If there’s one thing that sucks the fun out of darts, it’s the mandatory math you have to do in order to work out how well you’re doing. That’s the malady British manufacturer Target Darts, making its first trip to CES, is solving with its Omni automatic scoring system, saving your beer-drenched brain.
Omni is a halo that magnetically attaches to a compatible board, equipped with four 1080p cameras and an LED light strip. When you throw your darts, the system uses computer vision to identify where they ended up on the board.
From there, the scores will be represented on a nearby computer or tablet, and can even be output to a big TV in the vicinity. Even better, is that you won’t just have your score tracked, but you’ll hear a pre-recorded voice telling you how many points you need to score on your next throw, just as you see in a professional match.
Omni isn’t out just yet, but when it launches, players will be able to use it in conjunction with Target Darts’ existing Virt camera. That’s a pair of webcams — one facing the board, one facing the player — that enables darts fans to play against real people online either with friends, or with similarly-ranked strangers.
During the various shelter-in-place orders in force during the COVID pandemic, the UK’s professional darts league actually operated like this for several months. Amusingly one star player, Gary Anderson, was unable to take part in a tournament because his home Wi-Fi wasn’t fast enough to keep up.
Target Darts’ Omni scoring system will start shipping on January 31, and in the UK is priced at £449.95 (around $556). If you’d like to pick up a model in the US, you’ll have to find a reseller, a list of which is available on the company’s website.
Daniel Cooper
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