Foosbar: The World’s Best* Foosball Robot From Scratch

June 6, 2024 by Jonathan Bennett 6 Comments

[Xander Naumenko] is back with another bonkers project. This is the same creator that built a working 32-bit computer inside a Terraria world. This time it’s a bit more physical of a creation: a self-playing foosball table.

We’re not sure of the impetus for this idea, but we’re delighted to see the engineering it took to make it work. It sounds so simple. It’s just servos mounted on linear actuators, right? Oh, and some computer vision to determine where the ball actually is on the table. And the software to actually control the motors, pass the ball around, and play offense and defense. So maybe not so simple. All the code and some other resources are available under the MIT license.

As to while the claim of “best” foosball robot has an asterisk? That’s because, although we’ve seen a few potential competitors over the years, there isn’t yet a world foosball competition. We’re hoping that changes, as a tournament of robots playing foosball sounds like a sports event we’d show up for!

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Raspberry Pi Foosball Scoreboard

August 13, 2018 by Tom Nardi No comments

Foosball, also known as table football, is a classic game from the 1920s that is completely devoid of the bells and whistles of modern gaming. Players control stoic little figures with the most simplistic of input devices in order to move a tiny ball to and fro on the playing field. So naturally, somebody thought they should add a Raspberry Pi to it and drag the whole thing kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

The team at [Matmi] spend a good portion of their down time huddled over a foosball table, but they found the experience was significantly less exciting for the spectators than the players. To add a little more pomp to their sessions they added a flashy display that not only shows the current score, but makes individual scores a bit more exciting by showing some celebratory confetti.

Micro switches mounted in the ball return tubes of the table allow the Raspberry Pi to know who scored and when. This information is picked up by the web-based scoreboard written in Vue.js and served out by nginx. The actual scoreboard is being displayed by a laptop that’s connected to the Pi over Wi-Fi.

If the software setup seems a bit convoluted, it’s because the project itself was something of a learning experience for HTML5 and web programming in general. Further updates are planned to streamline the system a bit to make it more self-contained, as well as adding more features to the scoreboard such as tournaments and randomized matches.

Interestingly, we’ve seen quite a few foosball hacks over the years. It seems these tables are somewhat ubiquitous in offices and hackerspaces. From turning it into an online-enabled experience to building an AI table you can play against, there’s plenty of ways to inject some new life into this nearly 100-year-old game.

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Foosball Now Part Of The Internet Of Things

August 26, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 3 Comments

internet of things foosball

At a local LAN event, [Thomas] wanted a way to easily show off the capabilities from some of the Internet-of-Things devices everyone keeps talking about. His idea was to build an internet-connected foosball/table soccer/table football table to show off some hardware and software.

[Thomas]’s table automates almost everything that is part of the great sport of foosball. Once a user logs in using the barcode scanner, the game begins by deploying the tiny ball with parts salvaged from a Roomba. The table uses infrared sensors to detect the ball. Once a goal is scored, it is posted online where anyone can see the current score and a history of all of the games played on the table.

There are a few other unique touches on the foosball table, such as the LED lighting, touch screen displays, and an STM32-E407 ARM processor to tie the whole machine together.

For more information including the source code and demonstrations, check out [Thomas]’s project blog. And, if you get lonely, perhaps you can try the robot foosball player!

Robot Foosball Will Kick Your Butt If You Play Slowly

February 25, 2014 by James Hobson 4 Comments

foosball_pt3_1

Sometimes we find a project that is so far outside of our realm of experience, it just makes us sit back and think “wow”. This is definitely one of those projects. [Saba] has created a Robotic Foosball set that learns.

[Saba Khalilnaji] is a recent engineering graduate from UC Berkeley, and his passion is robotics. After taking an Artificial Intelligence class during his degree (you can take it online through edX!), he has decided to dabble in AI by building this awesome robot Foosball set.

His “basic” understanding of machine learning includes a few topics such as Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning and Reinforcement Learning. For this project he’s testing out a real-world application of Reinforcement Learning using the Markov Decision Process or MDP for short. At an extremely top level description it works by programming an agent to learn from the consequences of its actions in a given environment. There are a set of states, actions, probabilities for given state and action, and rewards for specific state and action sets.

Before we butcher the explanation anymore, check out his blog for more information — and watch the following video.

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Fubarino Contest: The Problem Of Being Very Good At Foosball

December 22, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

hachaoay [Sebastian] works at an engineering company testing car ECUs, head units, and all the confusing wiring harnesses found in the modern-day automobile. It’s good work, but not exactly fun, so [Sebastian]’s bosses bought a foosball table so the employees could unwind. The foosball tables have been there for several years, and now everyone at the company is really, really good at twirling little football players on a stick. With their current rule set (at least 6 goals and 2 goals ahead), matches last at least twenty minutes.

[Sebastian] came up with a solution to this problem: a KickerClock – something between a chess clock and an automated score keeper for foosball. The device has two seven-segment displays for each team, and a countdown timer for both of the four and a half minute rounds. All the documentation is up in [Sebastian]’s Google Drive, and he plans on adding a few neat features such as automated score keeping.

The easter egg for this submission? The buttons for scoring each goal are used as combination lock. By scoring eight black team goals (H=8), one silver team goal (A=1), three black goals (C=3), and eleven silver goals (K=11), the Hackaday URL shows up on the seven-segment displays. Extremely well hidden, and a great way to efficiently waste time at work.

Video of the KickerClock, and the easter egg, available below.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Hackaday Links: Sunday, April 21st, 2013

April 21, 2013 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Regular reader and master hacker [Bill Porter] got married. Congratulations [Bill] and [Mara]! The two of them just couldn’t leave their soldering irons at home. The actually swore their vows by soldering together a circuit during the ceremony (blinky wedding dress, el wire tuxedo, and all).

[Kevin] sent in a link to [Red Fathom’s] hacked Wacom tablet. It’s the screen from a Wacom-enabled laptop brought back to life with a Teensy and an LVDS interface module.

The Neato XV-11 is able to find its charging station when the batteries run low. [Derek] figured out that you can make a second station using some reflective tape.

If you use your drill a lot you’ll eventually break the rubber thing that holds the key to the chuck. Here’s a way to 3D print a replacement.

[Torxe] put eight floppy drives to use as a polyphonic Arduino-controlled MIDI player. And while we’re on the subject of Arduino controlled projects you should take a look at this web-interface to tell you if the foosball table is being used.

And finally [Th3 Bad Wolf] sent in this link to a milling machine built out of LEGO. It is able to mill floral foam and uses a lathe-like setup for one of the table axes.

Electronically Augmented Foosball Brings Competition To The Office

November 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

This office has a Foosball league that automatically tallies and posts the standings for each employee. This is thanks to all of the extra electronics that were added to the Foosball table in the break room.

The system is connected to the internet via WiFi. This allows it to store the final results of each game for use on the leader board. Player first identify themselves to the system using the RFID tag embedded in their employee badge (normally used to open doors in the building). From there the game play proceeds much like you’d expect, but the scoring is handled automatically. Each goal has a laser pointed across it which is broken when the ball passes through. But there are a pair of arcade buttons in case of a scoring error.

Standings are listed at the webpage linked above. There’s even functionality for new employees to registers through this page. Don’t miss a glimpse of the build in the clip after the break.

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