6 ms·

Show HN: I made a voice activated golf bag that shoots your clubs

142 points by nik12795 5y ago

ryanmercer 5y ago
"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball"
nik12795 5y ago
I grew up golfing and I love to make things, so I thought it’d be pretty funny and ridiculous if I made a voice activated golf bag that shoots out your clubs. Like a robotic caddy of sorts. The video explains some parts of how I built it and shows it off more (I even got to bring it to England to show Rick Shiels, a popular golf YouTuber), but I’ll highlight a few other key points. - Getting this thing to rotate and finding the right motor took me a lot of time. A bunch of stepper motors I tried initially were too weak and would “skip”. I did some MOI calculations and talked with some engineers (this math was new to me) and I eventually found a motor that was just barely strong enough. I threw a 10:1 gearbox on it to solidify the torque requirements and called it a day. - The motor didn’t rotate very accurately in terms of degrees. So trying to rotate 30 degrees would actually rotate 30 degrees +- 4 degrees. Over time, there was a lot of drift and rotating a certain number of degrees became completely inaccurate. I came up with a solution where a microswitch was clicked every time a club went by. That way, the motor rotated until a certain number of clicks happened instead of X number of degrees. The video breaks this solution down more. - The voice assistant software is Rhasspy, an open source offline voice assistant. It had to be offline since I wouldn’t have internet connection on the course. That runs on a raspberry pi and also has the microphone and speaker hooked up to it. - Originally I was going to use a fancy microphone that has lights and that took up all the pins on the pi, so I planned to use I2C to send commands to an Arduino to control the motor (and solenoid valves which controlled the airflow to the air cylinders that actually shot out the club). I set all that up then changed the microphone at the last minute. If I had more time, I would have removed I2C and just used the Pi. Since I didn’t have time, the current implementation is a Pi and Arduino talking over I2C. - The video shows how I 3D printed some parts to make the clubs stay aligned in one direction so they don’t smash into each other when they eject from the bag. Just wanted to call out I’m really proud of this solution :)
unityByFreedom 5y ago
165 yards for a 9-iron [1]? Tiger hits his 142.. [1] https://youtu.be/v42RaYL28ZA?t=104 https://youtu.be/v42RaYL28ZA?t=104
- nik12795 5y ago
  Haha I knew someone would comment on that. I tend to hit the ball pretty far but definitely not as straight as I’d like
- chasebank 5y ago
  Tiger’s 9 iron is 46 degrees iirc. Modern day pitching wedge is 43-44. Having said that, tiger can hit his 9 iron 180 if he wants.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    Every once in a while I can hit my wedge about 180, if I hit the ball just so on the leading edge. The big difference is Tiger can do that with the face of the club, and can choose the times when he does it :)
  - jackschultz 5y ago
    Pitching wedges were originally 48, now they're in the 46-47 range. Tour players have very different lofts depending on type of iron and ball flight. For normal players though, companies like to deloft the irons to 1) make them go further so if you're comparing a 7 iron, you want to buy the one that goes further even if you don't know the reason is because the loft is different and 2) because the cavity backed design and soft material makes the ball fly higher than a blade, which can cause problems. Like the wedge example, a soft cavity back can go super high so they have to knock it down a few degrees.
  - mattowen_uk 5y ago
    > Having said that, tiger can hit his 9 iron 180 if he wants. Unfortunately, not any more. :(
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
intrepidhero 5y ago
That is terrifyingly awesome! I feel like everyone involved should be wearing helmets. In other words, that project is all the reasons I became an engineer. Well done! Next step: motorized wheels and it follows you.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Thanks so much! Haha I would LOVE motorized wheels. That would be a great V2
- nabilhat 5y ago
  I can't imagine placing the push handle at the gazing-down-the-barrel end of this contraption without constant background anxiety about losing an eye or a few teeth. Maybe it's an intentionally motivating reminder to get to work on the autonomous caddy feature?
dogline 5y ago
That's pretty cool.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Thanks :)
worldmerge 5y ago
That's cool! Like your style of video. I want to make some videos of my own projects and I like how you focus on the end product the most.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Thanks! I do that by design so I’m glad you enjoy it
mixmax 5y ago
This is the most stupid thing I've ever seen. I love it!!
- nik12795 5y ago
  The internet loves stupid crazy things haha
dbish 5y ago
This is awesome. Get it built in to your own brand of golf carts that are an upgrade option at courses :)
anonymousDan 5y ago
Next you need some way to throw it back in without having to walk over :)
- nik12795 5y ago
  Oh there are some bloopers..
xwdv 5y ago
Wow can you make it look like some kind of R2-D2 form factor and make it respond with beeps? Then we can have a legit reason to own a droid. It’s the future!
- nik12795 5y ago
  Wow that’s a fantastic idea
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Would need to be C4-D3.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
