The Hacker part of Hacker News, thanks for sharing! I think you'd get a lot of bowling alley friends all over if you can package this in a way that they can use it, I would assume the Venn diagram of people running bowling alleys and those who know what ESP32 and RS485 means is pretty thin.
Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
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Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#292That's the signal in the noise I open HN for, thanks for sharing!
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#293[deleted]
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#294One thing I've always wanted at a bowling alley is an instant slow-motion video replay of the pins being knocked down. Seems easy to do in theory, a Raspberry Pi + compatible camera could do this very easily, so long as you could mount it in a good locaiton. The only alley integration needed would be to tie into whatever sensor detects when the ball reaches the end of the lane. * Mount a 60 fps camera pointed at the…
Probably better to enable it only for strikes/spares as it would drain too much time, but the idea is great.
When you say drain too much time, you mean due to it being a distraction? Then I would try to optimise it so that it's playing the slow-mo immediately, and maybe at 50% speed so that the 3 second buffer is played out in just 6 seconds.
If you wanted to be REALLY clever, you could get it to start playing the slow mo the moment the ball is detected.
Or perhaps replays could be gated behind a button push. Ball detection copies the current video buffer into an secondary buffer; the button plays whatever is in the secondary buffer.
Or you could make it a web app, and stream replays to people's phones when they're on the alley's wi-fi. That has the benefit of making an epic moment saveable and shareable.
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess: 1) New cars are too cheap to make at scale. 2) Old cars are quite unsafe to drive, comparatively (airbags, backup cameras, lane departure alerts, blind angle alerts, etc)
Aerodynamics as well, new cars and especially ev/hybrids are slippery compared to many/the average if we take old cars to mean 50’s through 70’s.
An older sedan-style car might still be more aerodynamic than a modern SUV, simply because the frontal surface area is smaller. The less air you have to push out of the way in the first place, the better.
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#296Well, now you can start your own company installing and providing technical support for your own system. Even though it's open source, many people won't know what an ESP32 is or how to integrate it all. If you can also monitor everything remotely and provide updates via the internet, you might have a good business on your hands.
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no shame and no business there. We just read a story of someone who didn’t want to pay market price and went DIY. There are companies doing bowling alley equipment and you can pay them for maintenance. Is there a single one of those on F500 list? No and people are running those companies and what OP did … he didn’t want to pay market price. Well yeah those companies are overpriced if you are software enginee…
It's just lack of competitive pressure. I bet if you investigate you will find there are only a couple of suppliers that have the bowling alley market sewn up between them.
There is not much to compete for. Competitive pressure doesn’t magically spawn out of thin air.
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no shame and no business there. We just read a story of someone who didn’t want to pay market price and went DIY. There are companies doing bowling alley equipment and you can pay them for maintenance. Is there a single one of those on F500 list? No and people are running those companies and what OP did … he didn’t want to pay market price. Well yeah those companies are overpriced if you are software enginee…
It's just lack of competitive pressure. I bet if you investigate you will find there are only a couple of suppliers that have the bowling alley market sewn up between them.
You’d die on the back of unreliable operation and relatively high maintenance. A DIY system built off of cheap ESP32s is never going to be reliable enough. The system as described above is the sort of thing I would happily operate for myself, but would never attempt to sell as a product. Anyone who’s tried to hold together a few dozen ESP32-powered IoT devices will likely attest—they’re very impressive for their cost, but hardly reliable on the scale of years.
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#299I love seeing software engineering applied to physical systems. Replacing expensive proprietary infrastructure with simple, repairable components feels like the kind of engineering that creates long-term value.
Re: Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
#300I love seeing software engineering applied to physical systems. Replacing expensive proprietary infrastructure with simple, repairable components feels like the kind of engineering that creates long-term value.
It does. But it's nothing special. This isn't "software engineering applied to a physical system". This is just software (and some hardware) engineering. This is just engineering. Making things to do things. You want to do something and you make a machine that does it.