Colorado Time Systems Myriad

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The Myriad is a discontinued Colorado Time Systems (CTS) LED matrix display, announced in 1997 as the two-color member of the pair of full-matrix boards the company built in that generation.¹² Where the Mercury16 beside it lit each pixel in one color, the Myriad mixed red and green diodes in every pixel, which CTS said let the board render 256 shades.²³ A dedicated computer running DisplayLink composed what either line showed.⁴

Role in the timing system¶

A Myriad is an output device: it shows what a timing console or a meet-management computer has already worked out, by way of the DisplayLink computer that formats it. Nothing about that arrangement is particular to this board, and the scoreboards overview carries the shared account of how a CTS matrix display is built, powered and cabled. The sections below cover only what is particular to the Myriad.

Announcement and marketing¶

Swimming World printed the Myriad announcement in January 1997, in a column that reprinted manufacturers’ press releases. CTS described the board there as its newest full-matrix LED display technology, credited the combination of red and green diodes in each pixel cluster with 256 color combinations, and said the first one would go to the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swim Center at the University of Texas at Austin.¹ A University of Texas board of 192 × 80 pixels later appeared on the company’s own customer list, so that installation went ahead.⁵

CTS advertising in the swimming press followed from February 1997 and ran to at least April 2001. The earliest advertisements sell the Myriad alone; from March 1997 the copy pairs it with the Mercury line, and by March 1999 the two names appear together as a single offer.⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰ All of this is the company’s own copy rather than independent coverage, and the claims in it are CTS’s.

Pixels and color¶

CTS built the Myriad pixel from nine diodes, four of them red and five green, and put the pixel centers 1.4 in apart. Driving the two colors at different intensities is what produced the 256 shades the company advertised.² DisplayLink exposed that control directly: its display-intensity dialog adjusts red, green and blue levels separately, for the board as a whole or for one 8x8 module at a time.⁴ No source describes a blue diode in a Myriad pixel, so that third control appears to belong to the program rather than to this board.

The diodes sit on a circuit board finished with a conformal coating, which CTS said protected the components where pool air would otherwise attack them.²

Sizes and configuration¶

There is no standard Myriad size. The board is assembled from modules and quoted per facility, and CTS expressed a configuration as pixels across by pixels high rather than as a model number.²

The unit of assembly is an 8 × 8 pixel board about a foot square, four of which fill one module measuring roughly 4 × 1 ft and 32 × 8 pixels. Modules stack and abut to whatever rectangle the facility needs.²¹¹ The five aquatic installations CTS listed on its own site show the range in practice:⁵

Facility	Configuration
University of Texas, Austin, Texas	192 × 80
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia	160 × 80
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts	160 × 88
Delta State University, Cleveland, Mississippi	160 × 88
Fort Bend ISD, Houston, Texas	96 × 80

Because the size varies, DisplayLink reports the attached board’s dimensions in its About window, and the guide tells operators to check there before drawing artwork, since the program neither scales nor centers an image that does not fit.⁴

Software and options¶

DisplayLink drove the board, and every Myriad was supplied with it.²⁴ The DisplayLink article covers the program itself. Beyond it, CTS sold four additions for a matrix display:²

ScheduleLink, for running advertisements and messages to a timetable
the GameLink console, which let more than one person work on the score at once
Template Editor, for laying out where names, times and graphics sit on the board
animation libraries, supplied ready-made

CTS listed two aquatic libraries by name. Between them the sequences included a wave, fireworks, a record breaker, a shark attack, a perfect ten and a request for quiet at the start.¹²

The manual adds two more parts to the list of what a display is built from, HWPM 110 and HWPM 220, which it calls optional equipment and never explains.¹¹

Installation and later support¶

CTS stated that its matrix displays were to be installed by company personnel only, and that the boards held no user-serviceable parts beyond those the manual covers.¹¹ The mounting method, the Unistrut framework it hangs on and the circuit planning behind it are common to the whole matrix generation and are set out on the scoreboards overview.

