Our šprtec (Czech table hockey played with flat round pieces, a small puck and a stick) gets goals that know when someone scores: they light up the scoreboard in the team’s color and sound a siren. In the full version, a phone instantly replays the goal in slow motion.
What’s new: the only toy in the set that upgrades a game the family already owns. Everyone knows the rules, so the magic works from minute one. It plays without a Mac or a network.
Shoot for Barcelona (big brother) or Florec (little sister). A goal only counts when the puck breaks the IR beam inside the goal. If the goalie makes the save or the puck hits the post, the scoreboard stays quiet. Sound plays only after you click. Here, chance decides who scores; on the real table, the stick does.
The IR beam is the red dashed line in each goal; the orange blocks are the LED and the phototransistor.
Trainer: you get ten seconds for each goal. The countdown starts with your first shot.
Face-off. The scoreboard is waiting for the first shot.
| Team | Wins | Goals |
|---|---|---|
| Barcelona | 0 | 0 |
| Florec | 0 | 0 |
Fastest goal of the season: none yet.
The slow-motion replay belongs to the full version: an old phone above the rink keeps the last five seconds in memory, and when a goal is scored the scoreboard signals it to play them back.
My 9-year-old sends the puck with his stick between his sister’s pieces and into the goal. The puck crosses the beam inside the goal, the LED ring on the scoreboard lights up in Barcelona’s colors, the siren sounds and the score jumps to 1:0.
The goal ritual and the score turn a kitchen game into a real match. The scoreboard keeps track of the season (wins, goals, fastest goal), and the trainer gives you ten seconds per goal. In the full version, the slow-motion replay settles every “was that a goal?” argument.
Goals v2 based on my sprtec_goal.scad, with a channel for the beam. The inside keeps the official 80 × 50 × 48 mm of the current goal.
A scoreboard with one LED ring and team crests printed on the MMU (Barcelona and Florec already exist as printed teams).
In each goal, an IR LED and a phototransistor sit about 3 mm above the floor and 15 mm behind the goal line. The 18 × 6 mm puck breaks the beam; neither the stick nor the goalie can reach that far.
In the scoreboard: an ESP32-C3, the LED ring, a piezo siren and a clock display for the score.
A commentator working from a pre-generated bank of lines. Claude writes the lines ahead of time in the workshop; the scoreboard just plays them.
Printing and electronics carry the toy. It works fully without AI.
A goal is a broken beam, nothing else. The score, the ring color, the siren, the season and the trainer countdown all run on the ESP32-C3 in the scoreboard, with no Mac and no network.
No model gets called during a match. It writes the commentator’s lines in the workshop beforehand, and only for the optional add-on.
The whole trick is where the beam sits. At 3 mm above the floor, a 6 mm tall puck always breaks it, and 15 mm behind the line neither the stick nor the goalie can reach it. That’s why the wire from the scoreboard only runs to this beam.
A scoreboard with an ESP32-C3 and one LED ring, plus two goals on a thin wire that runs only to the beam. It plays without a Mac or a network.
| Part | Where | Price source | CZK |
|---|---|---|---|
| ESP32-C3 Super Mini | scoreboard | LaskaKit | 148 |
| 2 pairs of IR LED + phototransistor | goals | estimate | ~20 |
| WS2812 LED ring, 8 LEDs | scoreboard | estimate | ~50 |
| Piezo siren | scoreboard | estimate | ~10 |
| TM1637 clock display | scoreboard | LaskaKit | 34 |
| Wire and connectors | to the goals | estimate | ~30 |
| Filament (goals v2, scoreboard, crests) | printing | estimate | ~60 |
| Sum of the rows (the design card says ~350 CZK) | ~352 | ||
Full version: slow-motion replay
An old phone on a stand above the rink keeps the last five seconds of video in memory, and when a goal is scored the scoreboard signals it to play them back. Nothing gets saved unless a player presses “save”.
The only extra part is a printed stand. Whether a particular phone can handle it still needs testing.
The beam position is the whole toy: about 3 mm above the floor and 15 mm behind the line. The channel in goal v2 has to hold it exactly there. Test the first printed goal with both the stick and the goalie before the league starts.
The full version depends on an old phone keeping a five-second video loop going. Nobody has tested that on an actual phone yet.
The recording lives only in the memory of the phone above the rink. It gets saved only when a player presses “save”.
The AI here is a thin, optional layer. The magic comes from the print, the beam and the siren, not from a model.
Items marked “estimate” are the author’s estimates. The jury recalculated the parts list, and the total comes to ~350 CZK.
“The best value in the whole pool: one evening of work buys an instant goal ritual for a game the family already has.”Jury, round 1: first place out of 48 ideas
“Score unchanged. The minimal version got cheaper, down to ~350 CZK, and the parts list adds up to the total. The video referee rightly stays in the full version only.”Jury, round 4
“No idea got a STOP.”No safety objection
One of eighteen finalist toy ideas in the Toy Workshop, generated by AI agents, picked by a dad.
Made by Ondra Malacka with Claude agents · malacka.cz