111–120 of 375 posts
Amazing post. I'm a enthusiastic bowler myself and in tech so this scratches both of those itches. These are the types of posts that keep me coming back to HN. Best of luck and please post some images/videos of the prototypes in action.
Absolutely. This is what makes open source extremely powerful - ability to take absurdly small niches no big tech company is willing to fill.
I wonder what sort of things you could do to harden the system. From potting to overbuilding to redundancy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain the significance of the single relay? My car starts with a single solenoid.
The pinsetter is either "on" or "off", there are no other states to manage. Once it's on, it runs indefinitely: it sets the pins, clears the alley, resets the remaining pins, and repeats the cycle, all without any external control. On mine, I do have some "feedback info" on which pins are down + a signal to "when" to score points, but this is optional as you can also write your score manually if you have no scoring c…
Right now I'm working on adding LED + DMX DJ light control - I kinda want to be able to order LED strips to "chase" a ball as it goes down the lane or back up the return. I plan on triggering laser-light shows and such with the DMX controller. Eventually, I want to allow a customer walk up to the lane, tap to pay and start bowling immediately, too. Kiosk-ize bowling alleys, yknow? I'm pumped. So much room for activit…
Your beginners have to come for shoes anyway, and the pointer to which lanes to take (you don't want them taking a lane at 6:30 that's reserved at 7)
Thank you for sharing; I'm so glad for you that it worked out.
That said, didn't you just shift the cost instead of reducing the cost?
It's of course subjective, and the goal of the question isn't to devalue your work, au contraire, I'm saying that you contributed 120k worth of value.
This is as-is a product that you can sell to other bowling alleys, and do not fall into the trick of selling savings and pricing it at like 20k. Your product may be better as it can be customized, modernized, it has a single author and less bureocracy than a corporate 30yo bundle that was handed over through 5 generations of programmers after resignations and layoffs.
Good luck
What would be a good source to buy these in bulk (along with accessory components. e.g. wires etc.)?
Are you getting any customers?
We're holding pretty steady at $3400-ish / month on open bowling alone. No leagues yet, no snack bar yet, no beer yet. It's not FAANG income by any stretch, but it's doing -so- much better than I initially expected!