A Real Time 8-Ball Pool Helper to help you find and calibrate the most optimal shot.
2The status report covers the last 2 weeks: Week 1: April 8th to April 15th This was the week of the carnival at CMU so I could not get a lot done because of the same. I made some changes to the code base, where …
This week I spent a lot of time continuing integration with Devank and working to improve the CV System. I improved detection of balls along the edge so it will find those consistently and than Devank and I worked together to get the Servo system …
This week, Justin worked on soldering the components so they are more stable when attached to the pool cue. He also worked on integration by making it so his data can be printed to a txt file, which can then be read by our other subsystems. Jimmy and Devank spent the week fixing bugs in their integration, like the CV system detecting the projection on the table as actual pool balls. Devank also made some edits to his shot calculation to make it more accurate, such as having it target the center of each pocket instead of the back, which meant some shots couldn’t be made as the walls were in the way. Currently our largest risk is with the lighting of the pool table. If there are significant shadows, it causes the CV system to fail to properly detect the balls, which breaks the whole system. Our solution to this is to add LED strips to the frame, which will prevent outside light sources from interfering with our CV detection. As stated above, we needed a stable, constant lighting system on the frame to make sure the CV functioned properly. This cost us $25. We have not updated our schedule.
This week I spent most of my time on assembling the components to be put on the pool cue. This meant I had to take apart my microcontrollers and reassemble them by soldering the wires back together. I also spent time on integration, writing a …
Devank and I continued to work on the integration of our two systems, the shot calculation, projection and CV System. We made good progress on working on it but found some errors that need to be fixed this upcoming week. We discovered that when the …
This week I worked further on the shot calculation system, the frame design, and integration with Jimmy and Justin.
For the shot calculation, I mostly did 2 two things. The first of these was to account for the distance of the cue ball to the target ball while making a shot. Until now I was accounting for the angle deviation and the distance of the target ball from the pocket. I realized that the distance to the cue ball from the pocket ball also plays a role in this as the lesser the distance between the cue ball and the target ball, the lesser the difference in distance each angle will make. I need to further optimize this metric as right now my thresholding values might give inaccurate results in some cases. The second piece of correction of the ghost ball. I was doing it incorrectly the first time and found during testing that this required a redesign of that module.
For the frame, I added a third leg which would act as a pillar to hold the projector. This would be slightly taller than the other two legs as the projector needs to be held up at a higher distance than we originally thought since we decided to use a different projector with a different throw ratio. I added support beams joining the three legs in place and now need to work on making the projector mounting mechanism more secure. We also added LED strips to produce stable artificial lighting as we realized that the CV system was really sensitive to external lighting conditions.
For integration, I worked with Jimmy to smoothen out a few bugs that came up in shot detection. With Justin we talked about how I would read the data he is sending me from the sensors so we can display post shot feedback back onto the table for the user to see.
My work for the next few weeks is pretty clear cut. I need to finish integrating the 3 sub-systems with my teammates, need to find a way to hold the projector steady and need to add another Arduino to the frame. The main purpose of this Arduino would be to control a servo that would move a piece of wood covering the projector lens back and forth so that the CV system does not catch the projected balls and think of them as real balls. This should not be too hard and will be done in the next week.
This week my work was split up into three parts. The first of these was the frame. I added a hole at the top shelf of the frame for the projector to sit on so that it could project the new image back on the …
This week I implemented the color to work with the webcam. We currently have run into problems with the lighting being inconsistent but when I have good lighting the program is working. I then worked with Devank and integrated our two programs to work together …
This week the team continued on making significant progress. Jimmy further optimized his CV system to account for color detection, and Jimmy and Devank were able to integrate their separate systems. Devank was able to fix an error pointed out by Jimmy this week with the placement of the lines and was able to work on the frame a little more. Justin was able to able to finish work on the Radio transceivers and was able to start work on the microcontroller. Justin and Devank will work on integrating their systems later in the week. With the upcoming interim demo, the team decided on a few major design changes to the overall system. The first of these is with the frame, which would require an extension to the current base to move the pool table forward (see Devank’s status Report for exact details). This is because the projector is projecting at an angle and not dead center, which is what we accounted for. This is an easy change to implement though as it only requires minimal woodworking. The second of these is that we changed the embedded cue stick from having real-time feedback on the LED to having post-shot feedback based on the shot made by the user. Where this feedback will be given is still to be decided but one idea would be to project it back onto the pool table for the user to see. Despite the design changes, we are still on track and should be good for the interim demo. We are continuing to make progress and are in good shape to finish on time.
This week I finished work on the Radio transceivers. I also started working on attaching the microcontrollers to the cue stick, as well as making them more stable. Before this week, I simply wrapped the wires together, which means they could slip apart. Now I …