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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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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..."
...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?
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
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!
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
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.
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.
>> 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.
It actually does do this. If you look at this image, you'll see a box that says "Aim for Triple 20" in the bottom right corner. When playing 301, the computer calculates the best next move using a simple dynamic programming algorithm and displays it there (assuming perfect players -- we are working on a version that considers a player's probability distribution).
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
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
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.
You could use a horse hair dart board using a pair of cameras and a little triangulation algorithm. The result would be a little bulkier, but probably more fun (soft darts suck!)..
I'd like to see what they think is the shortest way to finish 501, nine darts is the answer. saw John Lowe do this once :-) Two darts from 101 etc.
:-)
I also wonder if the tutor is smart enough to realise that John is crap and should always aim at triple 19s. Clive is playing and it just lights the whole board up as a guide:-) etc
Lastly, whatever happened to KISS, there is more hardware here than they took to the moon
"Think HMD .."
Is that some kind of blindfold?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Who doesn't?
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe