Home Assistant (optional)
Nothing about the panel needs Home Assistant. It reads ESPN, runs its own device page and updates itself over Wi-Fi. If you already use Home Assistant, you can add the panel to it, because the firmware is an ordinary ESPHome device.
Adding it
Section titled “Adding it”With Home Assistant on the same network, it discovers the panel as a new ESPHome device and offers to add it. The prebuilt firmware has no API encryption key, so there is no key to enter.
Picking a team or a mode from Home Assistant counts as setting the panel up, the same as the app or the device page, so the ticker stops asking you to pick a team.
What appears
Section titled “What appears”| Entity | What it is |
|---|---|
| Team | The team the panel follows in My team. Every league except men’s college basketball, whose list would be too long for one entity; pick those teams on the device page. |
| Mode | My team, Favorite teams or Live games, plus the older Live NFL, Live college and Live anything. |
| Power | The panel’s lights on or off. |
| Brightness | 1 to 255. |
| Scroll Speed | The ticker speed, 1 to 10. |
| Select Page | The Scoreboard or the Clock page, with Page Next and Page Previous buttons. |
| Game Status | The game in one line: the matchup, whether it’s upcoming, live or final, and the score. |
| Last Play | ESPN’s latest play. |
| Firmware | The firmware update, so Home Assistant shows when a new release is out. |
| Install Updates Automatically | The same switch as on the device page. See Firmware updates. |
| Check for Updates, Refresh Now, Reboot | The device page’s buttons. |
| Reset Wi-Fi, Factory Reset | The resets. See The boot button and resets. |
| WizMote Auto-Discovery, WizMote MAC Address, WizMote Status, Clear WizMote Pairing | Pairing a WizMote. See WizMote remote. |
| IP, ESPN Data | The panel’s IP address, and how much it has downloaded from ESPN since it started. |
A few diagnostic sensors, the Wi-Fi signal and the free memory readings, are there but turned off until you turn them on in Home Assistant.
Favorites, the timezone, the ticker switches, the celebrations, the Live games leagues and the panel layout have no entities. Set them on the device page or in the app.
What you can automate
Section titled “What you can automate”Game Status changes when a game starts, when someone scores and when it ends, not on every play, so it makes a good trigger and keeps your history small. Some ideas:
- Flash the room lights or play a sound when Game Status changes during your team’s game.
- Turn the panel on before kickoff and off at bedtime with Power, or turn Brightness down at night.
- Switch Team or Mode for the evening’s game.
- Install updates on your own schedule with the Firmware entity.
If you want room lighting to celebrate with the score, the separate gameday-matrix project does the same game tracking through a Home Assistant blueprint, using the same splash rules.
On your network
Section titled “On your network”The panel treats your home network as trusted: Home Assistant, the app and the device page all connect without a password. Anyone on your Wi-Fi can change its settings. Don’t expose it to the internet.