If you ever want a motor that can do any high torque job for <$5 go to an autowreckers and try a windscreen wiper motor. They are amazing. You should already have in mind the performance of these super cheap motors. Think of the torque of a the top of the wiper encountering newly fallen snow/torrential rain/leaves that they commonly have to overcome. They internally have metal gears, are high speed and are designed to be maintenance free. I've used them for automatic farm gate openers, wire spoolers (spinning out 2 ton spools of fencing wire with no further gearing, just a good flat bearing holding it) and a bunch of other contraptions over the years.
- veemjeem 5y ago
  also could have used a worm drive gearbox, they also have high torque, and possibly a rotary encoder for sensing position.
  - nik12795 5y ago
    Both very informative. Thanks!!
cafard 5y ago
Having belatedly watched "Caddyshack" for the first time, I am all the more impressed.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Thank you!! Confession: I’ve never seen Caddyshack. But after everyone telling me about my bags reference to the movie, I watched the clip where the golf bag shoots out the club haha and I can see the crazy coincidence
- sxv 5y ago
  Worth pointing out that someone engineered a replica of the caddyshack bag, including club launcher, 5 liter beer keg with tap, working radio, telephone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYMhCZbO48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYMhCZbO48
kleiba 5y ago
That's like something Colin Furze would do... minus the flames, of course.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Version 2.0 needs to spit a little flame out behind the club.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rapeelon 5y ago
This is dumb and just another reason to ban all bougie sports. Golf first.
elonscock 5y ago
This is dumb and is another reason to ban all bougie sports. Golf first.
arosier 5y ago
Do you know what ended up causing the driver to break?
- nik12795 5y ago
  No :( we think it was just swinging it super hard for a while but pretty unclear unfortunately.
dgellow 5y ago
Could someone add the [video] tag to the title?
- OJFord 5y ago
  Isn't that redundant next to (youtube.com)?
- nik12795 5y ago
  It won't let me edit it so an admin would have to. Sorry about that!
bambax 5y ago
The guy from Stuff Made Here made an automatic golf club that corrects the swing in real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Cv9fvajrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Cv9fvajrc Those guys should talk!
- zrobotics 5y ago
  I clicked through fully expecting this to be a stuff made here video, that channel is definitely a pro click. That said, I subscribed to Nick's channel just from watching this video, very fun project and good video skills. Glad he submitted it to HN, YouTube recommendations have been kinda crap in the last year and always happy to run across a new channel with interesting projects.
  - nik12795 5y ago
    Thanks so much :) Really glad you liked it. I love making these videos. They just take so long to make. I love these final "showcase" type videos that are really cleanly edited but I'm also considering mixing in "here's how it's going right now" and releasing those videos more frequently to show that process before I release the final video (that is edited like this one). Any thoughts about that?!
kulor 5y ago
Bravo, I've got so much time for this kind of technical tomfoolery! A few feature requests that I'm 100% not prepared to pay for: * Commentary mode upon hitting the ball: Offers words of encouragement in inspiration mode or lots of expletives in troll mode * Countdown beeps so you don't need to look to see when a projectile is coming at you * Primitive turn by turn directions to get the projectile receiver in the optimum landing zone. E.g "Back a bit", "to the side a bit", "tuts back a bit more"
- nik12795 5y ago
  Lol love those!!
jinto36 5y ago
What was used for the calculations for the voice assistant? I'm sure a lot of that is pretty well defined out there, but I'm not into golf so I wasn't sure. Also was wondering about the "ball dispenser"- were you feeding a ball back into a tube for that, or is there a mechanism for loading the next one that wasn't explicitly shown, sort of like a pinball machine?
- nik12795 5y ago
  Basically +- 4 yards if it's SLIGHTLY uphill/downhill or SOME wind in either direction. If you were STEEPLY uphill/downhill or there was STRONG wind, +- 12 yards. This was just trial and error on the golf course honing it in. Would be cool to have some sensors to make that even more specific. There were 2 tubes for the ball, so they would need to be reloaded. But my friend Jason did have a design for how I could have 12-15 balls that would automatically feed in. Just didn't have time to implement it :(
zhoujeffrey8 5y ago
Insults coming in v2? This is awesome!
LightG 5y ago
Make it: - follow the golfer like drones follow snowboarders - each of the pipes come out 6 inches to offer itself when you go to put back a club - voice controlled - have a grenade launch option for unexpected situations. I don't play golf, but bravo.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Love those ideas! It is voice controlled but the grenade launcher is 100% necessary
  - konfusinomicon 5y ago
    you never know when one if those menacing golf course swans will attack
  - LightG 5y ago
    Oh shoot, the voice control is very cool, I missed it ... more advanced than I'd imagined. Nice one.
dm8 5y ago
Awesome. I'm not a golfer but I love this. Keep improving.

