Colorado Time Systems Mini LED Scoreboard

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Equipment Scoring Timing Swimming Water polo

The mini LED scoreboard is a compact numeric scoreboard from Colorado Time Systems (CTS), built as a single enclosure holding two lines of 5 inch digits. CTS aims it at facilities that need a board they can move, or that have no room for a full-size one, and describes it as carrying what two lines of its LED-R scoreboard show in a quarter of the space.¹² The board displays data from a CTS timing console, from the UPC-C pace clock controller, or from a Dolphin wireless watch system through the Dolphin Scoreboard Adapter.¹³

Boards come as portable or fixed units, each built for one combination of what the two lines show, and they stack: several modules mounted in a column make a multi-line board of the kind a larger pool would otherwise buy outright.⁴³

Role in the timing system¶

The mini scoreboard is a display and nothing else. The console times the race and sends scoreboard data; the board shows whichever part of that data it has been told to show. It has no keypad and no memory, and the only control on it is a power switch.³ Shared background on how CTS numeric boards are built, powered and required by the rules is on the scoreboards overview.

What a given board shows is decided by its module code rather than by the console. CTS console software manuals list the scoreboard modules available in each sport, and a module code tells this board which of them to render on each of its two lines.³

Naming and models¶

CTS names the product three ways across its own documents. The user guide calls it the Mini Scoreboard, the 2014 datasheet the Mini LED Scoreboard, and the current sheet, revised March 2026, the Mini LED Swimming Scoreboard.³⁴¹ This article uses mini LED scoreboard.

The line has narrowed between those two datasheets. The 2014 sheet lists six display configurations, each available as a portable P01-1-000n or a fixed F01-1-000n board and each in 110 V and 220 V versions, and says the two lines can be set up for four sports: track, and in the pool swimming, synchronized swimming and water polo. The 2026 sheet lists five configurations, portable only, and mentions swimming alone; the water polo board and the whole fixed column are gone from it.⁴¹ CTS has published no withdrawal notice for either, and F927, still the manual on the company’s own index, documents fixed installation at length, so what can be said is that the current sheet no longer lists them.³⁵

Display configurations¶

A board is ordered as a configuration rather than programmed into one, and the signage printed on it matches what its lines show.

Part number	Top line	Bottom line
`P01-1-0001`	Event and heat	Lane, place and time
`P01-1-0002`	Lane, place and time	Lane, place and time
`P01-1-0003`	Period and shot clock	Score and game clock
`P01-1-0004`	Event and heat	Blank, for limited artwork
`P01-1-0005`	Event and heat	Signage only, for lane, place and time
`P01-1-0006`	Signage only, for lane, place and time	Lane, place and time

Each has a fixed counterpart numbered F01-1-000n, and a 220 V version of either carries an F suffix, so P01-1-0001F is the portable event-and-heat board for 220 V supply.⁴ The water polo configuration, P01-1-0003, appears only on the 2014 sheet.⁴¹ Signage can be printed on the weather cover or supplied as a separate panel, which is ordered as its own part.³⁶

Module codes¶

Every line of every CTS numeric board answers to a module code, and on this board the two lines are set independently. The codes run from 00 to 1F, set on a small bank of switches on each line’s circuit board, with the top line’s board at the left end of the enclosure and the bottom line’s at the right.³

Reaching the switches means opening the board. The weather cover slides out, after removing the end bracket on a portable unit, and the second digit in from the relevant end lifts off its rail to expose the switch bank; CTS warns against pulling a digit by its LEDs and says to lift from under the edge instead.³ Boards ordered for a single purpose, such as water polo or a single line of lane, place and time, arrive with their codes already set.³

The board reports its own configuration at power-up. It lights every segment of every digit, then shows the firmware version of each circuit board, then the module code each line is set to, which is the quickest way to confirm a change took.³

Data from a Dolphin system is addressed by lane rather than by sport module: lanes 1 to 9 take codes 01 to 09 and lane 10 takes 0A.³

Mounting¶

A portable board takes a handle and a set of legs, both bolted to threaded holes in the enclosure, the legs underneath and the handle on top. Two further options carry one or more boards upright: a wheeled CAD-MINI caddy, or a pair of pipe stands that bolt to brackets on the back of the board and are pinned in place, with a foot pointing forward and another back on each side.³⁷

