Brackets · Eliminators · Pots · Doubles · Jackpots
Side action that runs itself.
Full Rack puts your brackets, eliminators and pots live on every TV in the house, straight from the scores your lanes are already keeping. Nobody types a score. Nobody does math at the desk.
I built it for my home house, Grove City Bowl-O-Drome, because I was tired of watching our desk do all of that by hand. It's not for sale and it's not finished. This is where I'm showing it off as it comes together.
Why I built it
I'm the IT guy at Grove City Bowl-O-Drome, and I run the lanes on Tuesday nights. My day job is network engineering at an ISP, and I've been building websites for over twenty years, so when side action at our place needed help, I was the one who got asked.
A few years back I wrote a little bracket app that ran on a Raspberry Pi and showed the brackets on our TVs. Bowlers loved it. They'd crowd the TV between frames to see who they drew and who was still alive. But setting up a night was slow, every score still got typed in by hand, and under the hood it had turned into a mess I didn't want to touch anymore.
Most of our leagues didn't run brackets at all because of the setup. That's money and fun left on the table every week.
Full Rack is that app done right. It reads the scores the lanes already keep, figures out the money itself, and keeps every TV in the building up to date. The goal is simple: easy enough that the teenager working the snack bar can run the desk.
A league night, start to finish
Here's what a night looks like from behind the desk. These are real screens from a real Thursday league, with every bowler's name swapped for a Star Wars character. (Our bowlers didn't sign up to be on a website.)
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1
The roster shows up by itself
When the league secretary software sends tonight's roster to the lanes, Full Rack sees it too. The desk gets one question: "Mos Eisley Merchants 2026. Set up tonight's side action?" It already knows the week, the teams, every average and every handicap. There's nothing to type in.
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2
Pick tonight's events
Tap what you're running: brackets, an eliminator, high game, high series, doubles, a 300 jackpot. Your house rules for prices, payouts and ties are already filled in. Next week, last week's events are waiting for you, so most nights this is one tap.
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3
Take entries without touching the mouse
Type a few letters of a name, hit Enter, type how many brackets, Tab over to the pots, Enter. That's an entry. It tells you exactly what to collect. Regulars who buy the same thing every week? Press L and last week's entries fill right in.
It also tells you how many brackets you've got and exactly who'd need to buy one more to fill the next one. No more guessing.
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4
Close entries, brackets are drawn
One button draws the brackets. Nobody gets the same first-round opponent twice, and anyone who couldn't be placed gets a refund that's already worked out. The eliminator plans its own cuts from how many bought in.
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5
Bowl. The TVs keep up on their own.
As each bowler finishes a game, the score lands on the TVs within seconds. Brackets advance, the eliminator cuts, the pots update. The desk can watch every event at once from its own screen. If something needs a call, like a tie in a bracket, it waits for the director and the TV says "Tie being decided."
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6
Pay out and go home
The payout sheet lists everyone who has money coming, from every event, refunds included, biggest first. Mark people paid as they come up, or print it with a box for each bowler to initial. It shows the house's side too, so the drawer balances.
League winnings often get paid the next week. Full Rack remembers who's still owed and puts them on the TV next week: "Congratulations, winners! Please see the desk."
On the TVs
This is the part the bowlers see, and the part they love. Every TV can show everything taking turns, or just one thing: brackets by the lanes, the eliminator by the bar, winners behind the desk.
Any TV with an HDMI port
The TV screens are just web pages, so a smart TV's browser can show them. But anyone who's fought with a smart TV browser knows how that goes, so there's also a little Raspberry Pi box that sits behind the TV.
Flash the SD card, type your Wi-Fi into a text file on it, plug it in. That's the whole setup. It finds the hub on its own, and it never shows a wall of Linux text on your TV. From power on you get the rack lighting up pin by pin, then the board.
It even runs on an old Pi 3, so those dusty old TVs that used to run Keno can earn their keep again.
Run the whole house from one page
The owner gets a House page: switch events on or off, set your house rules once, name each TV and pick what it shows, swap the colors and add your logo, and back everything up to a USB stick. No command line. Ever.
The story so far
I'll keep adding to this as things happen.
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A few years ago
The old bracket app
A Raspberry Pi in the back and the brackets on our TVs. Bowlers loved watching it. Setting it up every night, not so much.
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Fall 2026
Starting over, properly
I wrote down every rule our house uses, every way ties get broken, every weird thing that happens on a league night. Then I picked a name: Full Rack.
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October 2026
Learning to read the scores
I spent a Tuesday night at the alley capturing every file the lanes and the league software passed back and forth. Turns out every finished game is right there. No more typing scores in.
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October 2026
The hub moves into the alley
An old Intel NUC became the hub, running its own locked-down Linux built just for this. It backs itself up every night and updates from a button on the House page.
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October 29, 2026
First real night
Thursday Merchants ran their brackets on Full Rack with real money for the first time. The owners liked it, and more importantly, the bowlers did.
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Late October into November
More events, more TVs
Doubles of every kind, reverse brackets, men's and women's pots, holiday themes, and the first display box hanging on a real TV, running on a Pi 3 that had been sitting in a drawer.
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Coming up
Tournaments, then sharing it
Tournament standings across squads and days are next. After that I'll be putting the code and the SD card images up for anyone to download, on my own server.
What's it going to cost?
Nothing. When it's ready, Full Rack will be open source. You'll be able to download it, run it in your house and look at every line of it. If it saves your desk some headaches and you want to toss a few bucks my way, there'll be a way to do that. If you don't, that's fine too. I'm building it for my home house either way.
It isn't released yet. It's running at one center, on one kind of scoring system, and I'd rather get it right than get it out fast.
Questions owners ask me
Will this mess with my scoring system?
No. Full Rack only reads. Your lane scoring and your league secretary software already pass files to each other through a shared folder. Full Rack looks at those same files and never writes to them, changes them or deletes them. If you unplug Full Rack, your scoring works exactly like it did before.
Which scoring systems does it work with?
Right now, centers running QubicaAMF's Conqueror scoring alongside CDE Software's BLS for league secretary work, because that's what my home house has. I'd love to support more. If you run something else and want to help me test, get in touch.
Does it need the internet?
No. Everything runs on a small computer inside your building, on your own network. The desk, the TVs and the scores never leave the house. The internet is only used to check for updates, and only if you want it to.
What hardware do I need?
One small always-on computer for the hub (an old mini PC works fine), plugged into the same network as your scoring computer. For the TVs, either their own web browser or a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 behind each one.
Can I run it my way?
That's the whole idea. Every event is its own piece you can turn on or off. Bracket prices and payouts, lineage (including none), how ties get broken, scratch or handicap, who can enter what. Anything your house decides by hand can be set to "Director's choice," and Full Rack waits for you.
Is it ready for my center?
Not yet. It's running real leagues at Grove City Bowl-O-Drome, and I'm adding to it every week. When it's ready to share, the download will be on this site.
Who are you, anyway?
Jonathan, I do IT for Grove City Bowl-O-Drome, run the lanes on Tuesday nights, and bowl in our Thursday & Sunday leagues. I'm also a coach for our young up and coming bowlers. Full Rack is a passion project, nothing more.