Section33 — my platform, SRE & bespoke technology consultancy. Also own a bowling alley, which I've been instrumenting with ESP32s instead of paying six figures for someone else's black box. Building OpenLaneLink in the open.
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Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
Oh totally. I actually thought about exactly that. I'm basically thinking "this -will- fail at some point, so when it does, I want to be able to replace a failed unit very rapidly."
I'm tinkering with an auto-provisioning function that tells a given ESP what node type it's connected to and configures itself from there.
Yep, USBC. You're exactly right, they do have pretty precise requirements for sanctioned league play. But casual 'open' bowlers don't care about that stuff for the most part. So if we're not running a league, we can flip back and forth and run the two systems in parallel (less maintenance on my very-expensive-sanctioned gear at the very least)
It can, yeah. For that reason, I only allow myself or Brunswick-certified mechanics to touch our pinsetters. We run old Brunswick A2s that were built in an era where 'safety' was practically a bad word, y'know? These machines are extremely hazardous if you aren't careful, for sure.
The good news is that electrically speaking, it's an incredibly dumb beast. You've got power on/off and the 'cycle' action. There are five safety interlocks through the power on/off path - one on the back of the machine, one on the front, deck jam, turret jam, and front desk. I'm not touching that path -at all-. If the machine's on, consider it dangerous.
The safety procedure for working on these is - Switch off mechanic interlock switch, switch off the machine main circuit breaker, disconnect main power, begin work.
Most insurance companies hear 'bowling alley' and immediately reject you... had to scramble to find a local insurance company that would carry us.
Sorry, I'll have a blog up soon. Wasn't sure there'd be any interest!
That link is so weird... it's definitely referencing this HN post, but those codeblocks in there... That's an interesting piece. Looks like their blog generator vibe-coded what it thought my firmware would look like.
Believe it or not, cameras are exactly how the existing system works. I can do it now with OpenCV, but I've thought about looking into doing the same thing with mmwave radar instead. I think the radar route is more data-rich, but obviously more complicated and expensive. In the meantime, openCV + a webcam pointed at the pins, then we do some really basic object detection to detect pinfall.
My original, handwritten post was 5600 characters. I used claude to truncate it down to the 4k limit. I assure you though, I had initially gone off on an extremely detailed diatribe about it.
You're not wrong, though I will say that I haven't forgotten it's a social space. The social aspect is why I bought it in the first place. In my mind, the kiosk terminal is there for convenience. We get a lot of people who A) don't want to interact with us more than necessary or B) sometimes people buy one game or one hour, then decide to stay -much- longer.
My thinking on that is, don't make the customer get up if they don't need / want to.
Long story short, the intent of the kiosk isn't to delete human interaction. Honestly, I implemented it as a way to summon servers or bowling mechanics, and any self-service options I could think of as-needed. One doesn't have to use the kiosk, they're just there as a convenience thing.
Oh yeah. We even have one lane pair the auto-scoring isn't working, we just can't assign most people to either lane. The machines themselves work fine, and we do have a way to bypass the failed unit - but for the generations that have never seen paper scoring, you'd think had asked them to file their taxes for fun.
Same here. We're running Brunswick A2s that are just ancient, and they're buggy... but I wouldn't trade them for strings if I had them given to me, honestly.
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!
I love it! I actually looked at integrating with scoremore myself, but once I crossed into hardware world, I still couldn't get over how much fouling alone cost. $750 / unit and they're -ancient-.
Definitely will post on bowl-tech as well. I'm just new enough to have a lot of that new-guy anxiety around posting OpenLaneLink there yknow? Those guys know -everything- about this stuff.
Not that I know of! My market research shows something like < 3500 remaining bowling proprietors in the US, down from 12k in the 60's. I think the lack of alternatives is just a matter of being super, super niche -and- a legacy industry if I'm being honest.
We just charge a flat rate with shoes included. We do $5 / person or $25 for a whole hour for larger groups. Wanted to take some of the advanced calculus out of the price of bowling, yknow?
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?