Found 5 Dollars

Build your own live LED scoreboard

Your phone keeps score in the free Found 5 Dollars app — and this board, built from off-the-shelf parts in an afternoon, shows it live from across the yard, the gym, or the kitchen table. We build these ourselves and run them at real tournaments. Here's exactly how.

~$85 in parts No soldering for the basic build An afternoon start to scoreboard

How it works

The Found 5 Dollars app publishes live scores to a public relay — that's how spectator pages and TV mode work. This board is a small Wi-Fi computer driving an LED panel that checks the same relay every few seconds and draws whatever your game is doing:

🏐 Volleyball / sports courts get big paired scores with sets and serve, straight from the app's Sideline scorer. 🃏 Table games (Five Crowns, Farkle, anything with rounds) get a standings board — names and running totals, leader in green. 🕐 Between games it's a clock, or anything you draw in the app's board designer.

No board? Everything works without one — phones and TVs show the same live scores. The board is for the rooms where everyone asks "what's the score?" out loud.

Build #1 — The Game Night Scoreboard

A 64×32 LED matrix with a plug-together controller. This is the exact build we run at volleyball tournaments and on the game table at home.

Parts

PartNotesApprox.
Adafruit Matrix Portal M4 The brains — Wi-Fi + matrix driver on one board. Get the M4 (our firmware targets it), not the S3. $34.95
64×32 RGB LED Matrix, 4 mm pitch The display. Any HUB75 64×32 panel works; 4 mm pitch is a good indoor size (~10″×5″). $39.95
USB-C cable + 5V wall adapter (2.4A or better) Powers everything through the Matrix Portal. A beefy phone charger works; skip the skinny ones. ~$10
Optional: acrylic diffuser, small easel or frame Softens the pixels and props it up. A 3D-printed stand works great if you have a printer. ~$10
Total~$85–95

Links go to Adafruit, the maker of the controller board — most parts are also on Amazon. Prices are approximate and not ours; we have no affiliation with Adafruit.

Steps

  1. Snap it together

    The Matrix Portal plugs directly into the panel's HUB75 socket (the 16-pin connector on the back) — press it on firmly. Screw the panel's red and black power leads into the Matrix Portal's screw terminals (red → 5V, black → GND). That's the whole assembly; no soldering.

  2. Install CircuitPython

    Plug the board into your computer over USB-C. Double-tap the RESET button — a drive called MATRIXBOOT appears. Download CircuitPython 10.x for the Matrix Portal M4 from circuitpython.org and drag the .uf2 file onto that drive. The board reboots as a drive called CIRCUITPY.

  3. Copy the scoreboard firmware

    Copy our firmware bundle onto CIRCUITPY — it's a handful of Python files plus a lib folder.

    📦 The firmware download is almost ready — we're preparing the public release right now. Want it today? Email us and we'll send the current bundle with hand-holding included.

  4. Tell it your Wi-Fi and your court

    Create a file called settings.toml on CIRCUITPY (a template ships in the bundle): 

    CIRCUITPY_WIFI_SSID = "your-home-network"
CIRCUITPY_WIFI_PASSWORD = "your-password"

SCOREBOARD_TOURNAMENT = "SMITH26"   # any code you make up
SCOREBOARD_COURT = "TABLE"          # must match the app

    Wi-Fi must be 2.4 GHz — the board's radio can't see 5 GHz networks. You can list a second network (like your phone's hotspot) as a fallback for away games.

  5. Power it up

    Plug into the wall adapter. The board joins your Wi-Fi and starts polling — a tiny heartbeat pixel blinks in the corner about once a second so you always know it's alive.

  6. Point the app at it

    In the app (free), start any rounds game and open the 📺 Live board card — enter the same tournament code and court label. Scores appear on the panel within a few seconds, and every point you enter afterward follows automatically. For volleyball, the Sideline scorer broadcasts to the same code.

Field lessons we learned so you don't have to: cheap power banks sag when the panel goes bright — use a wall adapter or a quality bank. iPhone hotspots need Maximize Compatibility ON to show up as 2.4 GHz. And if the board ever sits dark, check the heartbeat pixel first: blinking means it's alive and your design is just dim; dark means power or a crashed card.

More builds on the bench

🏓 Pickleball board you score with your feet

The board lies at the net post with four big arcade buttons — up and down for each team, sized for a toe-tap between rallies. No phone, no sweaty hands; spectator pages mirror it live. We're field-testing the prototype now — directions coming once it survives real games.

🔳 The 64×64 square board

Two chained panels make a square board with more rows for table standings and a last-set line for volleyball. Same controller, same firmware — one line of config. Directions coming.

🎨 The off-hours sign

Between games, a board can show anything you draw in the app's board designer — a mantel clock, a bar sign, a countdown to game night. It ships with the same firmware; the designer lives in the app.

The board is the easy part

The scores come from the free Found 5 Dollars app — scorecards for everything your family plays, synced live to every phone, TV, and board in the room.

Open the app — it's free