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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.
It _is_ a digital dartboard, as you can see by looking at the pictures:j board.jpgr d.jpg
:-)
... hehe
1) The board has obvious cavaties: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sander/dip/pro
2) I've never noticed anything like this on a regular dartboard: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sander/dip/boa
Read the article, look at all the purdy pictures and _then_ post
Not that I bother doing that of course
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Nope, this is real. if you read the article they say "Our first goal was to understand how our Sportcraft dartboard translates a single dart hit to an electronic signal..."
and a quick search of sportcraft on google finds www.sportcraft.com
Which has electronic darts boards exactly like the one they've hacked.
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
Did I not see a colour detector as part of the LegoMindstorms set, or does that require one digital camera for each pool pocket?
If you're using red/yellow balls, plus white cueball and black 8-ball, you should be able to detect all of those using 2 light-sensors, a red filter, and a yellow filter.
Of course, you can just play pool at games.yahoo.com if you really need the bounce-angles calculated and displayed on the table
Nice idea, but tracking the ball movements is not going to be feasible unless you have a very fancy high-speed high-bandwidth camera and a lot of computing power to process images many times a second. The problem is mostly with the break, I should think. The balls are moving essentially at random all over the place in just a fraction of a second. The ball tracker would also have to understand the basic physics of the game, because otherwise even two balls colliding head on would present a big problem. The moving ball may appear to pass through a stationary ball for example.
But all is not lost. I don't see why you can't just track the balls on colour. In pool, each ball has a unique colour and at least some of it is always visible - even on the "stripes" balls (aka bigs or halves). Since you're not tracking movement, you can do all the image processing between shots, taking several seconds if necessary.
Finally, may I suggest, instead of an expensive projector, you could rig up a laser pointer reflected off some kind of servoed mirror. If your computer could manipulate the mirror accurately and quickly enough it could draw out the line along which you should hit. You may well be able to buy these mirror components as they are already used in laser displays for rock bands, museums, etc.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
Nah those are with huge lasers for open-air displays. All you would need is a good laser pointer. The page you want is here where they have a bunch of cheap components like mirrors and "General scanning 124 Galvo" for a couple hundred.
Also they have a "hackers special" which includes the laser and stuff for $2700, which is almost getting down to the price-range. It looks like the galvo (motors) + mirror subsystem goes for around $1000 though - still pricey.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.