A fixed board hangs on two wall brackets whose keyhole slots are set 1 m (39.37 in) apart, levelled and fastened with 3/8 in anchors. Each module then takes four cap screws in its outermost threaded holes, left standing 3 to 4 mm proud and treated with anti-seize, and drops onto the keyholes. CTS has the installer test-fit a module at the lowest and highest positions before tightening the brackets, then build the column from the bottom up, and leaves the end trim until the data connections have been proved. The wall has to carry about 28 lb (13 kg) per module.³

Two columns can sit side by side, and boards stacked in a column are joined to each other with data cables, the last one reaching a wall plate, a cable left accessible, or a wireless adapter.³

Connections¶

Both kinds of data jack sit at the right-hand end of the board beside the power switch: a pair of round quarter-inch jacks for RS-232 and a pair of 5-pin DIN jacks for RS-485.³

A console connects by cable to the RS-232 side, using a CTS data cable ordered to length.³¹ For a wireless link the board takes a Sky-Fi WA-1 adapter on its RS-485 side, with a second WA-1 at the console, both set to the same channel.³ A Dolphin system reaches the board through the Dolphin Scoreboard Adapter, also on RS-485.³ Further boards, shot clocks and horns chain onward from the first device with the same kind of cable it is already using.³

Two restrictions apply. RS-232 and RS-485 must never feed the board at the same time. The symptom is flickering data, and the check is whether cables of both types are plugged in. A console older than the System 6 has to be set to send high-speed data, which the System 6 does by default; the symptom otherwise is garbled figures.³

Power and battery¶

The board runs from AC power, and portable models carry internal batteries. A full charge runs a board for about 8 hours, but its brightness starts to fall after about three and a half, so CTS recommends running from AC power when a session needs full brightness throughout.³

The batteries charge whenever the board is plugged in, and CTS gives two ways to keep them that way: leave the board plugged in between meets, or charge it overnight after use and then give it another overnight charge, or at least eight hours, every three months. The batteries should never be run flat, and the power switch should be turned off after use.³

Specifications¶


Type	Two-line LED numeric scoreboard
Digit height	5 in (12.7 cm)¹
Lines	2¹
Dimensions (H × W × D)	13.75 × 48 × 4 in (34.9 × 121.9 × 10.2 cm)¹
Weight	About 28 lb (13 kg) per module³
Viewing distance	50 m or more¹
Data connection	RS-232 on quarter-inch jacks, or RS-485 on 5-pin DIN; CTS 2DC cable, length specified at order¹³
Data sources	System 6, System 5, System 4000, UPC-C pace clock controller; Dolphin through the Dolphin Scoreboard Adapter¹
Module codes	`00` to `1F`, set per line³
Power	110 V or 220 V AC; internal batteries on portable models⁴³
Battery run time	About 8 hours, dimming after about 3.5 hours³
Status	Current; the 2026 datasheet lists portable models only¹²

Part numbers and accessories¶

P01-1-0001 to P01-1-0006, portable boards by configuration, and F01-1-0001 to F01-1-0006, the fixed equivalents. A trailing F marks the 220 V version of either.⁴
SP-01-0001, the separate sign panel, ordered on its own.⁶
CAD-MINI-4 and CAD-MINI-5, the caddies that hold four or five modules and roll the board to the deck.⁷
R-xxDC and R-2DC data cables for the RS-232 side, and R-DC4-xx for RS-485, each ordered to length.³
Portable stands, sold with their own brackets, screws, speed pins and a 4 mm hex wrench.³
Wall-mounting parts ship with a fixed board: two brackets, two anchors per module, end trim, cap screws, pan-head screws, a long-arm hex wrench and anti-seize compound.³

A dealer listing prices the P01-1-0001 board at USD 3,242.98 with a 49 lb shipping weight and notes an extended lead time from the manufacturer.⁶

References¶

Colorado Time Systems, Mini LED Swimming Scoreboard datasheet (Rev. 03/26), specifications and part-number table. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³
Colorado Time Systems, Portable Mini Scoreboard for Swimming (P01-1-0001). ↩ ↩²
Colorado Time Systems, Mini Scoreboard User Guide (F927 Rev. 201202, ©2012). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹
Colorado Time Systems, Mini LED Scoreboard datasheet (Rev. 03/14), specifications and part-number table. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Colorado Time Systems, Manuals (Mini Scoreboard User Guide F927). ↩
Poolweb, Two-Line Mini LED Scoreboard, Event/Heat and Lane/Place/Time (1151-P01-1-0001) (dealer listing: price, 49 lb shipping weight, sign panel SP-01-0001 ordered separately). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Colorado Time Systems, Mini Scoreboard Caddy datasheet (Rev. 04/14). ↩ ↩²

Last updated September 23, 2026.