Not that I know of! My market research shows something like < 3500 remaining bowling proprietors in the US, down from 12k in the 60's. I think the lack of alternatives is just a matter of being super, super niche -and- a legacy industry if I'm being honest.
Sorry, I'll have a blog up soon. Wasn't sure there'd be any interest!
That link is so weird... it's definitely referencing this HN post, but those codeblocks in there... That's an interesting piece. Looks like their blog generator vibe-coded what it thought my firmware would look like.
It can, yeah. For that reason, I only allow myself or Brunswick-certified mechanics to touch our pinsetters. We run old Brunswick A2s that were built in an era where 'safety' was practically a bad word, y'know? These machines are extremely hazardous if you aren't careful, for sure.
The good news is that electrically speaking, it's an incredibly dumb beast. You've got power on/off and the 'cycle' action. There are five safety interlocks through the power on/off path - one on the back of the machine, one on the front, deck jam, turret jam, and front desk. I'm not touching that path -at all-. If the machine's on, consider it dangerous.
The safety procedure for working on these is - Switch off mechanic interlock switch, switch off the machine main circuit breaker, disconnect main power, begin work.
Most insurance companies hear 'bowling alley' and immediately reject you... had to scramble to find a local insurance company that would carry us.
Oh yeah. We even have one lane pair the auto-scoring isn't working, we just can't assign most people to either lane. The machines themselves work fine, and we do have a way to bypass the failed unit - but for the generations that have never seen paper scoring, you'd think had asked them to file their taxes for fun.
Growing up, never saw automatic scoring. Keeping score on paper was just part of going bowling. They had an overhead projector at each lane so everyone could see the score sheet.
My original, handwritten post was 5600 characters. I used claude to truncate it down to the 4k limit. I assure you though, I had initially gone off on an extremely detailed diatribe about it.
Believe it or not, cameras are exactly how the existing system works. I can do it now with OpenCV, but I've thought about looking into doing the same thing with mmwave radar instead. I think the radar route is more data-rich, but obviously more complicated and expensive. In the meantime, openCV + a webcam pointed at the pins, then we do some really basic object detection to detect pinfall.
We're holding pretty steady at $3400-ish / month on open bowling alone. No leagues yet, no snack bar yet, no beer yet. It's not FAANG income by any stretch, but it's doing -so- much better than I initially expected!
Yep, USBC. You're exactly right, they do have pretty precise requirements for sanctioned league play. But casual 'open' bowlers don't care about that stuff for the most part. So if we're not running a league, we can flip back and forth and run the two systems in parallel (less maintenance on my very-expensive-sanctioned gear at the very least)
Same here. We're running Brunswick A2s that are just ancient, and they're buggy... but I wouldn't trade them for strings if I had them given to me, honestly.
