This week was another good one in the world of best ball.
This week I was able to improve upon the LiDAR system and begin to compile and mess with some library’s to work with our other sensors. Our LiDAR is now able to differentiate between feet, balls, and putters. This will allow us to accurately detect the ball. I have also added a script to measure and display the distance from the LiDAR to the ball, this will need to be edited to tell the distance from the ball to the hole but that should be simple linear equations.
I was able to find raspberry pi library called mfrc522 which is a library to control our RFID sensor through GPIO connections and a SPI interface. I booted up an old raspberry pi and configured it to have SPI connections ready to go when the sensor does arrive and I began work on code to detect ball ids when a ball is placed on the RFID sensor.
Lastly, I began to work on the actual green. I have begun work on a design for the green to allow for confined walls for the LiDAR to make an outline of the course. The green will need to be slightly elevated in order for sensors to live under the course. To accomplish this, we will create a wooden base with cut outs to fit our sensors where they are needed. On top, the wooden base will be covered with green felt. The green will need to be at least 6cm off the ground to fit all our sensors and to fit a golf hole with the right depth.
Overall we are slightly behind schedule as our sensors did not arrive when we expected, however, we have a few that arrived yesterday and we will be able to begin testing them as a team on Monday.