Raspberry Pi Foosball Scorekeeper Prevents Office Fights

Matmi develops branded experiences, and, like many hip companies, they’ve got a foosball table in the break room. That’s a great way for employees to loosen up after a few hours of coding, but like all competitive games it comes with a dangerous caveat: scoring. In the heat of an intense match, it’s easy to lose track of the score, and that can lead to some bitter discussions. As with all things, technology can provide a solution, and so Matmi used a Raspberry Pi to build a digital foosball scoring system.

Foosball gameplay is very simple; each player has a set of handles attached to strikers. A small ball is placed on the table, and the two players attempt to use their strikers to knock the ball into the opposing goal. To detect a scored point, Matmi just had to place a microswitch in the chute behind each goal. Those switches are connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 B+, and tracked by a lightweight program that runs in Visual Studio Code.

That would have been enough to simply track points, but Matmi took it another step forward with a flashy scoreboard that’s shown on a TV next to the foosball table. The scoreboard was written in Vue.js, which is a JavaScript framework that’s easy to use. Games can be setup through a website hosted on the Pi, so players can enter their names and scores can be tracked. The best part, however, is a fun confetti explosion after each goal. Now Matmi employees can play friendly games of foosball without worrying about scorekeeping.