Another ball spotter idea but with a twist

nataddrho

www.digicue.net
Silver Member
I’m still mentally drained and I don’t want to start another project yet. But I thought of a unique case that comes up when I am practicing.

I have a carom table and play 3C and 1C usually. I should be doing drills with sticker dots, but a lot of times I just play to relax and still learn a lot from trying to make points in an open format. If I miss a shot I like to move the balls back to where they were and try again. My memory is pretty good so I can get close but not precisely.

I thought it would be a neat idea to combine a small camera with a laser pointer display, so that it automatically places laser dots EXACTLY where the three balls were, all hands free. Like a “mulligan”. The software would analyze the previous shot frames and match them to table locations with the laser dots using stepper motors or a galvo motor setup. You would mount it on the ceiling or on a tripod.

I think this is unnecessary but then again sometimes I get very close to a point and I want to try the shot again exactly and I can’t set it up the same way. And I can’t tell if the idea has any value.

If you think it could be worthy of a prototype let me know your comments and I can finish designing it in my head. I am thinking of a way to make it cheaper than a LED projector system.
 
Last edited:
Sounds neat, but I think I would still prefer the donuts because they remove human placement error. The balls just fall into "exact" place pretty quickly.

-td (my two cents (probably worth a little less))
 
Back
Top