Stickers on a soccer ball?

Asset Tracking
#1

Would it be possible to place beacons on a soccer ball to allow a video camera to track the ball in order to keep in in the viewing area?

  • Is the sticker beacon small enough to be attached to a ball without compromising the shape?
  • Is it sturdy enough to withstand impacts?
  • Will the communication latency between the beacon and the device reading the signal fast enough to react the movements of the ball? Thinking something like https://shop.soloshot.com/

Thanks.

#2

My experience with the sticker beacons has been that they are rather delicate and would not stand up to impact, but YMMV.

#3

Hi Alper,

I reviewed the https://shop.soloshot.com/ and got your main idea.

As far as I understand you are looking for any solution which can be used to make shots of the soccer ball in the moment when it reach the gates.

We often investigate such request and offer our services in term of development custom hardware solutions based on client needs.

Kindly review solution developed by our company which related to the big tennis:

  • Shot Stats: http://shot-stats.com - Here we developed the smart device, which clipped directly on the strings of the tennis racket to track and instantly analyze your tennis swings and strikes. Later we additionally developed iOS and Android apps as well as extensions for Apple Watch and Android Wear where users can compare, share and plan their games. Here we handled all development stages including PCB design, Firmware development, Mobile apps and Server backend. The Shot Stats device communicates with mobile apps via Bluetooth 4.0 LE protocol.

We want to offer you our team experience, expertise and passion for bringing your product idea to life. Specifically, we can participate in the development of hardware/firmware part and mobile app - i.e. basically we can cover most your project development needs.

Let me know if you are interested.

Looking forward to your reply on our offer for helping with your product delivery.

You can contact me by the following details:

Best Regards,
Ilya Surinsky

#4

Great idea, although at this time, I’m not sure stickers would be a good fit. First, we’d love them to be able to withstand all kinds of harsh conditions, but that’s unfortunately not the case yet—we continue iterating on the design. Second, their range as of now is limited to up to 15 meters, something we’re also working on improving.

As for the latency, as of stickers firmware 1.1, you can now configure the advertising interval of your stickers, and can make them broadcast as frequently as 10 times a second. Two things to keep in mind: one, Bluetooth packets often get lost on the way, so you can’t always rely on all 10 packets hitting the receiver (it also depends on the sensitivity of the receiver), which means the actual average latency will be higher than 100 ms. Two: broadcasting this often will greatly reduce the battery life of stickers—they’re tiny, because they have a tiny battery inside, which is great for size, but comes at the cost of the battery life.