142 points by nik12795 5y ago

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball"

I grew up golfing and I love to make things, so I thought it’d be pretty funny and ridiculous if I made a voice activated golf bag that shoots out your clubs. Like a robotic caddy of sorts. The video explains some parts of how I built it and shows it off more (I even got to bring it to England to show Rick Shiels, a popular golf YouTuber), but I’ll highlight a few other key points. - Getting this thing to rotate and finding the right motor took me a lot of time. A bunch of stepper motors I tried initially were too weak and would “skip”. I did some MOI calculations and talked with some engineers (this math was new to me) and I eventually found a motor that was just barely strong enough. I threw a 10:1 gearbox on it to solidify the torque requirements and called it a day. - The motor didn’t rotate very accurately in terms of degrees. So trying to rotate 30 degrees would actually rotate 30 degrees +- 4 degrees. Over time, there was a lot of drift and rotating a certain number of degrees became completely inaccurate. I came up with a solution where a microswitch was clicked every time a club went by. That way, the motor rotated until a certain number of clicks happened instead of X number of degrees. The video breaks this solution down more. - The voice assistant software is Rhasspy, an open source offline voice assistant. It had to be offline since I wouldn’t have internet connection on the course. That runs on a raspberry pi and also has the microphone and speaker hooked up to it. - Originally I was going to use a fancy microphone that has lights and that took up all the pins on the pi, so I planned to use I2C to send commands to an Arduino to control the motor (and solenoid valves which controlled the airflow to the air cylinders that actually shot out the club). I set all that up then changed the microphone at the last minute. If I had more time, I would have removed I2C and just used the Pi. Since I didn’t have time, the current implementation is a Pi and Arduino talking over I2C. - The video shows how I 3D printed some parts to make the clubs stay aligned in one direction so they don’t smash into each other when they eject from the bag. Just wanted to call out I’m really proud of this solution :)

unityByFreedom 5y ago

165 yards for a 9-iron [1]? Tiger hits his 142.. [1] https://youtu.be/v42RaYL28ZA?t=104 https://youtu.be/v42RaYL28ZA?t=104

nik12795 5y ago
Haha I knew someone would comment on that. I tend to hit the ball pretty far but definitely not as straight as I’d like
chasebank 5y ago
Tiger’s 9 iron is 46 degrees iirc. Modern day pitching wedge is 43-44. Having said that, tiger can hit his 9 iron 180 if he wants.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Every once in a while I can hit my wedge about 180, if I hit the ball just so on the leading edge. The big difference is Tiger can do that with the face of the club, and can choose the times when he does it :)
- jackschultz 5y ago
  Pitching wedges were originally 48, now they're in the 46-47 range. Tour players have very different lofts depending on type of iron and ball flight. For normal players though, companies like to deloft the irons to 1) make them go further so if you're comparing a 7 iron, you want to buy the one that goes further even if you don't know the reason is because the loft is different and 2) because the cavity backed design and soft material makes the ball fly higher than a blade, which can cause problems. Like the wedge example, a soft cavity back can go super high so they have to knock it down a few degrees.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  > Having said that, tiger can hit his 9 iron 180 if he wants. Unfortunately, not any more. :(
danielmarkbruce 5y ago

intrepidhero 5y ago

That is terrifyingly awesome! I feel like everyone involved should be wearing helmets. In other words, that project is all the reasons I became an engineer. Well done! Next step: motorized wheels and it follows you.

nik12795 5y ago
Thanks so much! Haha I would LOVE motorized wheels. That would be a great V2
nabilhat 5y ago
I can't imagine placing the push handle at the gazing-down-the-barrel end of this contraption without constant background anxiety about losing an eye or a few teeth. Maybe it's an intentionally motivating reminder to get to work on the autonomous caddy feature?

dogline 5y ago

That's pretty cool.

nik12795 5y ago
Thanks :)

worldmerge 5y ago

That's cool! Like your style of video. I want to make some videos of my own projects and I like how you focus on the end product the most.

nik12795 5y ago
Thanks! I do that by design so I’m glad you enjoy it

mixmax 5y ago

This is the most stupid thing I've ever seen. I love it!!

nik12795 5y ago
The internet loves stupid crazy things haha

dbish 5y ago

This is awesome. Get it built in to your own brand of golf carts that are an upgrade option at courses :)

anonymousDan 5y ago

Next you need some way to throw it back in without having to walk over :)

nik12795 5y ago
Oh there are some bloopers..

xwdv 5y ago

Wow can you make it look like some kind of R2-D2 form factor and make it respond with beeps? Then we can have a legit reason to own a droid. It’s the future!

nik12795 5y ago
Wow that’s a fantastic idea
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Would need to be C4-D3.

