I hope other people are interested…
2 Likes
Ten team colours.
- Black
- White
- Red
- Orange
- Yellow
- Green
- Purple
- Pink
- Blue
- Light Blue
You’ll need this reference for the video (or if you want to pick a winner from the short race).
Here’s a really rough rough early concept demo. No electronics installed.
Video pulled off phone. Probably should’ve gone 60fps.
First time using Davinci Resolve as well. Neat program.
3 Likes
Was that black marble that almost got lapped the Essington marble?
2 Likes
Was Joey sitting on the fence.
2 Likes
Clever stuff, I’ll keep an eye on this
2 Likes
Was playing with this last night and more work is needed with regards to getting the marbles lifted. A 15cm lift doesnt cut it. Need more gravity.
Most of the marbles were complaining there were no overtaking opportunities!
1 Like
Well, it’s been a while but i’ve been working diligently in the background. The new marble lift had a lot of extra editing to do just to get things right. Making sure the marbles consistently needed to go where they needed to and pop out the top as well before falling into the track. This system was expandable and could’ve gone higher.
However, the whole thing wasn’t consistent enough. Also turns out it could only take 14mm marbles when majority of what I have are 16mm… sigh. Back to the ole drawing board.
Once I get this done I can then go back and focus on the electronics and then creating nice boxes to hide it all in a way that is neat and tidy. My workspace is an absolute mess right now.
Any feedback is appreciated. Please comment to keep me going along!
5 Likes
So, am l right in saying this is a form of gaming, taken to a new level with AI and 3D graphics? I will remain an interested onlooker, for now.
There won’t be any AI on the final product. AI has been great though when trying to remember coding functions.
1 Like
Well, turns out maybe a little bit, but not that bad stuff.
To explain there will be an overhead camera which will tie into the laser start/finish line to not only trigger when a marble crosses the line but also which marble.
The system i’m using basically requires me to ‘train’ it’s database so it can learn what it is I want it to target. So first there are round things. Then there is a colour(s). Then there are patterns. There’s also then learning to differentiate between the ‘red’ marble and the ‘black’ marble. To train this basically I will need to take about a thousand shots PER marble. 100 gets me about 95% accuracy, 1000 is closer to 99%.
Once all this is learnt and the system can identify it all we then need to train it further by taking photos of the marbles moving! As we all know when we take a photo in motion you can get a blur which makes in this case the marble less round.
Last step, once that system is all good and ready, we then need to tie it back to the timing controllers to churn out all that gooey data.
The only alternative that i’ve seen is to drill a small hole in each marble and insert a rolled up rfid tags like you can get for your marble. Basically it’s built in ID for the marble which a detector then picks up and tracks. Difficult to do in 16mm, maybe 30 but then everything gets too large!
But i’ve started the journey now and i’ll get to the end. No rush. No fixed end date 
4 Likes
I think it’s freaking awesome.
3 Likes
Next potential marble lift is a chain link version.
I don’t think the motor is 100% right though with that harmonic ‘thump, thump, thump’.
Obviously there will be more cradles to lift the marbles and the whole mechanism to catch the marbles and throw them out on the top still need to be designed and printed too.
2 Likes
That’s very cool. What are you using for coding it all up? Python?
My kids used to watch these sort of simulated 2d versions of what you are building (but more staged elimination type), and they often had a series of cogs of spinning scoops to “lift” the marbles, which added that component of randomness to the uphill sections. I don’t know how that plays out in 3d, but would at least be a smooth motor sound.
Python for the cam software. Arduino is mostly C++
1 Like
In this case its pure motor. Even disconnected with nothing on the shaft it makes that noise.
I haven’t figured out gears though. I do need to learn how they can all connect and how they function.
1 Like
This is going to be fun to see unfold!
2 Likes
It’s a cool project @Soulnet. Maybe we can get this AI training the AFL umpires to get them up from 30% accuracy.
1 Like
Turns out, the motor is fine! Was a software issue.
Basically as the script was in a loop, everytime the loop reset there was a micro drop in voltage which caused that ‘thump’.
That problem is solved!
2 Likes