How to Make a Basketball Auto Score Keeper Using Colour Sensing -- Episode 579

Everything is a competition at Lorraine’s home and work, especially when it comes to throwing balls into basketball hoops. Watch as she upgrades it to automatically detect who has scored a basket using a colour sensor, a micro:bit and multi-coloured balls.

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Bill of Material:

Product Name	Manufacturer	Quantity	Buy Kit
micro:bit version 1	BBC	2	Buy Now
DF Robot Sensor Board, RGB Colour	DFROBOT	1	Buy Now
RGB LED strip 1 metre	MULTICOMP PRO	1	Buy Now
Male to female jumper wires	MULTICOMP PRO	1	Buy Now
Pin Header	AMP _ TE CONNECTIVITY	1	Buy Now
Kitronik Edge Connector	Kitronik	1	Buy Now

Additional Parts:

Basketball hoop

Coloured balls

element14 presents | About Lorraine | Project Videos

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lorrainbow over 2 years ago in reply to dougw

aw, I remember these!
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lorrainbow over 2 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

Yeah, ambient light does make a difference. The sensor definitely acted different outside in the dark to inside in the light
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beacon_dave over 2 years ago in reply to dougw

If using bean bags, or specific 'balls', then slipping an RFID tag inside might be another way to do it.

Slip the micro:bit inside and you could use its magnetometer to detect the hoop whilst using the accelerometer to track its flight profile. Transmit this data to a paired mobile device to get training feedback.
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beacon_dave over 2 years ago in reply to dougw

I recall that SparkFun did one of these a while back with built-in scoreboard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-GyVX0CfeI&t=6s
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dougw over 2 years ago

If you are looking for ideas, your scoring system would work great on one of those bean-bag games...
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lorrainbow over 2 years ago in reply to DAB

Thanks DAB.
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lorrainbow over 2 years ago in reply to dougw

Yeah, I'd have to calibrate against the exact colours of the balls.. which isn't unreasonable
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lorrainbow over 2 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

Oh yeah, my clock would make a great scoreboard!
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DAB over 2 years ago

Nice project.

Getting proper spectral detection is not easy.

You might try using a Hue and Saturation approach.

It might give you a better discrimination of the objects.
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dougw over 2 years ago

It looks like it will work well if the balls fit the hoop and they have good colors. It might be easier to just use RED, NOT RED and DARK, if the green ball is not a really saturated green.
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