pi-scoreboard

Pi Line Board

A Las Vegas sportsbook–style line board for college football and the NFL, built to run all day on a Raspberry Pi plugged into an old TV. Live scores, spreads, totals and moneylines in glowing CRT green, a full-screen game view with a live field, NFL fantasy leaders, and a phone remote you open by scanning a QR code on the TV.

NFL line board

Live demo: College football · NFL Shows real data from ESPN. Scores move on game days; the lines are there all week.

Features

The board

Scores, spread, total and moneyline for every game, with ½ and EV the way a sportsbook writes them
College: FBS games only, sorted by AP ranking (#1 first), your teams pinned in a * MY TEAMS * section
NFL: grouped by kickoff slot (SUN 1:00 PM, SUN 4:25 PM, …)
Live games show quarter, clock, down & distance, possession and a red-zone flag
Finals show who covered and whether the total went over, and flag upsets
Filters for top 25, live only, one conference, or hand-picked games; sort by rank/kickoff or by soonest

Game view — click (or send from the phone) any game for a full-screen view: big score, pregame line, a live field with the line of scrimmage, first-down marker and the offense’s logo, the last play, and each team’s top passer, rusher and receiver.

Game detail

NFL fantasy — the week’s top 5 at every position (ESPN PPR), and a My Players screen for your own roster with live points and stat lines.

Fantasy leaders	My players

Phone remote — the TV shows a QR code for its first minute. Scan it to switch leagues, change filters, open a game, page through the board, pick fantasy players, or set your teams.

Phone remote

How it works

 ESPN public APIs ──► LineBoard.html  (in the Pi's browser, full screen on the TV)
                          ▲    │
            settings,     │    │ what's on screen
            taps          │    ▼
                        server.py  (Python standard library, on the Pi)
                          ▲
                          │
                     remote.html  (your phone, same Wi-Fi)

LineBoard.html is the whole board: one file of plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no build step or frameworks. It pulls scoreboards, game summaries and fantasy stats straight from ESPN, pages through games, and draws the field as SVG.
server.py serves the board and the remote, stores the remote’s settings, and passes taps to the board. It uses only Python’s standard library.
remote.html is the phone page.
setup-pi.sh / start-board.sh set up the Pi to run everything on its own.

It’s built to be left running:

ESPN drops odds once a game ends, so the board remembers each pregame line to settle spreads and totals.
Around midnight ESPN’s feed can briefly come back empty while it rolls over. The board double-checks and keeps the last good data instead of going blank.
The last good board is cached, so a reload during an outage comes back with games on screen.
When ESPN’s live data briefly drops the ball spot, the field falls back to its yard-line number, then to the last known spot.

Run it

Just the board: open LineBoard.html in a browser. Add ?league=nfl for the NFL.

With the phone remote (any computer with Python 3):

python3 server.py

Open http://localhost:8080/ for the board; the remote’s address and QR code appear on screen.

On a Raspberry Pi: copy the files into a folder on the Pi, then run once:

bash setup-pi.sh
sudo reboot

After that the Pi runs itself:

server.py runs as a background service: it starts at boot and restarts if it ever stops.
The board opens full screen at login (start-board.sh), with Chromium’s background throttling turned off so it keeps updating.
A watchdog restarts the browser if the board stops checking in for 5 minutes.
Screen blanking is turned off.

No mouse on the TV? bash hide-cursor.sh hides the desktop’s pointer too (undo with bash hide-cursor.sh off).

Pushing updates from another computer: create a .deploy.env file with your Pi’s login:

PI="username@192.168.1.50"
DIR="Scorebug"

then run ./deploy.sh. The TV reloads itself when a new board arrives, and the server restarts itself when server.py changes.

Board options (URL parameters, when not using the remote): league=cfb|nfl, my=OSU,MICH, sec=20 (seconds per page), cols=1, scope=today, sort=soon, top25=1.

Project history

ScoreBugv1.html is where this started: a simple multi-sport scorebug. The line board grew out of it.

Notes

Uses ESPN’s public (unofficial) web APIs for scores, odds and fantasy stats. Not affiliated with ESPN or DraftKings; for personal use.
Screenshots use sample game states.