A non-US perspective: it's quite weird hearing someone younger than about 50-60yo use inches as a measurement. Especially for something scientific.
Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
121–130 of 172 posts
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#122nice work! you could probably speed the computation quite a lot by using a small deformation basis (e.g. using modal analysis) and optimize in this smaller space instead.
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#123cool
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#124This was really well explained and interesting. Funnily enough I'm pretty sure this is a really similar method to urinal design, so if this whole basketball thing doesn't work out for ya, you could always work for American Standard...
Similar methods exists for all kinds of engineering problems, like architecture (form follows function), roofs, bridges, city planning, or just the economy.
The optimal form is always an optimization problem. Just define the constraints. Maybe the most famous example is Gaudi calculating the form of the roofs of the Sagrada Familia, and then Frei Otto for the Munich Olympics. City planning is easier as their is no gravity, just more constraints. Think of SimCity run in a simulation with feedback loops.
The best planning approach is always prolog-like. Define the facts and rules, and the forms will fall out eventually by itself. Then optimize the solutions iteratively according to cost functions. It's called OR, operations research. I did a lot of that with free-forms, also even simply office layouts, when I worked as architect. We even sold CAD programs to special manifacturers to design a good roof or other free-form shapes. Like for Disney.
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#125That was a pretty cool video! I loved how he used 3D Monte-Carlo and side-stepped all the complicated math. I wonder if he was using a Physics engine like Bullet or ODE to calculate the simulated trajectories. Also, a good intermediate step might've been to build the backboard in something like Unity and shoot some hoops to catch the radius error before actually machining it out.
> complicated math Is it though? Isn't the final shape just a paraboloid, like a parabolic antenna with the hoop in the focal point?
It's optimizing for an average of shots from more or less arbitrary locations, so it's not necessarily a perfect parabaloid.
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#126I love this! I was expecting something more like Mark Rober's movign dartboard [0], which is super cool, but this is even more interesting, because of the way you used software to come up with a general solution in advance. Kudos!
Mark Rober is an interesting character. It feels like he pitches himself as a crazy inventor guy but it seems like he’s more akin to the head of a design laboratory that employs many other talented people.
It’s not like he doesn’t acknowledge the other crazy-inventor people he commissions though, and I certainly don’t mean to paint him as a fraud.
When he says things like, 1m45s into a video on a steerable bowling ball “in the spirit of full disclosure this is all down to [named co-collaborator]’s work” it feels like that use of full disclosure in the sense of I would rather not reveal this but I am legally obliged to.
No offense to Rober or that particular collaborator. For all I know, he just didn’t want the publicity. Rober is very good and it’s almost like I feel aggrieved that if only his style was ever so slightly different he’d win my complete instead of partial admiration.
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#127Did other people also wonder what a French cleat might be? It is a molding with a 30–45 degree slope used to hang cabinets or other objects. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cleat
I put up a giant wall of these in my home and they're incredibly useful. You can build any type of contraption and throw a cleat on the back of it and boom, just put it on the big wall. Reconfigure it every month, build new things to mount up there, it truly is simple and versatile. French cleats truly are terrific.
I like the idea. It's a bit invasive, but if you don't mind would you share a photo of what this wall looks like?
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#128This was really well explained and interesting. Funnily enough I'm pretty sure this is a really similar method to urinal design, so if this whole basketball thing doesn't work out for ya, you could always work for American Standard...
Similar methods exists for all kinds of engineering problems, like architecture (form follows function), roofs, bridges, city planning, or just the economy. The optimal form is always an optimization problem. Just define the constraints. Maybe the most famous example is Gaudi calculating the form of the roofs of the Sagrada Familia, and then Frei Otto for the Munich Olympics. City planning is easier as their is no gr…
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Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#129The style of presentation, the manner of speaking, seems to be inspired by This Old Tony [0]. This is no bad thing. I wonder if Tony picked it up from somewhere else. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/featony/videos
He needs to do some more monte-carlo simulations on the jokes to get to the level of ToT. But it was a very nice presentation of the topic and a neat result.
Re: Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]
#130Can anyone tell me what tablet and app he is using for the drawing?