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

If you ever want a motor that can do any high torque job for <$5 go to an autowreckers and try a windscreen wiper motor. They are amazing. You should already have in mind the performance of these super cheap motors. Think of the torque of a the top of the wiper encountering newly fallen snow/torrential rain/leaves that they commonly have to overcome. They internally have metal gears, are high speed and are designed to be maintenance free. I've used them for automatic farm gate openers, wire spoolers (spinning out 2 ton spools of fencing wire with no further gearing, just a good flat bearing holding it) and a bunch of other contraptions over the years.

veemjeem 5y ago
also could have used a worm drive gearbox, they also have high torque, and possibly a rotary encoder for sensing position.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Both very informative. Thanks!!

cafard 5y ago

Having belatedly watched "Caddyshack" for the first time, I am all the more impressed.

nik12795 5y ago
Thank you!! Confession: I’ve never seen Caddyshack. But after everyone telling me about my bags reference to the movie, I watched the clip where the golf bag shoots out the club haha and I can see the crazy coincidence
sxv 5y ago
Worth pointing out that someone engineered a replica of the caddyshack bag, including club launcher, 5 liter beer keg with tap, working radio, telephone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYMhCZbO48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYMhCZbO48

kleiba 5y ago

That's like something Colin Furze would do... minus the flames, of course.

geerlingguy 5y ago
Version 2.0 needs to spit a little flame out behind the club.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rapeelon 5y ago

This is dumb and just another reason to ban all bougie sports. Golf first.

elonscock 5y ago

This is dumb and is another reason to ban all bougie sports. Golf first.

arosier 5y ago

Do you know what ended up causing the driver to break?

nik12795 5y ago
No :( we think it was just swinging it super hard for a while but pretty unclear unfortunately.

dgellow 5y ago

Could someone add the [video] tag to the title?

OJFord 5y ago
Isn't that redundant next to (youtube.com)?
nik12795 5y ago
It won't let me edit it so an admin would have to. Sorry about that!

bambax 5y ago

The guy from Stuff Made Here made an automatic golf club that corrects the swing in real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Cv9fvajrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Cv9fvajrc Those guys should talk!

zrobotics 5y ago
I clicked through fully expecting this to be a stuff made here video, that channel is definitely a pro click. That said, I subscribed to Nick's channel just from watching this video, very fun project and good video skills. Glad he submitted it to HN, YouTube recommendations have been kinda crap in the last year and always happy to run across a new channel with interesting projects.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Thanks so much :) Really glad you liked it. I love making these videos. They just take so long to make. I love these final "showcase" type videos that are really cleanly edited but I'm also considering mixing in "here's how it's going right now" and releasing those videos more frequently to show that process before I release the final video (that is edited like this one). Any thoughts about that?!

kulor 5y ago

Bravo, I've got so much time for this kind of technical tomfoolery! A few feature requests that I'm 100% not prepared to pay for: * Commentary mode upon hitting the ball: Offers words of encouragement in inspiration mode or lots of expletives in troll mode * Countdown beeps so you don't need to look to see when a projectile is coming at you * Primitive turn by turn directions to get the projectile receiver in the optimum landing zone. E.g "Back a bit", "to the side a bit", "tuts back a bit more"

nik12795 5y ago
Lol love those!!

jinto36 5y ago

What was used for the calculations for the voice assistant? I'm sure a lot of that is pretty well defined out there, but I'm not into golf so I wasn't sure. Also was wondering about the "ball dispenser"- were you feeding a ball back into a tube for that, or is there a mechanism for loading the next one that wasn't explicitly shown, sort of like a pinball machine?

nik12795 5y ago
Basically +- 4 yards if it's SLIGHTLY uphill/downhill or SOME wind in either direction. If you were STEEPLY uphill/downhill or there was STRONG wind, +- 12 yards. This was just trial and error on the golf course honing it in. Would be cool to have some sensors to make that even more specific. There were 2 tubes for the ball, so they would need to be reloaded. But my friend Jason did have a design for how I could have 12-15 balls that would automatically feed in. Just didn't have time to implement it :(

zhoujeffrey8 5y ago

Insults coming in v2? This is awesome!

LightG 5y ago

Make it: - follow the golfer like drones follow snowboarders - each of the pipes come out 6 inches to offer itself when you go to put back a club - voice controlled - have a grenade launch option for unexpected situations. I don't play golf, but bravo.

nik12795 5y ago
Love those ideas! It is voice controlled but the grenade launcher is 100% necessary
- konfusinomicon 5y ago
  you never know when one if those menacing golf course swans will attack
- LightG 5y ago
  Oh shoot, the voice control is very cool, I missed it ... more advanced than I'd imagined. Nice one.

dm8 5y ago

Awesome. I'm not a golfer but I love this. Keep improving.