Marker Board with bluetooth for programming via smartphone app

[hoot]

There's definitely some use to the stats you could pull from a board like that, but the focus of the thread looked to be more about tinkering with your marker. Bluetooth's effective range is pretty pants, so some other technology would probably be required to pull stats from a whole field of players.

I can't see any issues with the current OLED display/blinking LED system that's in place at the moment. This sort of seems like an unnecessary jump in terms of functionality. Not to mention it's just one more thing that can go wrong.

 

[Bolter]

I think the point is you wouldn't need a Marshall to monitor numbers if it was done right. One thing computers are good at is analysing numbers by themselves

I was responding to

Remote programming from outside the field could be easily spotted by an umpire monitoring bluetooth radio with a laptop / tablet.

 

[~Solo~]

I wasnt suggesting that the umpire would be monitoring numbers. Just looking to see if a Bluetooth radio gets switched on.

 

[Bolter]

Whats the difference? They'll still want paying!

 

[Ferenc Deak]

Hi,

I used to go to Campaign a lot. Unfortunately this year I was unable to go because of various reasons. Now, the thing is that I had the same idea. It would be nice to program the marker from a smartphone. One of my friends have an EGO with an OLED board with bluetooth on it but strange enough it does not have any function therefore useless...

Beacuse of that and also being an electrical engineer I have started to think about what if...

As step 1, I made a custom board for my Autococker Trilogy Selectfire (I did not like the performance of the marker so made a new board for it). It is working fine, I have tested it last year but winter came and did not play too much.

Then as step 2 I actually thought about it that there is still some space in the grip, so I have redesigned the panel and now it has bluetooth capability sending stats to the PC (at the moment I only have the PC application written and even that one is not complete).

So basically to have bluetooth connection on a marker is a doable thing and I think it is a nice feature taking that I find it confusing/tiresome to make changes with a button/trigger and a LED/LCD. Not to mention that the slectfire is quite basic and only adjsutable if you take the grip apart...

With regards to making changes on the fly, ingame: I do not really think that BT gives you an advantage as it is not convenient to do it with a smartphone. Not to mention if the phone is hit by a ball even if it has gorilla glass.

On my custom board I have installed a tournament switch on the board itself, if it is set, the board will only work in tournament mode which can not be adjusted via bluetooth but stats still can be read from the marker. It saves the hassle of making the fields to buy expensive equipment to monitor the markers. The switch is only operable if the grip is dismantled.

The marker controls are kept the original: 1 button, 1 bicolor LED. The difference is that if you start the marker with the trigger pulled it switches on the bluetooth function, if you start with the trigger released it will power up without the bluetooth functionality hence saving battery.

With regards to safety, when you connect to a bluetooth device, you will need to enter a pairing code. Now if you do not know the code you will not be able to connect to the marker.

PS: I have looked it up, my friends board is a Seventh Element with a BT module. According to their webpage it supports communication to the hopper and also that paramter upload to smartphone is under development.

regs.:

Ferenc

 

[Hazza]

im pretty sure i have seen a youtube video where someone is on the phone to someone at his house and he gets them to change his settings somehow as he hadnt changed them back from when he played a different day ?

 

[Hazza]

my bad i was thinking of this video

 

[~Solo~]

Was clearing out a load of old watched threads and thought this might be worth a bump considering what Dye has done with the M2 recently and other recent PB developments.