展示HN：我用1600美元的ESP32替换了一个价值12万美元的保龄球中心系统
我可能是地球上唯一一个拥有自己保龄球中心的 SRE（网站可靠性工程师）。这份工作比你想象的要复杂得多。
我和家人买下了一个位于美国中西部乡村的废弃 8 条道保龄球中心。在我们的小镇上，家庭娱乐的选择并不多。你听说过“食品沙漠”吗？这里是一个“休闲沙漠”。
这个保龄球中心被废弃是有充分理由的。屋顶漏水，电力系统时常出现浪涌，而我那台 70 年的保龄球设备（至今）仍然运转不太正常。让我特别感兴趣的是那个记录分数的系统。它是你在比赛中关注的东西，但除此之外，它又显得不那么重要。结果发现这些东西真的很酷，但价格却离谱。
我们的系统安装于 2008 年，花费了六位数。它能够计算球速和轨迹，基于摄像头的瓶子检测（在集成电路上进行物体检测和三角函数！），处理犯规、动画、瓶子设置机和球返回。对于它的年代来说，这些功能非常酷。
从商业角度来看，我的设施只花了我 10.5 万美元。更换分数记录系统的费用在 8 万到 12 万美元之间，具体取决于功能、供应商和设备的年龄。请注意，没有升级或服务合同，每个功能和定制都是新的费用项目。这是对 2008 年安装的系统进行 1:1 替换的费用。考虑到科技界的快速发展，这真是令人难以置信。
更换零件的费用令人震惊，每对道的费用高达 4000 美元。但等等，保龄球机本身已经 70 年了，那这个“先进”的系统到底在干什么呢？不过是激活一个继电器来触发那台老机器。其他一切都是纯机械的。与此同时，我手里拿着一张六位数的发票。我很不高兴。
考虑到开放硬件、计算机视觉、实时事件流和全球范围内运行的大规模开源产品的现状，我必须找到一种方法自己来做这件事。
到目前为止，我已经为每对道构建了一个等效的原型，成本大约为 200 美元，如果你想要更高档一点则是 400 美元。使用 ESP32 和 ESPNow，并配备 RS485 作为备用，报告给一个实际上只是 Redis 和一个与 ESP32 网关相连的状态机的树莓派道计算机。
由于一切都基于 ESP32，我抽屉里有一把备用控制器，已经预先刷好或等待刷写。所有都是常见的现成硬件：微控制器连接到继电器、光耦合器和红外断射传感器，每个都运行稍微不同的固件。编写固件和协议才是真正的难点。
这是一个 ESPNow 星型拓扑网络：每个节点从其传感器发出事件并接受控制命令，报告给通过 UART 连接到树莓派的网关节点。从那里开始就是事件流：接收的数据包被翻译并放入 Redis，命令根据需要传回网络。RS485 作为有线备用，适用于嘈杂的射频环境。
一旦数据进入 Redis，就变成了熟悉的中间件/React/websocket/pub-sub 相关内容。任何 React 开发者都可以构建自己的用户界面和保龄球动画。由于一切都运行在普通硬件上，作为业主的我可以随心所欲，并且我拥有所有数据。维修只需五分钟；我可以在 10 分钟内更换一对道的设备。我敢打赌，像我这样的保龄球中心可以在一两个小时内从零启动并运行。
我们称之为 OpenLaneLink，我计划在准备好后开源硬件、固件和软件栈。保龄球很有趣，我希望帮助保持像我这样的保龄球馆的可负担性。
我讨厌供应商锁定。我不喜欢封闭系统，每次出现问题都要打电话支持，或者为“白标”自己的设备而付费。想要晚上变成 Tron 主题？祝你好运，找到一个在世纪之交购买的东西的霓虹灯新拟态主题。
这一切都让我感到烦恼。诚然，保龄球设备是小众的，但开放硬件和软件的前景非常令人惊叹。
感谢你的阅读！如果有人对更多关于这项保龄球项目的帖子感兴趣，请告诉我。
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I might be the only SRE on Earth with his own bowling center. It's a more in-depth gig than you'd think.<p>My family and I bought an abandoned 8-lane bowling center in the rural mid-west. In our small town there weren't many recreation options for families. You've heard of a food desert? This is an R&R desert.<p>It had been abandoned for a good reason. The roof leaks, the electrical system was constantly surging, and my 70-year-old bowling equipment (still) doesn't work perfectly. The system that keeps your score is particularly interesting to me. It's the thing you watch during your game, but it fades into the background beyond that. Turns out these things are really cool, but absurdly expensive.<p>Ours was installed in 2008 and cost six figures. It's calculating ball speed and trajectory, camera-based pin detection (object detection and trig, on ICs!), runs the fouling, the animations, the pinsetting machine and ball return. Very cool stuff for its age.<p>From the business perspective, my facility only cost me $105k. To forklift-replace the score keeping system runs anywhere between $80-$120k, depending on features, vendor, and unit age. No upgrades or service contracts, mind you, and every feature and customization is a new line item. That's for a 1:1 replacement on a system installed in 2008. Incredible, given how fast the tech world moves.<p>Replacement parts cost a shocking $4000 per pair of lanes. But wait, the bowling machines themselves are 70 years old, so what's this "advanced" system actually doing back there? Actuating a single relay to trigger that big old machine. Everything else is strictly mechanical. Meanwhile I've got a six-figure invoice in my hand. I'm upset.<p>Given the state of open hardware, computer vision, real-time event streaming, and open source running megascale products worldwide, there had to be a way to do this myself.<p>So far I've built an equivalent prototype for about $200 per lane-pair, $400 if you're fancy. ESP32 and ESPNow with an RS485 fallback, reporting to a raspberry pi lane computer that's really just redis and a state machine bolted to an ESP32 gateway for the mesh.<p>Since it's all ESP32, I've got a fistful of spare controllers in a drawer, pre-flashed or waiting to be. All common off-the-shelf hardware: microcontrollers wired to relays, optocouplers, and IR-break-beam sensors, each running slightly different firmware. Writing the firmware and protocol is the actual hard part.<p>It's an ESPNow star-topology mesh: each node emits events from its sensors and accepts commands for its controls, reporting to a gateway node connected to the raspi over UART. From there it's event streaming: RX packets get translated and tossed into redis, commands relay back out to the mesh as needed. RS485 sits underneath as a wired fallback for noisy RF environments.<p>Once the data's in redis, it's familiar middleware/React/websocket/pub-sub stuff. Any React dev can build their own UI and bowling animations. Since it all runs on commodity hardware, I can do legit anything I want as the proprietor, and I own all my data. Repairs take five minutes; I can swap the rig on a lane pair in under 10. I'd bet a house like mine could go from zero to running in an hour or two.<p>We're calling it OpenLaneLink, and I plan to open source the hardware, firmware, and software stack when it's ready. Bowling is fun, and I want to help keep it affordable for alleys like mine.
I hate vendor lock-in. I'm not a fan of closed systems, calling support for every hiccup, or paying to "white label" my own equipment. Want to go Tron-themed for a night? Good luck finding a neon neumorphic theme in something bought at the turn of the century.<p>All that bugged me. Sure, bowling equipment is niche, but the open hardware and software landscape is amazing.<p>Thanks for reading! Let me know if anyone's interested in more posts about this bowling nonsense.