Automated Score Tracking Cornhole Game

We are a group of three Electrical Engineering students from California Polytechnic State University (SLO), going into our senior year. We had to start thinking of senior project ideas and an automated score tracking cornhole game sparked our interests. It sounded like a fun, yet challenging project. The Automated Score Tracking (AST) Cornhole Game is a modern upgrade on the classic cornhole game that implements Cypress BLE Mesh to allow for wireless communication and introduces modularity to the game. AST eliminates the responsibility for teams to manually keep track of their score from round to round. Users will easily be able to connect to other game boards, that contain AST, by pairing the devices via bluetooth. Once the boards are paired, the game can begin. As players toss their bean bags, points will be awarded as per usual, where one point is given to bags landing on the board and three points are given to bags that land through the hole. Through the use of RFID, PIR, and various other sensors, AST will be able to detect all possible outcomes for a bean bag toss including a “sink” where the bag lands in the hole located on the board, a “hit” where a bag will land and stay on the board, or a “miss” where the bag misses the board completely. Each team’s bean bags will contain a different RFID tag, in order to distinguish between different teams so points can be awarded correctly. This project will showcase the CYBT-213043 MESH kit’s ability to form a BLE Mesh by communicating the points to each other as well as to the companion app. The team will be continuing with the AST project as our senior project at Cal Poly.  The full project will be completed by Spring of 2020. This project has much potential and will take time to develop more features and become a cohesive network. With time the team will be able to incorporate bean bag detection via RFID, a scoreboard, and a companion app. Here are the general future steps we plan to take:

1.) Modify pre-existing code to implement AST.

-Communicate through UART between RFID sensor and BLE Mesh boards.
-Collect RFID data

2.) Pair with other nodes in network (ie. smart phone, other BLE Mesh enabled boards, etc.)

-Broadcast RFID and motion sensor data to network. Determine scoring based on RFID and motion sensor data.

-Display scores on companion app and on external displays