What a Basketball Scoreboard Shows

The core set is the same across the line, and the cabinets differ in how much of it appears in digits rather than indicators, and how large those digits are.

• Points for each team. With the Period Clock, these are the largest digits on the face - 16 in. on the largest cabinet, 12 in. on most of the line.
• The Period Clock. Four digits, and on the models that support it, tenths of a second in the final minute.
• Period. The quarter or half.
• Team Fouls. A running count per side, which is what the Bonus indicators are derived from.
• Time Outs Left. On some models this replaces the Player/Foul pair - the LX2550 takes the LX2655 layout and swaps them.
• Player Number and Player Foul. The player who committed the most recent foul, and how many fouls that player now has.
• Bonus and Possession. Indicators rather than digits.

One structural note that saves confusion later: the console screen shows information corresponding closely, but not exactly, to the scoreboard. A value that reads zero on the console can be blank on the face, and a cabinet that does not carry a function will not show it even though the console is tracking it internally. Some models do not include Fouls or Player Number at all.

Fouls, Bonus and Possession

These three are the ones a new operator asks about, and they behave in a specific way worth knowing before a game.

Team Fouls are a straightforward count per side. Bonus is not derived automatically from that count - it is set by the operator, and the key cycles through three states: none, single bonus and double bonus. On the console screen single bonus shows as a lower-case "b" and double bonus as a capital "B"; on the scoreboard, single bonus lights one indicator and double bonus lights two. Some models do not carry the double bonus indicator at all.

Possession is an indicator with no count behind it, toggled as the ball changes hands.

The practical consequence is that the scorer's table is doing the interpreting. The scoreboard shows what it is told, and a team-foul count that has run past the bonus threshold without anybody pressing the bonus key looks exactly like a scoreboard that is working correctly - because it is.

Player Number and Player Foul

These two keys work as a pair, and the manual is explicit about the order: set the Player Number, then set the Player Foul immediately afterwards. The Player Number identifies the player who committed the most recent foul; the Player Foul shows how many fouls that player now has.

One detail that comes up in every gym eventually: the Player Foul display cannot be blanked once it has been turned on. It initialises to blank when the console is reset for a new game, so if you want it empty, reset the console rather than looking for a clear key.

On cabinets configured for more than one sport - the ones showing volleyball or wrestling information - this key and its display have no meaning, and the Player Number display can represent something different depending on the model. That is worth confirming at commissioning on a shared court.

The Clock, Time Outs and the Horn

• Setting the clock. Only while it is stopped, entered as digits, with seconds above 59 rejected.
• Tenths of a second. On a down-counting clock the display can shift to seconds and tenths during the final minute of a period, and that behaviour can be switched off.
• The horn at the end of a period. Automatic by default. It can be turned off at the console prompts.
• The shot clock horn. A separate setting. By default the shot timers sound their own horns when they count to zero.
• The horn at the end of a time out. Disabled by default, and can be enabled.
• The Time Out Timer. Available while the game clock is stopped: it counts down any duration under ten minutes, optionally shown on the scoreboard instead of the game clock, with a "T" on the console screen. Starting the game clock while it runs aborts the countdown.

Three separate horn settings sounds fussy until the first game where the shot clock horn sounds during a dead ball and nobody knows which setting caused it. Ten minutes at commissioning settles all three.

A Game From the Scorer's Table

The features make more sense in the order an operator meets them, so here is a game from the seat that runs it.

Before tip-off: power up, decline the offer to restore last game unless you want it, set the clock, and confirm the period. Check that Player Foul is blank - it clears on a console reset and not otherwise.

During play: the clock runs and stops from one key, and while it runs only that key and the horn do anything, which is a feature rather than a limitation - a bumped keypad cannot rewrite the game. Points go up one press at a time. A foul is two keys in sequence: the player number, then that player's foul count. Team Fouls climbs on its own key, and when the count crosses your competition's threshold somebody has to press bonus, because the scoreboard will not infer it.

At a time out: the Time Out Timer counts anything under ten minutes, optionally taking over the game clock display on the scoreboard while the console tracks both. Starting the game clock again aborts it.

Corrections: the console has direct-entry keys for a team's score and the other figures it tracks, so a wrong number is typed over rather than clicked down. The clear key backs out of any prompt without changing anything, which is the key to reach for when a sequence has gone somewhere unintended.

None of that needs a specialist. It needs one person who has done it once before the first game, which is the argument for a proper handover at commissioning rather than a manual left in a drawer.

Shot Clocks, and Why They Are Separate

Shot clocks do not come with a basketball scoreboard. They are their own product, ordered as a pair, and they mount behind the backboards.

The LX2180 also repeats the Period Clock in 6 in. digits, so the officials' end of the gym has the shot time and the game time together. Attached to the console, shot clocks show 35 seconds on power-up, and the console programs two reset values onto the top and middle buttons of the three-button handheld controller that ships with the set.

