The project's objective is to design a system that allows players to effortlessly keep track of their scores during ping pong games, making the gaming experience more enjoyable. The system will be integrated into the ping pong table itself, providing real-time score updates and storing the history of past games. It will also include data collection features to generate statistics, such as average points per game and win/loss ratios. The project will be executed over a two-week period for setting up the system on the table, with the remaining co-op term dedicated to developing the program for data storage and statistics.
In pursuit of the project objectives, a diverse array of technologies was employed. A significant portion of the hardware was designed around the Arduino platform. These systems comprised individual buttons for each player affixed to the table's sides, 30 addressable LEDs on each side to convey game status through engaging animations, and a radio module facilitating wireless communication with the base station.
The base station, on the other hand, was assembled with an Arduino and a radio module, connected to a computer running specialized Python visualization software tailored to our project's needs. This included a drop down to select the current players and a win screen at the end of the game. The code also saved each game played into a csv file.
The premise of the entire project was based around inclusion of more employees in the office lunch-time games and using hobby technology in innovative ways to achieve that goal. By the end of the project, I got a lot of recognition for my initiative and more people would stop by while we were playing to examine our setup and see how the system works. Some even stayed to play games with us while others hung around to eat lunch and talk. Overall, the project made our lunchtime activities more popular and encouraged a more social environment in the office.