NHL Goal Alerter

I got the idea for this project after visiting my brother-in-law Paul and noticing he had one of those goal lights that you can set up to flash and beep if your team scores. Got me to wondering how that worked, and if I could replicate and improve on it. Turns out I could.

The trickiest part was finding where to get near-real-time game updates. A few Google searches later, and I found the NHL stats API (Application Programming Interface – a method for two systems to talk to each other). Better yet, it was open (i.e. don’t need a login or key or anything and it’s FREE).

Once I figured out how to communicate I decided to write the code with Micropython – a slimmed down version of the Python program that lives right on the microcontroller. This made coding boat-loads easier than writing in Arduino C.

The NHL Goal Alerter includes the following features:

• Customizable favourite team
• OLED mini-screen that shows game status and score
• Different LED animations for:
  > Game time approaching (brightness slowly increases)
  > Game in progress
  > Favourite team scores
  > Opponent team scores
  > Favourite team wins
  > Opponent team wins
  > Goal is overturned
  > Game is over (brightness slowly fades)
•  Different music cues for:
  > Puck drop imminent (Hockey night in Canada theme)
  > Favourite team scores (Indiana Jones theme)
  > Opponent team scores (Imperial March)
  > Favourite team wins (We Are The Champions)
  > Opponent team wins (Don’t Cry for me Argentina)
  > Goal is overturned (Pop Goes the Weasel)