The console carries four data output ports - nominally two for the scoreboard and two for shot clocks or other displays, though all four are identical. Each drives a display directly through a single cable run, and up to ten displays can be daisy-chained in synchronisation; with the ScoreLink wireless option that practical limit disappears.

Colour, Brightness and Legibility

The indoor line uses three LED colours to separate areas of the face, so a spectator finds the clock without reading captions. On the largest cabinet the LEDs are amber, red and green behind aluminum masks.

Brightness is a console setting rather than a fixed property: 50 selectable levels. That matters more in a gym than people expect, because the lighting a scoreboard is commissioned under is rarely the lighting it plays under.

For distance, plan roughly 25 feet of viewing distance per inch of digit height. A 12 in. digit reads to about 300 feet and a 16 in. digit to about 400, which covers a school gym several times over - indoor sizing is usually decided by the wall rather than by the seating.

The Indoor Range

On the LX2770, Guest Points, Home Points and the Period Clock are 16 inches tall; Period, Fouls, Time Outs, Player Number and Player Foul are 12 inches; and the Bonus and Possession indicators are 5 inches, with captions at 7, 5 and 4 inches. That hierarchy is the same idea at every size in the line.

What Gyms Actually Order

Two models are more than half the record. The LX2350 and LX2655 together account for 5,053 of 8,810 basketball entries. Read by the name of the buying organization, 5,091 entries are schools, 584 parks and recreation departments, 581 churches and private facilities and 405 colleges, with 2,149 unclassified.

Colleges buy differently. Among the college entries the most ordered product is not a scoreboard at all - it is the LX2180 shot clock pair at 79, ahead of the LX2655 at 74 and the LX2160 shot clocks at 69. A college gym already has a scoreboard; what it adds is the shot clock.

One caution about reading this too literally. These are sales and shipping records: they say what was ordered and where it was sent, not what is hanging today, and a shipping address is sometimes a dealer rather than the gym.

Mounting and Power

An indoor scoreboard ships with hardware for attaching the cabinet to a wall, and the posts, clamp assemblies and concrete footings that go with outdoor scoreboards have no part in a gym installation. On the largest cabinet, the LX2770, the mounting tabs hang on two lag bolts - or similar hardware - of at most 3/8 inch diameter, spaced 72 inches centre to centre. For a ceiling mount, two eye bolts along the top of the frame, 60 inches apart, with a 1-inch opening for chain or cable. Whichever method, the structure carries the display plus anything hung with it, including ID panels.

Electrically the line is undemanding: 0.9 to 1.9 amps at 120 VAC, with the console on its own circuit at 0.5 amps and a dedicated breaker recommended. The LX2770 with electronic team names draws 3.4 amps rather than 1.9. Cabinets ship with a six-foot AC power cable, a stereo patch cable, and a junction box when the order is configured for hardwired data.

What matters far more than the electrical work is confirming what is behind the wall at the height you intend to hang it, and whether that height clears the top of the backboard from the front row. Both are cheap to answer in advance and expensive to discover on installation day.

Setting Up the Console Before the Season

Ten minutes with the console in September saves a season of small irritations. The settings worth deciding once:

• Restore or start fresh. On power-up the console offers to restore the previous game, and if nobody answers it restores automatically after a few seconds. That is the usual reason a scoreboard opens a new game with last week's score on it.
• The three horn behaviours. End of period, shot clock at zero, end of time out. Decide each rather than discovering them.
• Tenths of a second. Whether the clock shifts to seconds and tenths in the final minute of a period.
• Brightness. Fifty selectable levels. Set one for a full house with the lights up and one for a practice, and write down which is which.
• Electronic team names, if fitted. The MP-Series console is the one that supports them, and they are what the scoreboard shows instead of painted lettering.
• Shot clock reset values. Two, programmed onto the top and middle buttons of the three-button handheld.

And one habit rather than a setting: put a card inside the console case listing which button does what at your gym. Scorers change from year to year; the card does not.

The Rest of the Order

A gym order is rarely one cabinet, and the additions are small and frequently the part people are happiest with.

• Locker room clocks. The LX7406 is a 23 in. x 10 in. display weighing 12 lbs. with 6 in. digits at 0.3 amps. It repeats the signal sent to the scoreboard Period Clock wherever you mount it indoors, and several can be daisy-chained back to one console. There are 139 in the sales record.
• Backboard light kits. LED light bars mounted on the backboard act as a visual horn indicator, driven from a goal light output port on the scoreboard. In a loud gym they do the job the horn cannot.
• ID panels. Panels carrying a mascot, a school name or a sponsor's message. A model with a built-in identification panel on the left, right or both is designated -L, -R or -LR and is quoted as its own model, because it adds cabinet, weight and mounting hardware.
• Handheld devices. A clock start-stop switch and the three-button shot clock controller, both plugging into RJ-45 sockets on the console's back plate - and it does not matter which device goes into which socket.

Replacing a Scoreboard, or Adding to One

Most gym purchases are replacements, and the useful first question is whether a replacement is what the problem actually calls for.

