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Romega Digital Assists Boston Celtics Facility

One of the most exciting projects I’ve had the opportunity to work on at Romega launched mid-June. We worked with HB Communications to deliver a custom software solution for the new practice facility for the Boston Celtics


HB Communications came to us with a list of equipment they were planning to implement for a LED banner wrapping around an entire room. On this banner, they were hoping to show near real-time scores from across all major league sports. However, they were unable to find an out-of-the-box product to meet the retrieval and display of this custom set of data. We were happy to help.

The Build

The whole project took a couple of months to complete. We needed everything ready and live by June 19, the reveal of the Auerbach Center. First, we found a service whose API we could utilize to retrieve scores and other live game information. After that, it was just a matter of transforming the data and displaying it in near real time.

 

The biggest challenge in this project was how the seamless display needed to be rendered on a computer. It could not render just one long image. Instead, we broke it up into 4 individual lines that would need to be started at the exact right delay point. This allowed for a seamless blend between each line on the banner.

the original wireframe design

We used a series of technologies to overcome this challenge. Ultimately, we ended up with the seamless blend we were hoping for.

The next thing we focused on was enabling Celtics staff to control the banner display. We created a few features that help ease this management, including the ability to choose which sports should be shown at any time.

the UI for enabling and disabling sports

Additionally, the ability to add a custom message to the banner was an important aspect of the project. At any time, they may be inviting special guests into the facilities and wanted the ability to show a user-defined message exclusively or alongside the scores.

the UI behind the custom messages

One more implementation of this data was in a scoreboard format on a large LED video wall in the same room. For the design, we reimagined an old-style Daktronics display and how it might look like as a graphical LED if designed today. The design fits both the aesthetics of the room and the Celtics branding.

a Daktronics display (above) versus what we created (below)

 

The Result

We attribute the success of this project to a wonderful partner in HB Communications, a fantastic customer in the Boston Celtics, technology partners like Appspace and Nanolumens, and the designers and developers at Romega Digital that brought it all together.

We love solving unique problems for our customers. Everyone has their own challenges they need to overcome, and off-the-shelf products don’t always fit your needs. We recognize this as well and want to help. If you have a need for software that just doesn’t exist, shoot me an email. Let’s see how we can help.