Hockey Goal Detector

Goal

The project is simple in the best way: point a camera at a hockey net, detect when the puck crosses the line, and fire an old Bud Light goal light like it belongs in a basement rink broadcast booth.

The interesting part is making the loop dependable. A YOLO model can find candidate puck and goal events, but the system still needs confidence thresholds, frame-to-frame smoothing, false-positive handling, and a hardware trigger that fails calmly instead of strobing every time someone skates through the crease.

Architecture

[ Camera ] -> [ YOLO detector ] -> [ event filter ] -> [ relay / controller ] -> [ Bud Light goal light ]

The detector watches for goal-line events, the filter turns noisy frame predictions into a single clean event, and the hardware bridge handles the old goal light without coupling the model loop directly to the relay.

Current Focus

• Collecting representative clips from different angles and lighting conditions.
• Tuning the YOLO confidence threshold so it catches real goals without firing on near-misses.
• Building a small trigger service that can run locally and keep the hardware side isolated.

What Comes Next

The next milestone is a repeatable test set: clips with real goals, saves, traffic in front of the net, and no-puck motion. Once that is stable, the goal light becomes the fun part instead of the debugging surface.