I had an idea to create a scoreboard of sorts for the workplace, could be based on pretty much anything: from emails left in a support queue, to total number of sales within the week.

I guess anything that can be be measured(and accessible via an API) would be good enough, but first lets break this down into the individual components:

Display

Ideally some sort of LED matrix display ( https://www.jaycar.co.nz/large-dot-matrix-led-display-panel-blue/p/XC4251 )

Using an old repurposed computer screen would be overkill if we are just displaying some sort of simple metric

Display Driver

Going to use an Arduino for this as it will work nicely with any LED display. If we were displaying a large amount of information(or anything graphical such as graphs then a screen and RaspberryPi might be a better bet)

Communication

With using an Arduino we can look at communication via WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth or USB. AT this stage I’m going to go with USB/Serial because its simpler: one cable for power and communication and less libraries to deal with and there will be computers for it to be connected to anyway in most workplaces. If this was going to be a standalone project(no computer readily available) then USB might not be a good option

Data collection/processing

Data for this could be collected anywhere, via an API seems a reasonable method. At this point I’m going to start with data in an Excel spreadsheet as this will collected data and should be able to push the data to an Arduino

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Hello! I’m doglitbug, a 40 yo software engineer from New Zealand. This blog is to chronicle my exploits outside of work, hobbies etc!

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