Billiard Industry needs

"Federal law prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of jamming equipment that interferes with authorized radio communications, including cellular and Personal Communication Services (PCS), police radar, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS)."
Applicable Law

  • The Communications Act of 1934
    • Section 301 - requires persons operating or using radio transmitters to be licensed or authorized under the Commission’s rules (47 U.S.C. § 301).
    • Section 302(b) - prohibits the manufacture, importation, marketing, sale or operation of signal jammers within the United States (47 U.S.C. § 302a(b)).
    • Section 333 - prohibits willful or malicious interference with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act or operated by the U.S. Government (47 U.S.C. § 333).
    • Section 501 – allows for substantial monetary fines and criminal sanctions including imprisonment (47 U.S.C. § 501).
    • Section 503 - allows the FCC to impose forfeitures for willful or repeated violations of the Communications Act, the Commission's rules, regulations, or related orders, as well as for violations of the terms and conditions of any license, certificate, or other Commission authorization, among other things (47 U.S.C. § 503).
    • Sections 510 - allows for seizure of unlawful equipment (47 U.S.C. § 510).
  • The Commission's Rules
    • Section 2.803 - prohibits the manufacture, importation, marketing, sale or operation of unauthorized devices within the United States (47 C.F.R. § 2.803).
    • Section 2.807 - provides for certain limited exceptions, such as the sale to U.S. government users (47 C.F.R. § 2.807).
  • The U.S. Criminal Code(Enforced by the Department of Justice or Department of Homeland Security)
    • Title 18, Section 545 – prohibits the importation of illegal goods into the United States; subjects the operator to possible fines, imprisonment, or both (18 U.S.C. § 545).
    • Title 18, Section 1362 - prohibits willful or malicious interference to US government communications; subjects the operator to possible fines, imprisonment, or both (18 U.S.C. § 1362).
    • Title 18, Section 1367(a) - prohibits intentional or malicious interference to satellite communications, including GPS; subjects the operator to possible fines, imprisonment, or both (18 U.S.C. § 1367(a)).
I am sure other countries have similar laws.
OH MAN!!! :) Correct. But if I walked this path, I would not be doing that. Federal law doesn't prohibit the public production of sounds that just so happen to be at the exact opposite phase of the sounds produced. I am not touching the radios signal. Read about this new technology from the early 1800s (1801 speci) LINK
 
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Thanks for so many replies. You rock. I may get hate mail for this, but I can't see Fargo as being the best. From my actuarial pragmatic experiences, I see flaws that can be corrected or improved upon hence that micro cavitation issue I alluded to. Having a system that is probably AI driven or something that dynamically weights impeding factors empirically is going to be lightyears ahead of Fargo basic win/loss driven statistics. Please do not take offense. I don't mean to take a stab at Fargo or you. I've just experienced otherwise with fargo is all I am saying. Mea culpa.
Micro cavitation issue? Are you making propellers? WTH are you talking about?
 
The billiard community could be improved if there was a Consumer Reports like evaluation of cue shafts and a description of the materials used in shafts. It could start with deflection scores for ten shafts.

It could publish lists of shafts' energy transferring efficiency of shaft-hit to cue ball (Defy vs Revo!), a description of the technology used (tear the shaft apart and tell players how they are made --- length of carbon-fiber rod in CF/wood shaft; whether cored shaft is hollow, foam or wood; maybe the weight of the first one inch of shaft for deflection purposes.
This is interesting and I LIKE IT! Let's explore this. So would this be the device or is this the report NPO? If this is the device, the goal of the device would be to measure the resultant vector force from the cue (with tip/pad/ferrule) imparting its kinetic energy to what are you thinking - something like a read pad?

I've always wanted to explore a tool that measures deflection/squirt, but in their very nature (friction + impact point + impact velocity) the results would be a 3D topographical surface in the rough shape of a mound (rotated parabola around the parabolic maximum). Perhaps the inflections points (non-smooth mound points) would speak to imperfections with the tip or asymptotic impacts, but would those imperfections mean manufacturer defects or plastic deformation as a consequence of using the same tip to perform similar tests over and over? hmmm:unsure:

Looking forward to your response here.
 
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I have a lot of programming/electrical engineering/technical and pool experience and want to give back to the community. If time or money were no option, but human resources were restricted to just one human, what could be crafted to improve the billiard community. Ideas I have heard so far, and in no particular order:

1) A wearable (clip on) timer that conveys time violations. - Accelerometer/BLE/microphone.
2) A free/freemium unified platform (website/app) for tournament management. -Self mobile check-in & reporting; state of the art.
3) A device to determine who wins the lag. -laser proximity non-doppler.
4) Facial recognition & game recognition for automated player scoring - Compareface et. al.
5) Improved Ranking & Handicapping system - Avoid known micro cavitation & include transparent metrics.
6) Augmented reality aiming glasses. -- Might be a bit too complicated for 1 man.
7) Balls with sensors (training) devices. -3 axis Accelerometer/BLE/Resin

What else? I'll pick my favorite one, make it and report back. I like 1 and 2 a lot. 3 is too easy.

