Students of Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST) have designed a smart cricket ball with an aim to provide a portable and inexpensive solution for measuring ball speed and spin rate.
Three students of FAST Islamabad Campus told state-run news agency APP on Wednesday that conventional method of ball speed measuring was too much expensive and countries like Pakistan could not afford that technology at grassroots level.
“We have designed an inexpensive solution that provides reliable speed and spin rate of cricket ball without any special expertise and man power to operate the system” they said.
Divulging details of the project students said that smart Cricket ball embedded with specialized microcontrollers that can transmit the data through Bluetooth to a mobile device which would help to improve analysis and bowling skills as well.
Usman Tanveer, a group member apprised that smart ball had a power button, 3 axis-accelerometer that had ability to endure high level of stress 10000g and used I2C interface to communicate data, microcontroller (arduino Beetle BLE), a Bluetooth module that transmit data to mobile device, 32 kb flash memory card and 3-axis- Gyroscope for spin rate measurement.
“Wooden made smart Cricket ball has 74mm diameter, 161 grams weight that takes 7 voltages for charging with capacity of 550 mah battery. We are planning to advance our ball that could detect snick detection, leg before detection and trajectory estimation” Hamza Ahmad another group member said.
Students sought support of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to introduce smart cricket ball at high performance center of national cricket academy in Lahore and other academies of PCB that would help to measure ball speed of local talent.
