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The University of Southampton
Engineering

Young innovator pockets engineering prize with smart snooker table

Published: 24 March 2021
Southampton student Jonathan Lim
Southampton student Jonathan Lim completed the smart snooker table during lockdown.

A talented teenage engineer has shown he was on the ball during lockdown by creating a self-scoring snooker table in his home kitchen.

Jonathan Lim, a first year Mechanical engineering with Mechatronics student at the University of Southampton, 3D-printed colour-sensing cradles for each of the table’s pockets that calculate and beam live points to a Bluetooth scoreboard.

The automated scoring system has this month been recognised as a joint winner of The Engineer’s C2I2020 Young Innovator trophy.

Jonathan set himself the ambitious project for his DT A-level at Nottingham High School and completed the build during the first national lockdown.

“The abacus style of scoring on a traditional snooker board is time consuming, and I thought there must be a better way,” Jonathan says. “I had the idea to automate the process in 2017 and realised that the only differentiating factor between the balls was their colour, nothing such as mass or magnetism could work.”

The Southampton student designed and built the three quarter size snooker table from scratch and prototyped rotating cradles beneath each pocket that block out all light for a colour sensor triggered by a microswitch.

“The calculation of score is very robust, I programmed all the rules of snooker that are applicable, and so, this part does not fail,” he explains. “The colour detection was more challenging as there are more uncertainties. The colour detection currently works over 99 percent of the time and I have ideas to add a machine learning algorithm so the system can improve its reliability over time.”

The scoring system determines the active player using two switches at either end of the table and Jonathan is enhancing this design by adding sensors to the cues that automatically detect the next player.

“These ideas are quite complex, but, if the project were to materialise into a commercial idea, they would be achievable,” he says. “I am considering patenting this design, so you may see this as a product on a full-sized table in the future.”

The Engineer’s Collaborate to Innovate (C2I) young innovator award recognised future engineers who used the opportunity of lockdown to advance their engineering skills.

“It was certainly challenging to design and build an entire snooker table that was also to be used as the dining table in the house; however, I thoroughly enjoyed the construction and assembly phases,” Jonathan says. “This project has allowed me to fulfil the dream of having a snooker table at home.”

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