Keeping on top of NFL scores can feel like a full-time job.If you're in a fantasy league, it can be hard to know how well you're doing without constantly checking your phone.I decided to build a scoreboard using a cheap ESP32 board to keep me informed while I'm at my desk.
A Cheap Yellow Display makes the perfect scoreboard You can buy the touchscreen display for around $15 A Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is an incredibly versatile little device.It's an ESP32 microcontroller with a built-in color touchscreen display.You can buy a CYD for $15 or less, and while the touchscreen responsiveness isn't anything to write home about, it's more than good enough for a lot of uses.
I often use CYDs in my smart home projects.I use a CYD to help me discover great new music, to keep me from sitting down for too long, and even as a mood ring that reacts to the weather and upcoming events.It felt like it was the perfect tool for helping me keep track of NFL scores, since it could display key information on the screen, and using the touchscreen, I could swipe through to see other screens if I needed to.
Related I loved Samsung's Now Bar until it stopped working—here's the only fix that might help Here's how to fix sports scores on Samsung's Now Bar.Posts 1 By Cory Gunther Getting live scores onto the CYD Home Assistant handles the data, and ESPHome gets it to display Close The first challenge was to get live NFL scores to appear on the CYD.ESPN provides a publicly accessible NFL scoreboard data feed, and although this isn't a proper public API, it returns structured JSON containing information about current and upcoming games.
I set up a small Python service running on my home server that periodically requests the ESPN data, extracts the fields I need to show on the scoreboard, and organizes them into a specific format.This ensures that I'm only working with the data I want rather than the much larger set of data that ESPN provides.The processed information is passed to Home Assistant, which acts as the link between the Python service and the CYD.
Home Assistant sends the data to the ESPHome firmware running on the CYD, which redraws the relevant parts of the screen to show any updated information.The Python service only requests data every few hours when there are no games in progress, but once a game is due to start, it polls more frequently, so that the information on the display isn't too far behind what ESPN is publishing.When the score changes in a game, the CYD updates to show the new score as well as showing which team scored and how the points were gained.
The scoreboard even shows my fantasy football matchups Sleeper lets me track my team without touching the app The CYD does more than just show the current scores.It can show the current state of my fantasy football matchups, too.I use the Sleeper fantasy sports platform, which has its own API that allows applications to retrieve publicly available league and matchup information.
Using the league and roster IDs, the Python service retrieves the current NFL week and the league's matchups.Home Assistant once again shares this data with the CYD, so I can swipe through to a dedicated screen that shows the score of my current matchup.During live games, the fantasy scores are checked frequently, so I can see the current matchup score.
It doesn't show other information such as individual player performances or projected points; I still need to use the app to check these out.I can keep an eye on scores without pulling out my phone The touchscreen lets me swipe to the information I want The beauty of my tiny ESP32-based scoreboard is that it makes keeping tabs on games incredibly easy.If I want to see the current NFL scores, I can glance at the screen.
If I want to see the live score updates for a specific game, I can swipe through to that game, and if I want to see how my fantasy matchup is going, I can access that screen, too.In the past, this would have involved pulling out my phone and checking the relevant apps.My CYD scoreboard keeps the information on the screen at all times, and there are no other distractions like there are with my phone.
If I'm doing some work, I can keep an eye on the scores with a quick glance, without going down a rabbit hole of doomscrolling once I open my phone.A tiny screen with big ideas It's truly impressive what you can do with a CYD.ESPHome and Home Assistant make it relatively easy to get information to appear on the screen, which opens up a world of possibilities.
While the tiny screen isn't ideal for everything, for displaying small amounts of information such as sports scores, it's the perfect device for the job.
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