Would any of these not succeed, if not why - adoption, pragmaticism, implementation, something else? Nothing is too complicated.
Mobile handheld device that will do as many of these things as possible:

Measure surface and ambient humidity.
Measure light levels.
Measure surface temperature.
Detect substances, like silicone or wax, on balls.
Wave it over racked balls and it detects if there are gaps.
Detect break speed.
Serve as time clock.
 
Micro cavitation issue? Are you making propellers? WTH are you talking about?
LOL Thanks for the reply. To expound using a bit of hyperbole, and to simplify Fargo et.al. If a player does not expand their reach beyond their common group, then all points earned by the individual are simply exchanged in the long run with the players in their group. Think of this as a bubble. No one escapes the bubble until they leave their group - for good. The benefit of Fargo is that it is functionally correct on the distal ends, but in the middle, these mathematical micro-bubbles (micro-cavitation) are an inexorable nuisance.

Hope this helps.
 
LOL Thanks for the reply. To expound using a bit of hyperbole, and to simplify Fargo et.al. If a player does not expand their reach beyond their common group, then all points earned by the individual are simply exchanged in the long run with the players in their group. Think of this as a bubble. No one escapes the bubble until they leave their group - for good. The benefit of Fargo is that it is functionally correct on the distal ends, but in the middle, these mathematical micro-bubbles (micro-cavitation) are an inexorable nuisance.

Hope this helps.
If you want to improve fargo, _all_ that needs to be done is to make the data public.
 
Another thing, a reasonably priced stimpmeter to help measure the speed of rolling balls on a table. Along with the ability to add reproducible amounts of speed to it (think pinball plunger) so that "stroke speeds" can be adjusted and rebound angles can be measured. This is to test the rails and speed of tables. And possibly to answer the question of all pool questions, do blue label diamonds bank short? Or do all of those 40 year old gold crowns just have dead rubber?
 
LOL Thanks for the reply. To expound using a bit of hyperbole, and to simplify Fargo et.al. If a player does not expand their reach beyond their common group, then all points earned by the individual are simply exchanged in the long run with the players in their group. Think of this as a bubble. No one escapes the bubble until they leave their group - for good. The benefit of Fargo is that it is functionally correct on the distal ends, but in the middle, these mathematical micro-bubbles (micro-cavitation) are an inexorable nuisance.

Hope this helps.
You might want to dumb it down a little for this crowd, just saying.
 
I've always wanted to explore a tool that measures deflection/squirt,
A Chinese researcher posted in the last year a video of his tests of a unit that would test deflection. I cannot find the link, however.

Predator and Meucci have made their own cue-ball hitting machines.

Dr Dave shows you to do deflection testing without a machine at

There is great interest in this. Even Dr Dave's tests would be adequate in my opinion. It has its caveats but seems to be the best available now. It seems the cost of accessing ten shafts is an obstacle.
 
The OP seems to have been referring to the "island" problem of a group of players who are inbred, play-wise. They are sort of a bubble. Cavitation is the formation of bubbles in liquid, such as when propellers on boats move too fast. (Bad for the propeller.)
Yes sir. Indeed I am. I noticed the 'island' problem empirically and never sought out if someone (or a collective) had also noticed it, so I described it how I envisioned it. I will call it an island going forward and not a microbubble (cavitation). One would think that a problem so obvious that it earned a name, would have been solved by now. I have a few ideas to solve the 'island' issue. It's just mafs.
 
I have a lot of programming/electrical engineering/technical and pool experience and want to give back to the community.
Contact those already in the community to see where you’re talents and skill could be most beneficial.


If time or money were no option, but human resources were restricted to just one human, what could be crafted to improve the billiard community. Ideas I have heard so far, and in no particular order:
1) A wearable (clip on) timer that conveys time violations. -
Does it shock the wearer? Jk
Accelerometer/
We used to have a lot of fun clocking our break speed with a radar gun, then an app was developed.

