In the past couple of decades gaming technology has made great advances. The problem with this new technology is that kids have started going outside less and playing video games more. Globall started off as a concept to get kids to go outside more and be more healthy while still having just as much fun. Our first idea was simply to make an automatic scoreboard for an outdoor basketball hoop so that it would be more fun to go out and practice shooting.  That idea evolved into making the game even more fun, and we thought it would be a great idea to compete against friends by sharing your score, and the idea for Globall was born. 

We started off the process of making Globall with the score board and online sharing system. We used a 30-per-meter Neopixel® RGB LED strip to light up the scoreboard. After looking at many existing scoreboards as references, we decided to make each number seven pixels tall and four pixels wide. We cut the Neopixel strip into strips of seven and soldered the ends together and grouped each strip into groups of four. The lights were then positioned in a grid, and taped in place. Once the layout of the lights was finalized, we were able to start coding. The indexes of all the lights in their respective positions were stored in a 2D array, and the rest was just picking and choosing which ones to light up to make which numbers appear. Once we had the lights ready, we moved to the construction of the outside of the score board. We made the scoreboard box in a design software called Rhinoceros. Then, we cut out the pieces that we designed on a laser cutter. After we had a working scoreboard that could display numbers that could be changed and updated, we worked on the online aspect of the game. Using the Particle Photon’s built-in online server, we figured out how to get two Particle Photons to send and read data and used that to send score updates between the two. The lever system was then designed also using Rhinoceros and the laser cutter. We had build many different prototypes to give ideas of how we wanted the lever to work. Some of the prototypes were as simple as popsicle sticks and glue. This allowed for many different ideas out in a short span of time. Once we had the idea we wanted, laser cut it. To get it to count we had a circuit connected to the lever and when the lever went down the circuit would disconnect. This then incremented the scoreboard and updated it to the server using the Particle Photons.

Globall is a new inventive way to play basketball against anyone in the world no matter where they are. The scoreboard uses the power of the internet to connect people and their basketball hoops. The scores of both players update in real time in their respective home and away positions so that each player sees their own score and also the score of their opponent. The basket is equipped with a paddle-shaped sensor that detects if the ball goes into the basket. 

Globall is a new take on online gaming; it preserves both the convenience of video games and the physical activity of real sports. The scoreboard can be used to connect people playing other games as well. Games like darts, cup pong, lacrosse, soccer, and more can use the same scoreboard but use different sensors. In the future, a camera can be implemented as well to add a more social element to the game. Globall is the start of an era of online games that encourages physical activity by allowing people to play actively with anyone anywhere at any time in real time over WiFi.