alt Hacker NewsShow HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
I might be the only SRE on Earth with his own bowling center. It's a more in-depth gig than you'd think.
My family and I bought an abandoned 8-lane bowling center in the rural mid-west. In our small town there weren't many recreation options for families. You've heard of a food desert? This is an R&R desert.
It had been abandoned for a good reason. The roof leaks, the electrical system was constantly surging, and my 70-year-old bowling equipment (still) doesn't work perfectly. The system that keeps your score is particularly interesting to me. It's the thing you watch during your game, but it fades into the background beyond that. Turns out these things are really cool, but absurdly expensive.
Ours was installed in 2008 and cost six figures. It's calculating ball speed and trajectory, camera-based pin detection (object detection and trig, on ICs!), runs the fouling, the animations, the pinsetting machine and ball return. Very cool stuff for its age.
From the business perspective, my facility only cost me $105k. To forklift-replace the score keeping system runs anywhere between $80-$120k, depending on features, vendor, and unit age. No upgrades or service contracts, mind you, and every feature and customization is a new line item. That's for a 1:1 replacement on a system installed in 2008. Incredible, given how fast the tech world moves.
Replacement parts cost a shocking $4000 per pair of lanes. But wait, the bowling machines themselves are 70 years old, so what's this "advanced" system actually doing back there? Actuating a single relay to trigger that big old machine. Everything else is strictly mechanical. Meanwhile I've got a six-figure invoice in my hand. I'm upset.
Given the state of open hardware, computer vision, real-time event streaming, and open source running megascale products worldwide, there had to be a way to do this myself.
So far I've built an equivalent prototype for about $200 per lane-pair, $400 if you're fancy. ESP32 and ESPNow with an RS485 fallback, reporting to a raspberry pi lane computer that's really just redis and a state machine bolted to an ESP32 gateway for the mesh.
Since it's all ESP32, I've got a fistful of spare controllers in a drawer, pre-flashed or waiting to be. All common off-the-shelf hardware: microcontrollers wired to relays, optocouplers, and IR-break-beam sensors, each running slightly different firmware. Writing the firmware and protocol is the actual hard part.
It's an ESPNow star-topology mesh: each node emits events from its sensors and accepts commands for its controls, reporting to a gateway node connected to the raspi over UART. From there it's event streaming: RX packets get translated and tossed into redis, commands relay back out to the mesh as needed. RS485 sits underneath as a wired fallback for noisy RF environments.
Once the data's in redis, it's familiar middleware/React/websocket/pub-sub stuff. Any React dev can build their own UI and bowling animations. Since it all runs on commodity hardware, I can do legit anything I want as the proprietor, and I own all my data. Repairs take five minutes; I can swap the rig on a lane pair in under 10. I'd bet a house like mine could go from zero to running in an hour or two.
We're calling it OpenLaneLink, and I plan to open source the hardware, firmware, and software stack when it's ready. Bowling is fun, and I want to help keep it affordable for alleys like mine. I hate vendor lock-in. I'm not a fan of closed systems, calling support for every hiccup, or paying to "white label" my own equipment. Want to go Tron-themed for a night? Good luck finding a neon neumorphic theme in something bought at the turn of the century.
All that bugged me. Sure, bowling equipment is niche, but the open hardware and software landscape is amazing.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if anyone's interested in more posts about this bowling nonsense.
Comments
75x markup and the entire moat was "what if your customers know what an ESP32 is." turns out one of them wanted Tron-themed laser shows bad enough to learn soldering.
I'm a bowling fan and seeing this makes me happy. If I can help or you put something together for others to contribute, please reach out.
woah! there's a whole genre of old, abandoned and dilapidated bowling alley pics on the internet and it's amazing. thank you for that!
and yes, you should post pics and stories like when jwz renovated the dna lounge. (i think one of his first posts was about building his own pos system, fwiw)
Where is this thing? Would like to visit!
Once I had more than a few esp32 sensors about the place, with my own firmware, I got serious about getting the OTA updates working and a good c++ wrapper around the nvram management. I don't like the vibe of multiple sensors not having the fixed firmware, just OCD. Github mianos.
I think this would make a very nice Youtube video, or ten. Quite niche, but interesting enough for anyone like me to watch.
