Family Sports Ticker: Everyone's Teams, One Panel
A family sports ticker is one strip on the wall that carries everybody's teams, without forcing everyone to share one login. GridTicker does this with a household. One subscription covers you and up to five more people you live with. Each person has their own account and stars their own teams, and the shared LED panel shows all of those teams together. The ticker in each person's browser, on their phone and in their widget still shows only their own teams. Before going further: GridTicker's LED panels are in testing and not for sale yet. The browser ticker is what is open today, and the account you make now is the one a panel will join.
Why one shared login doesn't work
The obvious way to share a ticker is to share one account. That works until someone opens it on their own phone. A shared login means one list of favorites. The person who only cares about one hockey team gets a whole household's leagues on their phone, and the person who follows three football teams has to scroll past everybody else's games.
A household avoids this. Everyone keeps their own account, and the panel combines them.
How a GridTicker household works
One subscription
GridTicker costs $10 a month, on as many machines as you sign in on, plus any sales tax that applies where you live. A household needs only one of those subscriptions. The owner's subscription covers everyone in it, so the other members don't need one while they belong to the household.
Each person keeps their own account
Every member keeps a GridTicker account of their own: their teams, watchlist, tracked flights, weather places, rivalries and phone. Nobody's favorites are merged into anyone else's account.
The shared panel shows everybody's teams
Once someone joins your household, your panels show their favorites, watchlist, tracked flights and weather places beside yours. That covers more than sports. A parent's stock watchlist and a teenager's team can share the same wall. If someone would rather not have their teams on the shared panels, they can take them off with Show my teams... on the panels, in their own Settings → Household.
Your own screen stays yours
This is the part a shared login can't do. The ticker in each person's browser, on their phone and in their widget shows only their teams. The panel shows the whole family's teams, and everybody's own screens show just what that person follows.
Setting up a household
- Create an account at the signup page. Every new account starts with a trial, and the signup page says how long it lasts and whether it needs a card.
- Go to Settings → Household. Type the other person's GridTicker username or their email address and press Send invite. If they don't have an account yet, they get an email with a link to create one.
- They accept at the top of their own Settings → Household. Nothing is shared until they do.
- Each person stars their teams under Settings → Sports. Starred teams lead the ticker, ahead of every other game.
A household can have up to five people besides you.
Who controls what
| Task | Who can do it |
|---|---|
| Invite, remove or cancel an invite | The household's owner |
| Set what the panels show: which tickers, how they look, when, brightness and speed | Anyone in the household |
| Name, remove and repair panels | The owner |
| Take their own teams off the panels | Each person, for themselves |
| Leave the household | Anyone |
Members choose a panel under Settings for at the top of the settings list, the same way the owner does. If a member sets up a panel, it joins the owner's panels.
Sharing one wall
When the whole family's teams are on one panel, there will be days when one game matters more than the rest. GridTicker gives you a few ways to handle that.
Modes
A mode is a saved setup for your panels that you turn on with one press and turn off again. When you turn it off, the panels go back exactly as they were. Each mode can show everyone's teams in the household or only yours, and Only games with favorite teams narrows it further. Anyone in a household can turn any of its modes on or off. Only the person who made a mode can edit it. If two modes are on, the panels show the one turned on most recently, so one person can take over the wall for a game and hand it back afterward.
Schedules
Under Settings → General, each ticker on each screen can have its own hours. For example, you could show stocks while the market is open and scores in the evening. A ticker with no windows shows at all times.
Living room mode
Sometimes nobody wants a ticker on. Living room mode is one switch that overrides every feed, schedule and favorite on your panels. Those settings stay saved and come straight back when you turn it off. The panels can go dark or show seasonal artwork instead. On an Android phone, the GridTicker app from Google Play adds a Living room tile to Quick Settings and a one-tap button for your home screen.
A little friendly competition
When a household follows rival teams, Rivals turns that into a game. A fan group is friends in one league, each with their own teams: the favorites they've starred in that league's section of Settings. When two of those teams play each other, it counts as a grudge match. Grudge matches come first on the card, with both teams' logos, who's behind each side and extra trash talk. A rivalry stakes a forfeit, never money: the loser might wear the winner's jersey, for example. Nobody is in a rivalry until they say yes.
When someone leaves
Anyone can leave a household. The owner can also remove anyone or cancel an invite. A member's account goes back to its own subscription the day they leave. Someone who is already in a household can't start one of their own.
How GridTicker helps with a family ticker
A household lets everyone's teams appear on the same panel under one subscription, and each person's browser, phone and widget still shows only their own teams. The browser ticker runs in any modern browser, on Windows, macOS, Linux or a Raspberry Pi, with nothing to install. The account you set up now is the one a panel will join when panels go on sale. The household section of the guide covers invites and sharing in detail. Modes, living room mode and fan groups cover the rest.
To try it, set up your strip and invite your household.