Showcase/Proposal: Major refactor

[WardBrian]

I decided to build one of these last week and couldn't leave well enough alone. I didn't intend to contribute back any changes, but I ended up doing a lot of work which may be useful for the broader community using this. In retrospect, a lot of what I did overlaps pretty strongly with requests already present in this repo - it seems that if I wanted a feature, chances are someone else did as well.

For the moment, I'm treating this as more of a showcase PR -- merging would require a decent bit more work and buy-in on some of my changes, which may not all be popular.

Major code changes:

• Update to Python 3 in largely the same way [WIP] Update scoreboard for Python 3 compatibility #304 did
• Run flake8, isort, and black for formatting and linting (this makes the diffs really ugly because of whitespace changes, sorry!)
• Switch from mlbgame to MLB-StatsApi (MLB XML API deprecation #293). This also resolved New standings implementation displays wrong record #320 as I redid standings, and has the nice benefit of Sorting games by start time #298 happening for free
• Refactor data to be less of a god object. Schedule and Game are now their own objects, with the corresponding logic moved into those.
• Run the rendering code on a separate thread than the data loading and refreshing code

This last change in particular should make the program more robust to future MLB api changes, as the only changes would be needed in these classes rather than every place that depends on a game's data etc.

Features and minor changes:

• Allow for the scoreboard to be run off-hardware by falling back on an emulator if rgbmatrix is not installed
• Show pitcher/at-bat information on the game screen (Pitcher/batter number for each team #23) for displays of size 64x32, scrolling their names if necessary. Disabled on 32x32, and not yet placed on larger boards but could be easily. This is inspired by the work pfightingpolish did, but on a much smaller scale. It can also show due up information during inning breaks (Display hitters due up #105)
  
• Animations for home runs and strikeouts (Display flashing marquee for strikeouts #25)
• Option to only show live games (Add option to rotate through only live games #51)
• Clean up the irregular status messages like manager challenges (an alternative approach to “Manager challenge” bug on 64x32 board #303 & Status text offset too far to the right on default w64h32 layout #258)
• Add an option to display standings when no [preferred] games are live (Display standings when all games are over #272 but also before any games)
• Unified the way updating of data is handled for network purposes and general consistency
• Switch to python's logging module for logging, rather than the ad-hoc method used before
• Fix a lot of bugs/crashes related to poor network behavior
• Support new command line args from the matrix library like --led-pwm-dither-bits
• Some opinionated renaming (ScoreboardConfig -> Config)
• A postseason bracket shown on the schedule page after the last day of the season

TODO

If this was going to be merged, there are a lot of further tweaks needed. The few that come to mind immediately:

• Update install script/method (why ship matrix as a submodule?)
• Update formatting for boards other than 32x32 or 64x32
• Update readme with new information
• Should probably parse the important dates manually and ditch mlbgame entirely

[pfightingpolish]

I wrote up a quick train display for my local subway stop during the offseason I'd like to keep using, but it's actually a rather difficult scheduling problem, especially if you don't want to be making network requests for information you're not actively using

There are a couple different ways I can think of attacking this:

1. Consider having an entirely different complete directory for different applications. For instance, I have different directories for different sports (MLB, NFL, basketball, soccer, etc.) and just go in and change the /lib/systemd/system/mlb-led-scoreboard.service file to load the different sport I want to display. The full build doesn't take up that much space. Multiple iterations on the same partition is very doable.
2. If you want to try and integrate it into the game display functionality, write it in as its own data class and renderer class, then set up the function in your renderers/main.py file to only have it call for the data on a conditional function, such as "no active games" or "no games on this day" or whatever. There's always a way to make something conditional.

[tracerrx]

on my 64x128 I get a flashing ? on strikeouts. Assuming this means I'm missing some font install for a backwards K? Also the mlb logo for 64x128 is missing from /assets

[tracerrx]

mlb-w128h64.png

[tracerrx]

Some font size changes and position changes for 128x6
w128h64.json.zip
4

[WardBrian]

Care to describe your changes? I only use 64x32 personally so the other sizes were mostly quickly eyeballed by me

[tracerrx]

• Change Default font to 7x13 from 9x18B
• Change base size to 10 from 14
• Change Due Up font to 5x7 from 7x13B
• Set Due Up divider to false
• Change leadoff font to 7x13 from 7x13B
• Moved number x pos from 87 to 93
• Re-positioned inning indicator arrow
• Re-positioned and resized OUTS
• Changed font to 5x7 for atbat and pitcher
• Added font 9x18B to Home and Away team names, changed positions to accomdate font size

[tracerrx]

FYI, installs and runs just fine on 64bit Raspberry Pi OS.

[tracerrx]

FYI, when running as a service add time-sync.target as a want and after to ensure that NTP syncs and gets a date before mlb-led-scoreboard starts.

in /lib/systemd/system/mlb-led-scoreboard.service make sure you have:

[Unit]
Description=MLB LED Scoreboard
Wants=network-online.target time-sync.target
After=network.target network-online.target time-sync.target

[twfarley]

Update the readme and wiki to include python 3 updates and I think we can merge.

I’d really like a 32x32 version as well so we don’t deprecate those that bought in with that config.

[WardBrian]

It works on 32x, it just doesn’t display the new batter/pitcher

I can update the readme later

[WardBrian]

@twfarley I can't edit the wiki, but I did fix the README

[tracerrx]

Is the Network/Channel the game is on in the feed? If so anyway we can put it on the pregame screen? Especially with all the exclusive deals now (Espn, Amazon Prime, AppleTV+, Peacock).. its getting a little confusing.

[WardBrian]

I can’t find it in the data feed

[tracerrx]

I just looked at todays NYY-BOS feed and while its not in the live feed below:
http://statsapi.mlb.com/api/v1.1/game/661316/feed/live

It does look like maybe its here:
https://statsapi.mlb.com/api/v1/schedule?sportId=1&date=2022-04-10&hydrate=broadcasts

[WardBrian]

Huh, I will look into it. I guess the most useful thing is only showing if it's a national broadcast?

[WardBrian]

It would be much easier if the information was available from the game endpoint rather than the schedule one

[tracerrx]

Agreed.. I also don't understand this hydrate option (maybe it can be used on the game url as well?)... I found it here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mlbdata/comments/rzywe0/mlb_tv_network_info/

[WardBrian]

I was able to find a (kinda old) version of the MLB documentation and it seems like that isn’t on the game endpoint

[tracerrx]

1. The link to this thread was removed from the README on github....
2. How hard would it be to build in a configurable delay? It seems that the MLB API is much faster than live game boradcasts this year.. maybe 10-15 seconds?

[WardBrian]

I’ve also noticed it being a few pitches ahead of the feed, though the Gameday app often is as well. The technical details of how you’d do such a delay get complicated pretty quickly