Godspeed!
With the dark patterns and lock in of LaneTalk I'm wondering if you plan at all to provide scorings to end users at all. Been getting sick of lane talk. I'm also wondering if you have any idea how LaneTalk gets their data and if it's possible to go to the source.
When you're up and running you should put up a display of some photos and explanatory text about the system. Might get some local kids interested in engineering.
Great project! As I like playing with ESP8266/ESP32 boards myself, I would enjoy reading more about your bowling adventure.
Oh nice. I'm a hacker, finally I will be able to win at bowling for the first time in my life!
EspNow is really helpful in this kind of network.
For those not familiar it uses WiFi packets to send short messages without any WiFi log on.
I’m curious what sensors you’re using? My first thought was a camera up above the pins pointing down that can detect them. There are probably more reliable methods. If it were me, I’d seek to simplify as much as possible so things keep running smoothly.
Amazing post. I'm a enthusiastic bowler myself and in tech so this scratches both of those itches. These are the types of posts that keep me coming back to HN.
Best of luck and please post some images/videos of the prototypes in action.
There's a scene where Jack Klugman's character is staying in a hotel in Buffalo and he leans out the window and he looks up and down the street and he says I never knew that one street could support eight bowling alleys
Hey! Thank you for posting. This a great project and an excellent illustration of progress in technology: commodity hardware and open source software got good enough that you could do this at such low cost and as a solo developer. Great work!
I had to read this twice because at first I thought it said that you replaced a $120 bowling system with $1600 in ESP32s and I was like "So you replaced a good-cost system with something more expensive why again?" :D
That's the signal in the noise I open HN for, thanks for sharing!
Good project! I've been tinkering with something similar for pinball, arcade, and other coin-operated machines. Lock-in for hardware and software there is a real bummer, but managing payments and security is worth the cost.
I'm in the midwaste. Love to know where you bowling alley is!
Wow, this sounds super amazing! If you find the time to take some pictures or put it in a blog post, that would be amazing :)
Any photos of the build?
All this tech is now off the shelf commodity items that anyone with basic skills can put together. For decades this tech was crazy expensive and required assembler machine language programming.
I’d love to see a schematic.
I’d highly recommend to make sure you have plenty of esd diodes and protection resistors on all inputs. That’ll help the longevity of the system.
Really cool. This reminds me of escape rooms. Since they're a newer thing, a lot of them rely on modern low-cost DIY stuff like this.
I want to start working with arduino/raspberry pi/esp32/sensors.
What would be a good source to buy these in bulk (along with accessory components. e.g. wires etc.)?
Did you consider using canbus? esp32s can handle canbus, and it would simplify the topology.
I would love to see some blog posts and/or videos about this!
This looks amazing! Wishing you the very best for your success.
Excellent approach to an interesting issue... I hope you will share more information about everything around here! And good luck!
Awesome SRE approach to a physical legacy problem, looking forward to the GitHub repo
what are you getting to make your bowling animations ;)
Much love and respect. Nerd on and may the strikes be with you.
That is freaking amazing!!! Love it!!
Excited to see the open sourcing of OpenLaneLink!
Please share more :)
Honestly this sounds amazing for a vlog on YouTube
this post is such a breathe of fresh air (real "hacker" stuff). thank you for posting
I've been dreaming of owning an alley
Did you use any AI to help you build this? If so, thats cool but if not, you are even cooler.
This is the dream. Imagine cutting out the fat with open hardware, experienced devs (assisted with AI) can rapidly learn and build systems and cut the overall cost of keeping a service running.
This translates into savings for customers and could mean the difference between wage stagnated customers being able to enjoy that service or not. It can also mean the difference between a service being able to survive in a lower density area vs closing.
That bloat from a vendor is eventually passed down to the customers. And to be frank, so many vendors do the bare minimum and get worse over time.
I observe when people buy out an old place like an arcade, house or some other venue, rip out all the old to replace with substandard "modern" design that might be modern taste but just of poor quality(real wood, screen printing, high quality professional displays vs particle board, cheap LCDs, etc.). All of that poor quality is some vendors additional padded margin.
