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

Announcements

[Maiko]

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?

Geez!

[Tazzy531]

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!

Watch out for...

[mikeage]

...network accessible _darts_. Now those had better be secured-- I don't want anyone cracking into my sharp pointy object collection

Bonus scores?

[Frank of Earth]

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.

Two things we can notice here:

[ksp]

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).

We can even track the slashdot effect.

[Hektor_Troy]

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) :-)

Someone I know finally made it onto slashdot

[DoorFrame]

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.

Also some game theory on the matter...

[mcarbone]

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).