Football Position Tracker

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Football Position Tracker
By Kavin Arumugham and Arjun Majumdar
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Introduction

• A common problem and frustration echoed by
  many football fans, is the delay and inaccuracy
  involved with acquiring first down measurements,
  goal line crossing, and catch vs. trapping
  judgment calls. Our project was designed to
  alleviate these problems.

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Objective

• Our goal was to produce a small chip to be
  placed in a football. The chip would communicate
  with a base station on the sidelines of the
  football field. It would transmit acceleration
  information. Ball movements are extracted form
  this data and displayed.

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Benefits

• Measure football position anywhere on the field,
  and follow its flight path
• Determine whether ball has crossed goal line for
  touchdown
• Determine whether offense has achieved a first
  down
• Verify whether pass was caught or trapped
• Allow measurement of throws and kicks (velocity
  and trajectory angles)

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Features

• Ability to Recall Past Ball Movements for the
  Duration of a Game
• Display as little or as much Data as the user
  desires

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Review Original Design
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Review Original Design
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Project Build

• The accelerometers were placed on a pcb
• The rest of the transmitter circuit was built on
  a Perfboard

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Project Build

• PIC encoded data
• Linx Transmitter/Receiver

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Project Build

• Visual Basic 6 used to acquire data through
  serial communication
• Program created to display ball movement from
  calculations of this received data

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Functional Tests

• Accelerometers tested for 0g, 1g, -1g values
• Linx chips tested for transmission range and
  error rate
• All components well within desired temperature
  ranges

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Challenges

• Major Challenges
• PICs are unable to collect more than two
  simultaneous pwm signals.
• Real time data with high sampling
• Other Challenges
• Incorrect PCB boards
• Accelerometer analog inaccuracy
• Matlab serial port inadequacies

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SUCCESSES

• Encoded and transmitted accelerometer data
• Display of position movements as well as
  acceleration and velocity values (data was not
  calibrated)
• Microcontroller had minimal delays outputting
  real time data
• Small Power Consumption (transmitter .205 Watts)

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Other tests

• The accelerometers need to be calibrated to
  accurately plot the data with the Visual Basic
  program
• Weather-proofing needs to be developed and tested
• Shock test done
• Chip Balanced

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Recommendations

• Tilt recognition should be implemented with the
  use of one additional accelerometer
• Accelerometer accuracy improved
• User friendly software with additional display
  capabilities
• Rechargeable power supply

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THE FUTURE

• The project will be continued by Arjun
• Extensive field testing should be done to verify
  product performance
• With modification we believe there is a strong
  market for this product