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 :-)

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).