This program evolved from a problem we (Sportiek Spins) were experiencing during the games. The scoreboard was positioned is such a way that it was visible for the teams but not for the spectators. To fix this problem I created a scoreboard that we projected on the wall so everyone could see it. Since I didn't have any programming experience I wrote the program in Visual Basic, since that seemed to be the easiest way to create a program with a GUI.
This scoreboard was an improvement in several ways:
- Since the score, time and current period are visible, people don't have to bother the game officials to ask.
- The penalty times were visible, so the teams could see how long power play/penalty killing time they had left.
- We didn't have to calculate the end time of the penalties anymore, because the scoreboard showed the time the penalty has left.
A while later, we started playing music during the important games, we had to ensure the music stopped once the time started and vice versa. To do this I integrated the program with an ITunes plugin. This gave us the opportunity to just run a playlist and once the time started/stopped the volume was set to 0/100 accordingly.