The small control box has a light sensor in it to sense when the bat is swung above it. There needs to be a light shining down that is strong and direct enough so that the bat casts a shadow as it goes by. I’ve been using a mic stand with a small Maglight flashlight at one batting station, and I experimented with a small laser pointer in the other batting station. The flashlight is far superior because is casts a wide beam that doesn’t easily go out of alignment, where a simple bump on the laser will misalign it with the sensor.
This was made very clear at my Playtest #3 on April 19th. One of my take aways to fix was this lighting problem.
So I decided to get an LED mini-Maglight (2 AA batteries, ~100 lumens!). The next time I set up the sensors in the garage to tune the game, the sensor was very flaky. I’ll cut this story way shorter than the two hours it took me to debug: all new flashlights use LEDs, and they are missing whatever wavelength my light sensor sees. It was flaky in the garage because sometimes the shadow of the bat from my overhead lights made it work, so I didn’t suspect this insanely bright new LED flashlight as being a part of the problem. Eventually I figured it out. I’m pretty sure that the sensor I have is actually sensitive down near the red/infrared range, which works great as a daylight sensor.
Next step – either go back to much dimmer incandescent flashlights OR find another sensor that can see in the LED color spectrum.
