') that will house the digits for the scoreboard, and any necessary segment drivers or the like
  • The clock would be 4 x 9" LED digits (MX037); the two goal counters would each be 7" LED digits; and the period counter would be a 5" LED digit (MX035)
  • I believe I will need 4-digit seven segment driver (MX008) for the clock portion, and 3 seven segment drivers (MX007)...unless the circuit kit includes the drivers built in
  • this will also include a power supply
• I plan to connect the controller and the keyboard with a series of 8-wire Ethernet cables

My questions:

• is there a simpler solution to what I want/need?
• are there other kits like the Maxxtronics kits that would provide me what I need?
• The only timer kit I saw was 6-digits; does anyone know of any that are only 4 digits?
• The 9" digits are ~$30, which I think is pretty cheap for a 7-segment digit; anyone know of any cheaper?

I am open to any/all suggestions and feedback, and really appreciate the time and thoughts in advance.
Arthur

 

[Colin Mitchell]

I have the remote control scoreboard as a project. My digits are 100mm

 

[ver chan]

scoreboard--------decade counter