Electrontic Scoreboards...?

[davetherocketguy]

Just wondering if anyone has tried to avoid the paper player cards at tournaments and used something like a projector and screen to show hole assignments and round scores. Player cards are nice but it seems like we are getting to the point where these should be obsolete. With PDGA live scoring and the PDGA tournament manager that can automatically assign players to either tee times or starting holes I think there has to be a way of displaying this info for players at tournament central.

I realize that this sort of setup is not going to work at all locations but this tournament I have in October has a really nice interior space for a projector/screen with power out of the weather. Just curious if anyone has tried this or seen something like this at any tourneys and how it might be implimented.

 

[uncle pennybags]

I could see something like that working if the TD had a RV with an outdoor entertainment center. Just hook up a laptop or something to the outdoor tv.

If I was a TD with a disc business on the side, I'd look in to getting a little cargo trailer and make something like that.

 

[davetherocketguy]

The hardware for display is the easy part imho. It's how to format the info to display is what I am pondering…

 

[DavidSauls]

Nothing wrong with the idea....though if you have live scoring, most players can see it all in their phones, anyway, and not just from tournament central.

 

[rhatton1]

Yes, we did it for the Welsh Open and it worked really nicely on a couple of large television screens, it then falls into being a place to watch the live scores which is quite a nice feature for players to congregate around.

Here's the outside one (in a marquee) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdCG-Wj...Gwch4HFT2_3mcmBKyVYJqq-R9XB6d2Kto_RaiMHOpZLp8

I've stopped with cards and cardports altogether, PDGA tournament manager is a work of genius. Well done PDGA on that one.

 

[ChrisWoj]

I've done this once. It actually was NOT a PDGA Sanctioned event. We had a local golf course, Bedford Hills, host a few tournaments and we used their clubhouse as tourney central. So we just hooked up the laptop to a TV and displayed the CTP winners, scores, and hole assignments on the TV. It was elevated up near the ceiling so no worries about people crowding others from being able to see. It was a nice and useful setup.

With an outdoor event setup - I worry about having a projector bright enough for daytime viewing of the screen? I guess tech is getting better, so maybe that isn't so expensive anymore but I have no idea, its been a long minute since I looked at projector costs.

 

[Getty]

I've seen this done a few times at tourneys held at Ft Steillacoom in Tacoma, WA. It's a really cool set-up. Maybe Monty will see this thread and be able to shed some light on the deets.

 

[ru4por]

We have talked about this a couple times for our early A Tier event. It always ends up shelved for more pressing issues and a lack of time and help.

I think it is very doable.

 

[Nova P]

Not quite what you are talking about, but I've found it's trivially easy to leave an older laptop sitting open at the TD's table, turned to face the players, with the event page pulled up in a web browser. When players ask me what hole they're starting on, I point them to the self-service laptop and move on to the next player checking in. It keeps things moving.

 

[ToddL]

I've used a TV at tournament central to display starting assignments and scores. Attached a vesa mount to the side of the shelter, attached a TV to it in portrait mode, and ran it off my laptop all day. Requires running a generator all day (my 240 battery pack can power it for a couple of hours, so a large pack could last all day if you have one).

It's certainly unnecessary; people can just as easily look up their tee assignments and scores on their phones. However, players really enjoyed it. Instead of using their phones, I had crowds of them all weekend staring at the TV together. I think it added to the community vibe. They could all watch scores come in and react and make comments together. "Omg, another birdie! He's back in it!" "Wow, look at player X! What a round!"

I mostly just left pdgalive displayed most of the time. Every now and then switched to a different division, or sometimes had two windows stacked on top of each other to display both at the same time. Biggest pain was taking it down every evening, putting it in my car overnight, and putting it back up the next morning.

https://i.imgur.com/1hvIDSH.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/9OCu3vd.jpg

 

[davetherocketguy]

Some good ideas. What I'd really like is a graphic that looks just like the current scoreboards with the player cards that updates automatically with info from PDGA Live but I have no idea how to make something like that on my laptop. In leu of that grandiose idea displaying the live scoring is not a bad idea.

For my upcoming tourney I have a 42" flatscreen and a laptop I can bring and the shelter we are using is completely enclosed with heat and power so I am going to take advantage of that situation for sure...