Installed boards outlasted the computers that had driven them. By February 2006 CTS was publishing instructions for putting a media converter between a laptop’s Ethernet port and the coaxial wall plate, with a warning not to reuse the T connector and terminator cap the earlier DisplayLink machines had needed, and a note about setting a wall plate to Local where a facility had several.¹³ Those instructions name no display model, so they apply to this board by architecture rather than by name. CTS continues to publish a troubleshooting guide for the two lines, which reproduces the isolation procedure from the printed manual.¹⁴¹¹

Compared with the Mercury16¶

The two boards share a manual, a module, a mounting method and a control program. They differ in the pixel. CTS gave the indoor Mercury16 four diodes of a single color per pixel, red or green, for 16 shades, and the Outdoor Sun Series version five red diodes, also for 16 shades. The Myriad’s nine mixed diodes give it the wider palette of the two.²³

The environmental ratings follow the same split. F853 rates Myriad and Mercury16 alike at 0–50 °C and reserves its wider −10 to 70 °C range for the Sun Series, which is the only place in the manual the models are treated separately.¹¹

Specifications¶

Figures marked as CTS’s are from the company’s own product page and advertising rather than from a technical document.


Type	Two-color LED matrix display
Pixel	Nine diodes, four red and five green²
Palette	256 shades, per CTS²¹
Pixel spacing	1.4 in between centers²
Sub-assembly	8 × 8 pixels, about 1 ft square²
Module	32 × 8 pixels, about 4 × 1 ft, four sub-assemblies²
Module weight	About 15 lb including framework¹¹
Configurations	Built to order; 96 × 80 to 192 × 80 among installations CTS listed⁵
Environmental	0–50 °C, 90% humidity non-condensing, 0 to 3000 m¹¹
Power	115 VAC ±10% at 2.5 A per module, or 230 VAC ±10% at 1.3 A, 50–60 Hz¹¹
Circuit loading	2 A per box, four boxes maximum across one circuit¹¹
Data in	Ethernet link at 5 V; RS-232 scoreboard port at ±12 V¹¹
Software	DisplayLink, supplied with the display²⁴
Status	Out of production; still marketed December 2004, and a sibling page survived into 2005²

References¶

Colorado Time Systems press release, Swimming World, January 1997 (Product World: FYI; Myriad announcement and first installation). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Colorado Time Systems, Myriad Full Matrix Boards (archived product page; captures unchanged 2002–2004). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶
Colorado Time Systems, Full Matrix Boards: Mercury 16 and Outdoor SunSeries Mercury 16 (archived product page). ↩ ↩²
Colorado Time Systems, DisplayLink 3.6 Users Guide, for Myriad and Mercury Matrix Display Systems (F837 Rev. 0404, ©2004). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Colorado Time Systems, Myriad Scoreboard Aquatic Center Customers (archived September 2003). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Colorado Time Systems advertisement, Swimming World, February 1997 (multi-color Myriad, DisplayLink supplied with every display). ↩
Colorado Time Systems advertisement, Swimming World, March 1997 (Myriad and Mercury displays offered together). ↩
Colorado Time Systems advertisement, Swimming World, March 1999 (Mercury 16 and Myriad named as a pair). ↩
Colorado Time Systems advertisement, Swimming World, September 2000 (last Myriad advertisement in that title). ↩
Colorado Time Systems advertisement, Swimming Technique, April-June 2001 (latest Myriad advertisement found). ↩
Colorado Time Systems, Myriad/Mercury16 Display Manual (F853 Rev. 0100); CTS no longer hosts it. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Colorado Time Systems, Aquatics Animations for Myriad Displays (archived December 2002). ↩
Colorado Time Systems, Media Converter Setup Instructions (F850 Rev. 0206). ↩
Colorado Time Systems, Mercury & Myriad Troubleshooting Guide. ↩

Last updated September 23, 2026.