SelfScoringCornholeBoard
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Creator: |
Overview
This is a project for building cornhole boards (bean bag toss) that can automatically keep track of the current score based on the location of the bean bags on the board face or in the basket under the hole in the board.
A cornhole board looks like this:
And the bags you throw look something like this:
We intend to make this board keep its own score by adding a postage scale class weight sensor under the board face to detect the weight of any bags that have landed on the face of the board. These are worth 1 point. We'll also add a string/cord basket under the hole with the corners attached to more weight sensors to detect the weight of bags that went in the hole. These are worth 3 points. There are 4 bean bags for each team usually red and black. For the computer to know the difference we will vary the weight by a very small amount the scale can determine the difference but doesn't affect game play by humans. It would be checking the total weight on the face and the total weight in the hole basket and dividing by the set weight for each team's bags to determine how many of which team's bags are where. It would then do the math and display on a 2 digit 7 segment display built right into the board the current round's score for which team. Remember the rules say the points cancel each other out. So if the red team has 1 in the hole for 3 points and the black team has a bag on the board face for 1 point then the red team gets 2 points and black gets zero for the round. The board display would need to show it was the red team getting the points AND that it was 2 points they were getting.
Here are a few links to some force sensing resistors that might work for the weight sensors on the board:
http://www.trossenrobotics.com/p/24-inch-force-sensing-resistor.aspx
http://www.trossenrobotics.com/store/p/6496-1-5-Inch-Force-Sensing-Resistor-FSR-.aspx
We could also look around on the internet for broken postage scales and use the weight sensors from those. If the sensors in digital bathroom scales are sensitive enough to pick out the slight difference in team bag weights then we could find broken bathroom scales and use those sensors.
Another option would be to add LED lights under the board face to be able to play at night since we'll be having so much fun the sun will go down and we won't want to stop. Here's an example what that might look like:
