You made some good choices here - downsizing the grid is not ideal, obviously, but it is appropriate given the size constraints. I like that you went with the two-layer return board with a breakbeam sensor. I think that will be much more reliable than pressure or other contact sensors. The nets are also a good decision, too.

I will be interested to see how this progresses through testing. I think your biggest problem here will be errant bounces, which will put the ball in a square that is almost certainly very far away from where the player aimed. Depending on the material of the ball, you will need some pretty significant damping on the bottom of the squares and especially on the raised edges of the cubes. Nicely done.

return to top of page

This is a very nicely designed gravity driven mechanism. It would be good if the location of the IR emitter/receiver can be shown.

The other suggestion that I have is to actually do some tests to see if the current wall cell height is enough in order to not allow a bounced ball to exit the cell.

As a suggestion the walls of the cell can be made out of plexyglass so that players can see the ball when it bounces.

return to top of page

Great concept of using gravity to self reset! How will the individual grid pieces be assembled together and will the bonding be strong enough to hold up under multiple balls hitting it from a distance? Will the balls be able to bounce up and get off the grid, what if a throw misses the grid? Also how will all of the sensors and wires be placed?

return to top of page

I really like this idea and think this concept is great. It's very smart to have the base of each grid slanted so that the balls automatically roll through the hole. With this, it makes detection of a ball really easy, which your team has discovered. Have you tested a model of this out adjusting the height between each square? I'm not sure if this might affect the gameplay.

return to top of page

One minor point about your website - make sure you escape special characters like '>' and '"'. Some browsers require that you use the escape sequences (e.g. >) otherwise they render weirdly.

return to top of page

In order to improve the visual aspects of the game, I was thinking LED strips can be added to the perimeter of each cell and these lights can turn on or blink for a few seconds when the IR sensor sense the ball.

return to top of page

The rendering looks very good, the lighting shows the angles very nicely and how the gravity resetting is supposed to work.

return to top of page

Nice rendering! The wood-like appearance makes it feel realistic and the shadows help to show that the base is slanted. Perhaps including a ball would be nice to give a sense of scale of the ball and each square.

return to top of page