Captivate Broadcast and Sport can connect to any Daktronics All Sport® 5000 and retrieve its serial data to display real-time sports data into on-air graphics. Follow the steps in this article to set up this communication between the console and Captivate.
Below are the 4 items and their requirements to successfully setup this connection.
- MacOS or Windows machine with an edition of Captivate Sport or Broadcast installed. The machine must also have an available USB type-a port (this requirement can be met with an adaptor or USB hub).
- Daktronics All Sport® 5000 console.
- Daktronics Port Expander.
- Note: We recommend obtaining this adaptor from the following site: https://serialtools.tv/product/daktronics-port-expander/
- USB to RS232 cable.
- Note: An adaptor with the FTDI chipset is required.
- Important! Serial data can only effectively travel 50 feet before you begin to lose data. We recommend keeping the cable length at least within 50 feet.
- Connect the male-end of Daktronics Port Expander to the Daktronics All Sport® 5000 "I/O PORT".
- The Daktronics Port Expander has a female-end RS232 port available, connect the male-end of the RS232 to USB cable to this port on the Daktronics Port Expander. See the image below as a reference to how the connectors should look once connected.
- Connect the USB end of the cable into a machine that has an updated version of Captivate Sport or Broadcast installed.
- Launch Captivate and add a scoreboard graphic to a channel from the Layers list. (See article Captivate playout interface overview to learn more about the playout interface).
- Navigate to the Data Controller column drop-down that corresponds to the graphic layer that will have the data controller added to it and navigate the menu as follows: Sports > Hardware Scoreboard > Daktronics > Sport Name.
- After selecting the sport of choice, the data controller to operate it will appear as a tab from the Layer Properties panel.
- Access the data controller and there will be a drop-down in the top right corner to select a source to read serial data from.
- The drop-down will list any ports that Captivate has detected from the console it is connected to.
- The data controller interface will list all the available data variables for that specific console set to that specific sport and when data is received for those values from the console, their string data will be displayed in real-time.
Important! This latest version of the data controller can only support a single serial data source at a time. It is recommended to only use a single sport data controller for that machine and session of Captivate to avoid any issues with data variables.