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.

Comments

I want one of those!

[Hektor_Troy]

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 :-)

Re:I want one of those!

[benjymous]

That's something I've thought of in the past, and I can't see why it couldn't be done.

You'd need

1) A camera mounted above the table, so it gets a fairly flat view of the table, and can see all 6 pockets

2) A Projector also mounted above the table, which can project over the whole area of the table (ceiling height would probably make this difficult)

3) A pc in between that runs some kind of image recognition system to spot the balls (I'd think recognising circles of distinct colours would be easy if you're playing english style pool with red and yellow balls. Spots and stripes may be harder to recognise). It could then hook this into a pool simulation engine to work out which is the best ball to aim for, and then plot lines of the ball paths, which would be projected onto the table.

Al made one of these for Sam in an episode of Quantum Leap :o)

Re:I want one of those!

[Space_Nerd]

Im just ranting here, but here is what i think:

1- Put a camera that focuses on the table and tune it so it just distinguishes circles, not colors.
2- If you put all the balls in a standard formation in which all the balls are ALWAYS in the same place (for example, number 1 with stripes is always on the tip of the triangle facing the player), so after a shot has been made it shouldnt be too hard for a computer to track all the circles movements so it knows which circle is which ball.

My guess for calculating the circles movement is to calculate each circle's center for each frame, and if your're using a fast enough camera you should be to calculate the balls movement...

Disclaimer: I'm not a good pool player neither have i any experience with image recognition systems.

Me not know english? that's unpossible

Cool hack but not so good players

[CProgrammer98]

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!!!