rpi-dodgers

A Raspberry Pi + Sense HAT ticker that scrolls upcoming MLB game info across the LED matrix and announces scoring plays. It polls the public MLB Stats API and, by default, tracks the Los Angeles Dodgers (team ID 119).

• program_api.py — the main program: fetches the schedule, scrolls the next game on the Sense HAT, plays a walk-up sound at game time, and announces runs.
• demo.py — a minimal standalone demo that just scrolls a message and plays a sound. Useful for confirming your Sense HAT and audio work.

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi (any model with the 40-pin GPIO header)
• Sense HAT seated on the GPIO header
• Speakers/headphones (or HDMI audio) for the walk-up sound

Raspberry Pi setup

Run these on the Pi (Raspberry Pi OS).

1. System packages

The Sense HAT Python library depends on python3-rtimulib, which is not available from PyPI — it must come from apt. mpv plays the audio clip.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y sense-hat python3-rtimulib mpv

sense-hat (apt) pulls in the Sense HAT Python module plus python3-rtimulib and the required kernel/I2C bits.

2. Enable I2C

The Sense HAT talks to the Pi over I2C:

sudo raspi-config    # Interface Options -> I2C -> Enable
sudo reboot

3. Get the code

git clone https://github.com/ryancheley/rpi-dodgers.git
cd rpi-dodgers

4. Install the Python dependencies

Because the Sense HAT library is installed system-wide via apt (it can't come from PyPI), the simplest path on the Pi is to install the remaining pure-Python deps with apt too and run against the system Python:

sudo apt install -y python3-requests python3-dateutil

Alternative: use a virtual environment

If you prefer a venv, create it with access to the apt-installed sense_hat module (which lives in the system site-packages):

python3 -m venv --system-site-packages .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install requests python-dateutil

sense-hat is declared in pyproject.toml as a Linux-only dependency, but on the Pi it comes from apt (for rtimulib), which is why --system-site-packages is needed rather than a plain pip install.

5. Configure

Two things are currently hard-coded and may need editing:

• Team: program_api.py ends with main(119) (Dodgers). Change 119 to your team's ID — find it at http://statsapi.mlb.com/api/v1/teams?sportId=1.
• Audio path: program_api.py runs mpv --fs /home/ryan/Documents/rpi-dodgers/dodger_baseball.mp3. Update that path to wherever you cloned the repo (the dodger_baseball.mp3 file ships with it).

6. Run

python3 demo.py          # quick hardware/audio check
python3 program_api.py   # the real thing

The program checks the schedule once per run. To have it run automatically, schedule it with cron — for example, every 5 minutes during the season:

*/5 * * * * cd /home/ryan/Documents/rpi-dodgers && /usr/bin/python3 program_api.py

Updating the code on the Pi

The Pi pulls its own updates from GitHub — there is no push-based deploy. Add a cron job that git pulls the latest main, e.g. every 5 minutes:

*/5 * * * * cd /home/ryan/Documents/rpi-dodgers && /usr/bin/git pull --ff-only >> /home/ryan/rpi-dodgers-pull.log 2>&1

So merges to main land on the Pi automatically within a few minutes. Edit crontab -e on the Pi to add it.

Development (non-Pi)

The project uses uv. On a non-Pi machine the Sense HAT dependency is skipped automatically (it's marked Linux-only), so you can still lint and type-check:

uv sync
uv run ruff check .
uv run ty check
pre-commit install    # run the hooks on every commit