I am looking to measure the speed of a cricket ball/tennis ball/baseball pitch during practice sessions using an IoT setup.
Here's some background on my project:
Objective: Measure the speed of a cricket ball
Setup: I plan to utilise IoT devices and sensors to capture the ball's speed.
Constraints: I have a limited budget for this project and would prefer a DIY approach.
I would greatly appreciate your expertise and suggestions on the following:
Suitable Sensors: Can you recommend specific sensors or devices that are capable of measuring ball speed accurately in a cricket practice scenario?
Wiring and Connections: How should I connect the sensors to an IoT platform or microcontroller for data collection and analysis?
Data Processing: Are there any recommended algorithms or techniques for processing the captured data and calculating the ball's speed?
Calibration and Accuracy: How can I ensure the accuracy of the speed measurements? Are there any calibration steps or reference points I should consider?
If you have worked on a similar project or have experience with IoT setups and sports technology, I would greatly appreciate any insights, recommendations, or references to relevant resources.
Thank you in advance for your time and assistance. I look forward to engaging with this vibrant community and learning from your expertise.
Is the ball being bowled/served/pitched/thrown by a person, or a machine?
Doing this in the case of a real person will be far more difficult - because your system will need to be able to find the ball in 3D space before it can measure its speed ...
Or you will have to somehow constrain it to some well-defined area.
I guess that'd be feasible for something like a cricket nets setting - less so if you want it during an actual match...
I can't achieve an hawkeye, the setup in itself is very costly.
It'll need a set of cameras at different angle and position with a compute that does AR (augmented reality) and gives the output on screen.
Just that there are going to be 2 people in there too along with the ball.
A bowler moving in towards batsman, and the batsman swing his bat, and the ball moving too.
Any Idea In this scenario how does one measure the speed of the ball that was bowled at the batsman?
I mean how does a speed gun used in cricket do it. (I see bushnell speed gun being very widely used, just that it's price is 4 times the price at which it is available in the US).
You need to google to research this , I did and quickly found :
“ The radar gun is kept just next to the sight screen and pointed towards the direction of the ball .It consists of a radio transmitter and receiver. It emits microwaves to track the path of the ball through the air. With the help of the tracking of the path and change in frequency the speed of the ball is calculated. The change in frequency is due to the phenomenon(doppler effect) if the object is moving towards (or away) from the gun the frequency of the reflected microwaves and the transmitted waves is different. The difference in data of frequency got by radar gun is fed to an image producing software which distinguishes the ball among other objects on the pitch and hence gives the speed of the ball. This method is being in use since 1999 in cricket history.”
The Bushnell is a hand held device , using the Doppler effect , and relies relies on you being able to point it at the travelling ball, and the device “ seeing” the ball , probably in line with its travel . You can get it from Amazon and the like around $200.
Again Hawkeye is used in professional cricket .
Impossible to make for less and I have no idea how effective at seeing such a small target .!
Then you could set up some kind of beam-break sensor - the bowler(s) would have to get the ball(s) through the "gate" area(s) covered by your sensor(s)
Semiconductor radar modules are becoming more "affordable" - though that's still relative - try googling "doppler radar module"...
the radar available in market is hb100, that uses 10ghz frequency.
bushnell uses 24ghz frequency. The reason I figured out is higher frequencies make small object detection easy.
But I couldn't find any 24ghz radar sensor with it's breakout board.
Yeah, I was inspired by the same post. That's when I thought of making a speed gun of my own, using radar sensors. Unfortunately I have not been able to crack the complete logic and open source sensors needed.