So many "reformed" businesses are just some joker's passive income investment portfolio because they have to put all the money they have to use somewhere and they wont spend a single ounce of energy more than they have to. That means buying substandard junk from a vendor at whatever the vendor charges, passing the cost to customers and they have to just take it.
Luckily with this declining K-Shaped economy more people are just deciding not to participate. Maybe that will put some fear into people who operate business like this.
Will this be the very best bowling system ever invented? Maybe not but the cost savings might make it much more valuable because it allows more to enjoy the service.
An average system thats low cost is better than an average system that you got to pay out the nose for. And the openness makes it possible that it could eventually become so much better than any vendor could possibly deliver.
Maybe im totally wrong about this and the existing players in the 'bowling machine' space are stellar...but I have my doubts given what I've seen elsewhere.
This is the stuff I want to read on HN!
Serious and maybe stupid question, also note I don't live in the US. Is this really needed? If you put a scoring pad and a couple pencils in each lane would your customers say "what is this shit", turn around and walk out?
Vendor lock-in wouldn't be a problem if successful businesses didn't become lazy, greedy, and dishonest. But somehow...
The Hacker part of Hacker News, thanks for sharing! I think you'd get a lot of bowling alley friends all over if you can package this in a way that they can use it, I would assume the Venn diagram of people running bowling alleys and those who know what ESP32 and RS485 means is pretty thin.
This is awesome! As others noted, it would be cool to have some YT videos about this that might inspire others and promote your project. I'm sure you have copious free time to do this ;-)
Well, now you can start your own company installing and providing technical support for your own system. Even though it's open source, many people won't know what an ESP32 is or how to integrate it all. If you can also monitor everything remotely and provide updates via the internet, you might have a good business on your hands.
- A Digital Twin of the facility in 3D?
- R3F and Drei for React-based 3D Three.js animations; but it might be best to pre-render at high FPS and encode with ffmpeg
- ProjectM, MilkDrop3, limit
- TIL about shuffle skating aka jam skating
- OpenNext NextJS
- Serwist for a PWA so that you can access your stats when not connected
- IndexedDb, sqlite-wasm, duckdb-wasm
- To run lights, projectors, etc. (with low enough hertz to avoid PSE Photosensitive Epilepsy risk) I have heard about: OSC (BespokeSynth, Resolume,), SMPTE LTC, Resolume projection mapping, mapmapteam/mapmap projection mapping,
Open Lighting Architecture has a list of Ethernet Protocols including OSC, and a list of USB/Serial/Network devices.
HyperHDR does ambient lightning to match displayed video.
Sometimes the glare from all of the lights is too much for visually impaired persons and animals FWIU; no varying lights hour might win too.
- If the machines are so old that all you need is a relay, there's possibly not as much need to model the whole system with TLA+ and check the proof.
Could ask the model about an "SIL" (Safety Integrity Level) controller or similar for a bowling alley. Rust RTIC and Rust embassy have RTOS features.
How to write unit and integration tests for the system without hardware simulators that can randomly fault.
- Soft-white backlit multicolor(?) ePaper displays would save energy and cut glare.
Most flying insects cannot see red, orange or yellow light;
Red preserves night vision. Blue keeps operators awake. Blue and white cause the worst glare. Jet instrument gauges are reddish/orange-ish.
- UV Blacklight paint, UV LED Black light.
Blue light glasses are great for reducing UV blacklight glare.
- Best LED projector 2026
- Gogs/Gitea/Forgejo host Issues, repos and can run Actions with nektos/act.
Cool project. Integrate an issue tracker with mobile notifications?
Wait. You didn't do all that without AI?
It's nowadays so easy to create your own custom esp32 thing. I used to control a home battery installation. Used it on a old Landrover defender where we added a complete dash unit with digital gauges. Used it for controlling a Zigbee 12v switch to activate sprinklers in a garden. In combination with Claude one can create an entire setup in a couple days. Before I was sometimes spending a week on the lcd drivers alone.
Thank you for sharing. This type of stuff gets me pumped up. It just shows that tech improvements usually 10x - or in this case 1000x - some old metric. In this case its cost. I think the same sort of rule of thumb applies to things like speed, features, user experience, etc... Getting this type of cost advantage eventually translates to a better UX, as you've alluded to. Way to go.