If the scoreboard is legible and the complaint is a missing function - no shot clocks, no clock in the locker rooms, no visual horn - those are additions to what already exists. Each console port drives a display directly, displays daisy-chain in synchronisation, and none of it disturbs the scoreboard on the wall.

If the scoreboard is genuinely too small or too old, three things decide how simple the replacement will be. What is behind the wall where the old one hung, because a larger cabinet is heavier and wider and the mounting tabs will not land on the old bolts. Whether the console goes too, since a new scoreboard ships with the console matched to it and an MM-Series can be upgraded to an MP-Series but not the reverse. And whether the data run stays, which is where most gyms move to the wireless link and stop maintaining a cable they cannot see.

One more question worth asking before the specification grows: which sports use the court. A gym that hands the floor to volleyball and wrestling during the season is describing the cabinet with removable caption plates, and that is a decision made at order time rather than afterwards.

What the Specification Does Not Say

• There is no sport-mode switch. What exists on the LX2665 is three removable metal plates carrying alternate captions for volleyball and wrestling. Swapping labels is a physical act, not a menu setting.
• There are no construction grades. The cabinets are extruded aluminum across the line. No premium tier costs more for the same size.
• There are no weatherproof or IP ratings. Not on any Electro-Mech cabinet. Indoors it is beside the point, but the claim turns up in gym specifications copied from outdoor documents.
• There are no 100,000-hour LED modules. Electro-Mech does not make LED modules and makes no lifetime claim about any component or assembly other than individual LEDs, where the statement is that the majority will keep working while holding at least half their original brightness over that span.
• Video displays are a different product. With their own specifications, electrical scope and quote. Nothing on this page describes one.

What to Bring to a Quote

Electro-Mech quotes each project individually rather than publishing a price list. A request carrying these comes back faster and closer to final:

• The wall you intend to use, and what is behind it. The answer that decides what can hang and at what height.
• The distance to the farthest seat. At roughly 25 feet of viewing distance per inch of digit height.
• Which sports use the court. Basketball only, or basketball with volleyball and wrestling - that decides whether removable caption plates belong on the order.
• Player and Foul, or Time Outs Left. Ask whoever runs the scorer's table which layout they want in front of them.
• Shot clocks, and which pair. Separate products: the LX2160 shows shot time, the LX2180 adds Game Time.
• Wired or wireless. And if wired, the path a cable would take across the gym.

Current models and their full specifications live on this site and are kept up to date there. Bring the model number you are considering, or the room measurements and the sports calendar, and let the sales representative work back to a model from that.

Most of what makes a gym scoreboard work well is decided in two conversations: one with the facilities team about the wall, and one with whoever will sit at the console. The catalogue question - which cabinet - usually answers itself once the room and the figures are settled.

Specifying one for your gym? Request a quote from Electro-Mech and include your wall, your farthest seat and whether shot clocks are part of the order.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a basketball scoreboard display?

Points for each team, the Period Clock, the Period, Team Fouls, Time Outs Left, Player Number and Player Foul, with Bonus and Possession shown as indicators. Which of these appear depends on the model - some cabinets do not carry Fouls or Player Number.

How does the Bonus indicator work?

It is set by the operator rather than derived from the team foul count. The key cycles through none, single bonus and double bonus; single lights one indicator on the scoreboard and double lights two. Some models do not carry the double bonus indicator.

Why can't I blank the Player Foul display?

It cannot be blanked once turned on, by design. It initialises to blank when the console is reset for a new game, so resetting the console is how you clear it.

Do shot clocks come with the scoreboard?

No. They are separate products ordered as a pair and mounted behind the backboards - the LX2160, or the LX2180 which also repeats the game clock in 6 in. digits. Attached to the console they show 35 seconds on power-up.

How many horn settings are there?

Three, all separate: the automatic horn at the end of a period, the shot clock horn at zero, and the horn at the end of a time out, which is disabled by default.

What is the largest indoor basketball scoreboard?

The LX2770, 14 ft. x 6 ft. and 220 lbs., with 16 in. digits for Points and the Period Clock, 12 in. for Period, Fouls, Time Outs, Player Number and Player Foul, and 5 in. Bonus and Possession indicators.

How does it mount?

On wall hardware supplied with the cabinet. On the LX2770 that is two lag bolts of at most 3/8 in. diameter at 72 in. centres, or two ceiling eye bolts at 60 in. centres. Posts and concrete footings belong to outdoor installations.

What electrical service does it need?

Ordinary 120 VAC at 0.9 to 1.9 amps, with the console on its own circuit at 0.5 amps and a dedicated breaker recommended. Electronic team names raise the draw - on the LX2770 from 1.9 to 3.4 amps.

Can a basketball scoreboard cover volleyball and wrestling?

The LX2665 carries three removable metal plates along the bottom with alternate captions for those sports. It is a physical swap of labels rather than a mode on the console.