Slashdot Mirror
The Harvard Network Accessible Dartboard
These guys hacked a dartboard to serve scores over a wireless network. There is an OpenGL client that grabs the scores, runs the games, stores the results in a database, and suggests moves based on player's past performance. On top of all this, the client looks exactly like the dartboard, so it can be projected over the real thing.
I think the real fun lies in hack of Caps.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
We were waiting for you - what took you?
We were waiting for each other? Surely this is love.
It is still the dark of night.
because we wouldn't want to insult our Lord by claiming that he had a tiny white man's penis.
Preach on, brother!
lol, they keep stats on ppl!? Not only can ppl know how badly I suck at CS; they can also know how bad at darts I am, with a picture to boot!
Wouldn't just been easier to hack a digital dartboard? You know, the one in pubs? Of course that wouldn't give the feel of a classic metal dart/wool dartboard.
J.
Not because I can play darts - I probably couldn't even hit the board - but because it's cool. I wonder if you could do something similar for a pool table. It would probably be quite a bit harder, as you'd need to be able to recognize each ball rather quickly. Maybe you could even build a program to recognize each ball and suggest the best shot and project it onto the table? Something new to do for these guys :-)
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I know from UK Darts TV coverage that the announcer says the scores after each set of darts thrown. Does the machine spout "Whon Hunderud hand eIIIIIIghty!" every so often?
I am the breaker of Chairs!
I'd prefer if Yana were wearing a bikini :-)
Oops, didn't hit anonymous! Oh well, _I_ thought it was pretty funny. ^_^
Geez..they go to harvard and they have enough free time to build a "wireless dartboard" ... meanwhile I'm still up a 7am working on my Programming Languages and Translator class project...UGH!
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Anyone smelling a hoax? It looks good and even possible, but the dartboard shown looks like a standard horsehair board and not one of those electronic pegboard types, so how does a hit register? A normal dartboard is a damned good insulator with a wireframe over it. Sections don't move, so switches can't be pressed.
woof.
...network accessible _darts_. Now those had better be secured-- I don't want anyone cracking into my sharp pointy object collection
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
...but obvisously before getting my morning caffine fix...
Say five "hail cofee" and two "ave computer".
;-)
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
How many points is it when you get the dart to hit the parallel cable. [looks like shielding doesn't cover everything completely]
Very cool guys.
Live web cams
This is so cool, although the guys are obviously not that great at darts strategy - look at the stas for the doubles. Double 20 is at the top as expected but double 16 is way down the bottom. Watch the pros play, they will always try and leave themselves double 20 or double 16 to finish. The logic should be obvious to most slashdotters - you can keep splitting the double 16 all the way down to double one if you miss the double and hot the single. Double 1 is the next highest double in the stats so maybe they are doing tjis, but just not very good at getting the doubles!!!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Where the computer works out the most optimal target to hit next and highlights it for them on the projection.
That would be sweet!
1)
"Pedro V. Sander" desperately needs to get a life according to the stats!
2)
You can be no good at darts as long as you play alone, it is easy to cheat since the PC never notices when you miss the board altogether.
BTW: Pedro, I am not suggesting that there is a link between 1) and 2).
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
When I read the article the first time, the counter (at the very bottom) said 865 visitors, now (~50 minutes later) it says 4589. That's obviously not enough to slashdot the server, so let's show them what we can really do - slashdot the server. Or just slashdot the fastcounter.bcentral.com server (they're the ones hosting the counter) :-)
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
So this is what the leaders of tomorrow do in their spare time? I am so proud!
We built a parallel port onto a dartboard. We connected the dartboard to an old laptop, which we call the dartboard server
I'd have thought they could have come up with a better name than 'the dartboard server'. How about 'Jocky', 'Eric', or 'Tricia'
Seems like every great game will eventually be ruined by cheaters, see Starcraft, CounterStrike, ARC... I wonder if this wireless dartboard can detect cheaters (e.g stand in front of the board and stab it point blank, in order to up your stats). Hope the AI is smart enough to /ban such users. And maybe literally "kick" them by ways of a 10 ton hydrolic metal boot nailed behind the player's spot.
We built....
We connected...
We wrote...
We wrote...
We connected..
We highlight...
We also...
How may "we's" can "we" use?
Actually, when applying to most grad schools, your undergrad GPA is multiplied by a certain factor depending on both the difficulty of the college AND the amount of grade inflation. It turns out great Harvard grades don't count for that much to most graduate programs.
boy... this moderator didn't get the joke.
>> the client looks exactly like the dartboard
I heard that version 1.0 was done as a dodecahedron. When that didn't work too well they tried the classic "Circle with some pie-slices" approach and found success.
Check out an Etch-A-Sketch that you can draw on by submitting moves to a form. The server is an 8 bit Rabbit 2000
Free cell phone tracking
Ok, so I've known a number of people in my life, but this is the first time any of them have ever did anything which warranted their appearance on the infamous slashdot. So, with my knowledge of a grand total of TWO of the players, I want to ask you, what do you think this guy is up to?
