What is the iphone interface like, Eric - does it use a cursor or screen press to actuate?
I made a youtube comment on your video as clark6466, but the character count confined it too much Here is a more detailed comment.
I dont know if its possible to program the mechanical buttons on an iphone, but if you could, it would be the ideal thing for ref timing (see below).. You would have a great device app that nobody could complain about (and it might even be in apple's best interest to help you program the mechanical buttons somehow = more sales for them?).
As it is now, a ref has to divert his attention away from the table to monitor a timing device, be it a watch or this phone idea, and so cant be as accurate with the timing events that they need to be. Plus, when you look away and then back again, your eyes are going to search the table for a few miliseconds to find the ball again. The ref is inevitably going to miss something in one of those split seconds - if they're human. I dont think anyone would disagree that the ref shouldn't have to divert their attention off the table during play. This iphone idea is worthwhile, in that the ref wouldn't need to see when the time is up, but the present demo requires a manual reset. The need to both find and consistently press a reset button is too demanding for anyone to do in the course of play - and much less practical if they need to move a cursor to press the reset (if thats the case?) . There would be a hell of alot of timer resets in a single game and thus the opportunity for mistakes to be made increases - again, if you're human. Its hard enough to ref a match without your timing mistakes becoming known by false alarms stopping play, while you're in control of the reset (its embarrassing, from experience). It would be ideal if they didn't have to look at the device interface to reset or start timing.
I've made various hand-held timers before and the design eventually evolved to a momentary switch that runs a timer as long as the button is held down and auto resets when its released. This allows a ref to operate both buttons with two fingers of one hand, freeing his other hand to feel the table jars. Theres more confidence that your two fingers are resting on a raised button by their feel. A ref wouldn't miss a microsecond of ball play on the field. Anyone claiming a ref doesn't get distracted by looking away has never tried reffing a match. Its also defending a timing method that should have been history a long time ago. I expected digital foos timers to have been in use already, so am surprised that they still aren't. This isn't rocket science folks - googling "digital timer schematics" is all a resourceful fooser needs to put one together. the easiest designs are audio alarms with no displays. They would be very cheap to produce if you could put the design into a chip, but you'd have to pay for a large production run. The ever optimistic foosers would disagree, but there just aint a market for foos timers right now. (Theres one possibility of a table manufacturer embedding timer buttons at each end of the table for anyone to depress during play, but that takes an owner with smart balls - are there any?)
Phones have momentary buttons in the keypad, so my input would be to suggest looking into the possibility of programing two selected mechanical buttons for the timers - pressing (down) to start and and release to end and auto reset. (You just identify which buttons correspond to which timer) This is easy to do with digital IC's, as most timing chips have reset inputs for either positive or negative going transitions. I dunno, but suspect a program can be triggered this way too?
If you could do that (with any device) i believe you'd find it to be the most elegant design possible for a foosball tournament application.
Some issues to consider would be muting the audio tones with the button depressed, while allowing the timer alarm. Also, i'd check what the battery draw current is when depressed (with tone muted, if possible). A quick and dirty batt test might be to time how long the battery lasts when a mechanical button is held down indefinitely?
How much demand is there for a total game timer?
Your jar meter looks functional enough, but i wonder if it could be calibrated acceptably enough (to fussy players) between any two tables or two different sets of players. Theres alot of jarring events on the table to set it off, but how much of that is interfering with the opponent's ball movements? A human ref would know best. It could work if both sides contributed to it's sensitivity level adjustment and agreed to honor that. It should then be intuitive enough for everyone involved to know which jarring alarms could be ignored during play. (imo)
Good luck to you.
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