Small Gps Systems

[Joe O'Connor]

Hey,

For Business Studies at school, my team are considering making a rugby ball that has a small GPS or RFID system that mesures the distance that you kick the ball.

But we are having trouble find anything on the web about buying the trackers.

What we want to do is put a small chip under the skin of the ball that send the signal to a display screen on the person telling them the distance, but we are having trouble finding anything that can do this.

Seeing as TF has lots of brainy boxes that know all about stuff like this, does anyone know where I can find one or something similar?

Thanks,

Joe

[quick_spider]

Unless you can kick the ball miles, I doubt GPS has the resolution you're after.

Jon

[Joe O'Connor]

What do you sugest then?

[isitafox]

Sky Sports and the BBC have a program when showing football that shows the direction of all the shots in the game, passes made, speed and trajectory of freekicks and stuff like that. Could be worth trying to get hold of a national sports program to see if any of the people who make the show can help you, don't know if you'll get anywhere with it but worth a try!

[Olicf]

You could measure the free-fall time quite accurately with an accelerometer.

Edited April 28, 2010 by Olicf

[anzo]

What do you sugest then?

There are mini GPS systems out there but you'll find that they record between 2.5m, so although you will get results, they won't be at all accurate to the point of kicking a ball - they're designed to track people or cars between miles/various locations.

Secondly, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars, you won't get realtime reports as you intend. You can buy a monitoring GSP tracker for about £400, however these are on a USB interface and you just download the information to the software afterwards and it will give a report then...so technically it could work for you that way, buy you'll be removing the chip after every kick.

Thirdly, these 'chips' aren't 'chips' like what you see in the movies. They require power from somewhere, which involves a large box containing a battery, GPS transmitter and the USB connector - they're like a large memory stick.

If you have that kind of money to spend, then you could make it work - however you'll be disappointed with the inaccurate results. GPS technology is still growing and is still kind of new to us. Realtime monitoring like you see in the movies is probably possible, but it's not something we have on the market yet.

For that price of such technology, you could buy a gun and raid the exam offices and tell them to give you a good grade for a lot less money.

Sky Sports and the BBC have a program when showing football that shows the direction of all the shots in the game, passes made, speed and trajectory of freekicks and stuff like that. Could be worth trying to get hold of a national sports program to see if any of the people who make the show can help you, don't know if you'll get anywhere with it but worth a try!

I'm almost certain these reports are gone through motion/force sensors

[Joe O'Connor]

Sky Sports and the BBC have a program when showing football that shows the direction of all the shots in the game, passes made, speed and trajectory of freekicks and stuff like that. Could be worth trying to get hold of a national sports program to see if any of the people who make the show can help you, don't know if you'll get anywhere with it but worth a try!

Thanks man, will do.

There are mini GPS systems out there but you'll find that they record between 2.5m, so although you will get results, they won't be at all accurate to the point of kicking a ball - they're designed to track people or cars between miles/various locations.

Secondly, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars, you won't get realtime reports as you intend. You can buy a monitoring GSP tracker for about £400, however these are on a USB interface and you just download the information to the software afterwards and it will give a report then...so technically it could work for you that way, buy you'll be removing the chip after every kick.

Thirdly, these 'chips' aren't 'chips' like what you see in the movies. They require power from somewhere, which involves a large box containing a battery, GPS transmitter and the USB connector - they're like a large memory stick.

If you have that kind of money to spend, then you could make it work - however you'll be disappointed with the inaccurate results. GPS technology is still growing and is still kind of new to us. Realtime monitoring like you see in the movies is probably possible, but it's not something we have on the market yet.

For that price of such technology, you could buy a gun and raid the exam offices and tell them to give you a good grade for a lot less money.

I'm almost certain these reports are gone through motion/force sensors

We contacted Gilbert and they said that they are doing some small projects of a similar design for training and aid. The guy incharge of ball design said that it is possible to do it. I just dont know where I can find the GPS!

[RobinJI]

I'd have thought it could be worth looking at race car dataloggers. Most of these will combine an accurate GPS system with an accelerometer, which gives very accurate mapping of the cars position on the track, along with all the forces that have acted on the car. The issue with these would be the need for a 12 volt power supply, and the cost, one that will transmit live will set you back a hell of a lot more than people will pay for a ball.

I think you're better off looking at using accelerometers. For the distance and speed of the kick, all it'll need to know is the g-force at the instant of being kicked, and the angle it's travelled, everything else could be calculated from that data by software. I can imagine on an industrial scale these are getting to be reasonable priced too, thanks to their inclusion in most modern mobile phones, it also means that they're capable of running off compact light weight battery's.

[Joe O'Connor]

I'd have thought it could be worth looking at race car dataloggers. Most of these will combine an accurate GPS system with an accelerometer, which gives very accurate mapping of the cars position on the track, along with all the forces that have acted on the car. The issue with these would be the need for a 12 volt power supply, and the cost, one that will transmit live will set you back a hell of a lot more than people will pay for a ball.

I think you're better off looking at using accelerometers. For the distance and speed of the kick, all it'll need to know is the g-force at the instant of being kicked, and the angle it's travelled, everything else could be calculated from that data by software. I can imagine on an industrial scale these are getting to be reasonable priced too, thanks to their inclusion in most modern mobile phones, it also means that they're capable of running off compact light weight battery's.

Thanks man,

Will this need things set up around the area before you can kick around? Because its leisure, we dont want to have it very complicated.

[RobinJI]

For the accelerometer to work it wouldn't need anything outside of the ball at all. It should be able to work it all out from some simple programming. The accelerometer will tell you the angle of the ball, and the g-force its under. G-force is in essance acceleration, and from acceleration, and time, you can work out speed. If you know the speed, and direction, you can easily work out distance with some basic physics.

If you wanted you could include a compass which could add direction into things, so you could map the balls movement. (all though only in relation to its starting point, but I can't see why that'd be an issue).

I'm not really sure about the technology side of things, and how to set it up, but like I say, they're used in mobile phones a lot (its what tilts the i-phone screen to match which way up you're holding it) so they must be very small, very light, and not too power draining, it'd just be a case of finding a small and very basic processor to run it.

This would need something to turn it on though, or the battery would flatten strait away, so I'm not quite sure how you'd go about putting a button on a rugby ball. But then you'll also need some sort of charging port unless you make it disposable, and you'll also need to sort out getting the data off the thing. A small transmitter would be an option, but I don't really know anything about them, so can't help with that, or you could have it store it on a memory card so it can be checked out later on (after the match).

[Joe O'Connor]

For the accelerometer to work it wouldn't need anything outside of the ball at all. It should be able to work it all out from some simple programming. The accelerometer will tell you the angle of the ball, and the g-force its under. G-force is in essance acceleration, and from acceleration, and time, you can work out speed. If you know the speed, and direction, you can easily work out distance with some basic physics.

If you wanted you could include a compass which could add direction into things, so you could map the balls movement. (all though only in relation to its starting point, but I can't see why that'd be an issue).

I'm not really sure about the technology side of things, and how to set it up, but like I say, they're used in mobile phones a lot (its what tilts the i-phone screen to match which way up you're holding it) so they must be very small, very light, and not too power draining, it'd just be a case of finding a small and very basic processor to run it.

This would need something to turn it on though, or the battery would flatten strait away, so I'm not quite sure how you'd go about putting a button on a rugby ball. But then you'll also need some sort of charging port unless you make it disposable, and you'll also need to sort out getting the data off the thing. A small transmitter would be an option, but I don't really know anything about them, so can't help with that, or you could have it store it on a memory card so it can be checked out later on (after the match).

Thanks heaps bro!