Though, I would like to know how hard a ball is/must be hit to effect certain things, like masse, jump, long cuts, & draws, and how fast a ball comes off a rail.
BLE/microphone.
Lavolier mics are useful in this sense.
2) A free/freemium unified platform (website/app) for tournament management. -Self mobile check-in & reporting; state of the art.
Have you been to Digipool? Something along those lines?
3) A device to determine who wins the lag. -laser proximity non-doppler.
Someone might repurpose a laser level for use in gauging the lag.
4) Facial recognition & game recognition for automated player scoring - Compareface et. al.
Most pool scoring apps rely on the player’s input for scorekeeping.
I’m unsure how facial recognition could be of use- voice recognition to tell your app what your score is and any pertinent shot information might be good.
5) Improved Ranking & Handicapping system - Avoid known micro cavitation & include transparent metrics.
Accu-Stats and Fargo Rate are what we currently use for measuring performance.
What do you think of them?
6) Augmented reality aiming glasses. -- Might be a bit too complicated for 1 man.
Fun for the casual player maybe.
7) Balls with sensors (training) devices. -3 axis Accelerometer/BLE/Resin
That gets complicated.
Pool balls are perfect spheres. Unless you are working with Aramith, for example, inserting anything into a ball mold will/can effect the roll of the ball, thereby ruining whatever you were trying to gauge or measure.
Perhaps an app might accomplish this?
What else? I'll pick my favorite one, make it and report back. I like 1 and 2 a lot. 3 is too easy.

Would any of these not succeed, if not why - adoption, pragmaticism, implementation, something else? Nothing is too complicated.
Many here are against reinventing the wheel, but there is always room to contribute your time to pool and the people who play.
Buona fortuna!
 
A Chinese researcher posted in the last year a video of his tests of a unit that would test deflection. I cannot find the link, however.

Predator and Meucci have made their own cue-ball hitting machines.

Dr Dave shows you to do deflection testing without a machine at

There is great interest in this. Even Dr Dave's tests would be adequate in my opinion. It has its caveats but seems to be the best available now. It seems the cost of accessing ten shafts is an obstacle.
Anything using a person's particular stroke that day is not an accurate test, nor is it scientific method. It cannot be replicated by others.
 
Can not fix what don’t want fixing. We can identify problems, but no one is doing anything to fix.

Pool has been declining in popularity, in USA for my life time.

Pro Player need to look out for their intrests, but most don’t get that point.
 
OH MAN!!! :) Correct. But if I walked this path, I would not be doing that. Federal law doesn't prohibit the public production of sounds that just so happen to be at the exact opposite phase of the sounds produced. I am not touching the radios signal. Read about this new technology from the early 1800s (1801 speci) LINK
This is extremely difficult to do. You will need to make many functional prototypes and it will take a lot of time.
 
I have a lot of programming/electrical engineering/technical and pool experience and want to give back to the community. If time or money were no option, but human resources were restricted to just one human, what could be crafted to improve the billiard community. Ideas I have heard so far, and in no particular order:

1) A wearable (clip on) timer that conveys time violations. - Accelerometer/BLE/microphone.
2) A free/freemium unified platform (website/app) for tournament management. -Self mobile check-in & reporting; state of the art.
3) A device to determine who wins the lag. -laser proximity non-doppler.
4) Facial recognition & game recognition for automated player scoring - Compareface et. al.
5) Improved Ranking & Handicapping system - Avoid known micro cavitation & include transparent metrics.
6) Augmented reality aiming glasses. -- Might be a bit too complicated for 1 man.
7) Balls with sensors (training) devices. -3 axis Accelerometer/BLE/Resin

What else? I'll pick my favorite one, make it and report back. I like 1 and 2 a lot. 3 is too easy.

Would any of these not succeed, if not why - adoption, pragmaticism, implementation, something else? Nothing is too complicated.
Well, first of all a huge thanks for this generous offer! Don't mind the elderly here that fear anything new and apparantly forgot basic politeness. The only thing I give them is recently there has been an instance where a new person promised a lot, but ended up ghosting once the reality of the challenges sunk in.

Usually I am very inspired and come up with all kinds of ideas. But honestly, I can't think of any thing.

Well maybe one thing. My schtick is that I am a bit of a game designer (amateur) and I am convinced that the big5 (8ball, 9ball, 10ball, straight pool and 1p) are great games, but they all lack *something*. In my post history there's a post about the search for the perfect game, a game that has it all, but is really hard to design - obviously.

Your question however is not about game design, but about mechinal engeneering. Well, one avenue in the search for the ultimate new poolgame is attributes on the pool table that modify the table. Like gates that could be passed or little "rail" islands. Altogether this is nothing concrete, just an idea that floated my mind.

For Elimin-8-ball it would be great if the pockets that are eliminated would automatically close.

All these are endavours that I honestly would not ask anyone to put a lot of time and energy into.

The digiball fills a void that we kind of knew would be a "very nice to have" and it's turning out fine. There's a company building topdown projectors that create (probably gimmicky) minigames for the party crowd. Imo with talented game designers they could make briljant games, but they probably aim for candycrush-pool games, if you get me.

So, a very long post to say: I don't know. But again, it's a genereus offer a d I hope someone has a really good idea.
 
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