All the Information I Care About in a Single Feed
If you want all the information you care about in a single feed, GridTicker is built for that. You might follow the game score, your stocks, the morning's headlines, the weather and the plane going over the house. GridTicker is a broadcast-style ticker that runs in any browser and puts all of it on one scrolling strip. It can run on your phone, across the top of a monitor, on a TV in the corner, or on a spare laptop you leave running. You pick what goes on it and when it shows.
This post introduces GridTicker: what it can show, how you make it yours, and where it runs.
Why one feed instead of five apps
Most of us check the same few things many times a day, each in its own app or tab. A ticker works the other way: the information scrolls past on a screen you weren't using for anything else. You get the answer with a glance. You don't have to unlock anything, tap anything or scroll past things you never asked for.
The trick is putting only your things on that screen, and GridTicker is built around that.
What can go on the strip
Each kind of thing you follow has its own section under Settings: Sports, Stocks, News, Flights, Space and Fantasy.
Scores, standings and brackets
A live game shows more than the score. In baseball, the row has runners on base, outs and the count, plus the batter and the pitcher. In football, it shows the team with the ball, the timeouts left, the down and distance, and the last play in words. A game that hasn't started shows its start time and the channel it's on.
If you turn on standings, you get the tables the playoffs are decided by. When a league's postseason arrives, its bracket appears too, drawn as one. Races and golf tournaments appear as a running order instead of two sides.
Stocks
You build your own watchlist of up to 20 symbols. A symbol can be a stock like AAPL, an index like ^GSPC, a future like GC=F, or BTC-USD. Each one shows:
- the price
- the change since yesterday's close, green up and red down
- a line of today's trading against a dotted line at yesterday's close
When a stock has moved sharply and there's a story about it from the last few hours, the story rides beside the price under BREAKING.
Headlines and weather
Headlines come from the outlets you pick, each led by the outlet's masthead. NEW marks a story the first time it comes round.
Weather covers up to four places, each with its own card: conditions right now, the next few hours and the days ahead. It uses the US National Weather Service, so it works inside the United States only. A dangerous warning, such as a tornado or a flash flood, takes over the whole screen until it ends.
Flights overhead
Set a point to watch the sky from. Your house usually works better than the nearest airport. Each plane in range shows:
- its callsign
- its altitude and speed
- how far away it is and which way to look
- what kind of aircraft it is
You can also track up to five particular aircraft by callsign, registration or ICAO hex code. A tracked plane shows up wherever it is, as long as it's in range of a receiver, not only when it's overhead.
Launches and the sky
The Space section lists every orbital launch in the world, with a countdown. It also shows the space stations: the ISS card says what the station is over right now, and the strip tells you when you can see it pass. There are feeds for the moon, eclipses, meteor showers and the northern lights. We covered the station in Where Is the ISS Right Now?
One strip, or a row for each
You can have it either way. With Stack tickers in rows on, each ticker gets a row of its own and scrolls on its own. With it off, everything shares one strip, one after another, like a classic broadcast crawl.
You can tune how it looks:
- Speed: each ticker has its own speed, so headlines can scroll slower than scores and prices faster.
- Row height: sets how much of the window each ticker's row takes when they're stacked.
- Theme: "GridTicker terminal", "ESPN Bottom Line" or "Retro LED". For the classic sports-channel look, see our post on the ESPN Bottom Line theme.
- Layout: "TV score box", or "Single line", which puts the whole game on one line.
Only the things you care about
A single feed is only useful if it skips what you don't follow. A few settings decide that:
- Feeds. Turn on the leagues, stock lists, news outlets and kinds of flights you want, and leave the rest off.
- Favorites. Star your teams, symbols and tracked flights. Favorites first puts them ahead of the rest of their league. Favorites only shows nothing else, league by league.
- What to show. Choose whether live, upcoming, finished and preseason games appear, and how far ahead upcoming games reach, from today only to the next two weeks.
And only when you want it
The other half is timing. Under Settings, General, you can give each ticker on each screen its own hours, such as stocks while the market is open and scores in the evening. A ticker with no windows shows at all times. The same page has a grid of tickers and screens. Tick a box to show that ticker on that screen.
Where it runs
GridTicker runs in any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux or a Raspberry Pi, and there's nothing to install. It fits the space you give it, from a thin bar across a monitor to a whole screen. Your settings follow your account, so the ticker looks the same on every machine you sign in on.
It costs $10 a month, on as many machines as you sign in on. Every new account starts with a trial, and nothing is charged before it ends. No card required for the trial so if you don't find it useful, you don't have to remember to cancel before the trial is done.
LED panels that hang on a wall and show the same ticker are in testing and not for sale yet. For now you use GridTicker in the browser, and the account you make now is the one a panel will join. If you're interested in an LED panel when they are available theres a watchlist that you can sign up for so you know when they can be purchased.
How GridTicker puts it all in one feed
You set up the sections once, and the strip keeps running. Sports, stocks, news, weather, flights and space each come from their own section and appear together on one screen, limited to your favorites and to the hours you allow. The guide explains every row on the strip, from a live game to a flight overhead, and the bracket section shows how the postseason is drawn.
To get your own strip going, set it up at https://app.gridticker.com/signup.