Ok, sure, it's a cool hack... blah blah blah, but you're all missing the most important point of discussion, does or does not Marco Carbone look like Jon Favreau (of Swingers fame):
Picture of Marco Carbone: here.
Picture of Jon Favreau: here.
There's almost certainly some sort of conspiracy afoot.
PS. I attempted to find a picture of Marco Carbone as a dog, but alas the wayback machine failed me.
--
RumorsDaily
We also applied some game theory to the game 301 and to a game we invented called 30-Block, which you can read about here. We can solve 301 fairly easily, but 30-Block turns out to be quite intractable.
The more interesting part of this paper discusses probability models we use to predict where players will hit based on where they aim. It's interesting: if you are a perfect player, you have the highest expected value when aiming for Triple-20 (obviously), but the worse you get, the best place to aim in the boards spirals inward until it gets to double bulls-eye (which minimizes how often you miss the board).
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
Wait till those online casino guys hear about this. I can see my popup ads doubling or tripling, with "PLAY AND BET ON DARTS ONLINE!!!!"
Damn. Of course, the easiest way to beat electronic darts is to simply press on the triple-20 repeatedly. No darts required!
A while back, the wall street journal did an experiment they had group consisted of seasoned investment managers square off against chimpanzees who would select stocks by throwing a dart at a dartboard. 50% of the time, the chimpanzees picked better stocks.
The Harvard guys should get themselves a few good chimps and use their networked dartboard to serve up a website that well-informed chimp-picked stock tips. They can then sell ad space to financial
Hey, there have been crazy dot.com business schemes.
The laptop and wires are protected by a dart-proof cover... but what about the webcam itself?
if they have a building named after the Great
Satan Bill Gates.
"Think HMD .."
Is that some kind of blindfold?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Marco Carbone, I want your sexy ass.
The most common value they hit? Zero!
maybe because Zero is all around, where as any other spot is well defined.
I still think I hit more 20s than zeros. Heck, I think I hit more T-15s than zeros.
I've taken my electronic dartboard apart. Never thought about this though. I'm with the people that say doing something similar with billiards would be better.
Who doesn't?
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
This is by far one of the niftier hacks i've seen lately, but its a shame that it is an electronic dartboard. I mean, if they had figured out how to do this with a standard dart board (which would probably be hard as crap) I would seriously go out and purchase one today (and yes i know they're not trying to sell it, i'm just saying). Having played on electronic dart boards before, i can tell you that half of my shots never stick in the board. This could be because i suck and have an unorthodox throwing style, but more over its just because its damn hard to get the darts into the tiny little holes. Can anyone think of a way to do this using a real dart board. just some food for thought.
This project is impressive -- i saw that they're not EE's, so they had a hard time figuring out how the contact sheets are picking up dart throws. They came up with a good work-around, but i'll explain how the thing was supposed to work -- (i'm doing a similar implementation to this for my senior EE project).
:)
WIRING:
Contact sheet 1:
Basically, the grid is broken down into two halves. one of the contact sheets connects full wedges (ie, 20, 19, etc) across the single/double/triple boundaries together with another wedge on the other half. Therefore, there's 10 wires (20/2 = 10)
Contact sheet 2:
contact sheet two connects all the point values on each half...so, for half #1, one wire connects all singles, one wire connects all doubles, etc... one wire connects all singles on half #2, etc...there's 7 wires total, because one of them is used for bull's eye
Implementation (time division multiplexing):
send a logic pulse down each of the 10 wires in contact sheet #1 really fast, in a loop. Read as input on the rings...so, if you read that there was a single scored on the first half, just check where you sent the last pulse down -- deduct which was hit.
i dunno, i guess this is boring, but in case anybody was interested
- blake
Going back on topic, the whole projector thing would only be any use if you wanted to give both players a hand (unless the game is programmed to be able to turn off the hints for the better player). We'd really need some way of making the projection visable to only one player.
Should be possible. Though it would require wearable computers and IO glasses. You can get yourself an wireless IP and have a central server broadcast the image to your goggles, or to everyones. This is the basic theory anyway - don't get me started on any specs.
I live under the bridge, in a pile of feces.
when can i get in on the action?
---
I'm just an ordinary man with nothing to lose.
We could have a 'net-accessible Atari 2600 which you control much the same way. It would take fighting over the controller to the next dimension.
I believe this was a slashdot story a long time ago, but there was a "Snooker Playing Machine" built by the University of Bristol (UK) back in '98.
t ics/Snooker/snooker.html
The only information I could find about it now is at: http://www.bmc.riken.go.jp/sensor/Ho/chicago/Robo
The site includes some pictures and a couple very limited technical details.
Well the usefulness of this technology escapes me at the moment. It is kinda interstings , but what next a web active foosball? I have a hard enuf time keeping up with that little ball as is. Maybe air hockey? Well in the spirit of spirits , networkable drinking games. Try one at your next lan party. I am running thin on those so far. But i do know you can hook up a lan while totaly enebriated.
I know that alot of breakthrows in computing and hard ware have happend do to people just fooling around. This could if used right turn into something workable in another feild , maybe your next SAT prompter will be a camera and use of specal pens so it can track cheaters.
But i kinda want one in my home sounds kinda fun.