About SHARPTRAK

"I didn't set out to create a product, only to solve a problem"

A few years ago, while working in a busy IT department, we were fortunate enough to have a table tennis table in our office. It was a perfect way to get some exercise and social fun with the team, quickly becoming part of the daily lunch routine. Like with most games, someone always has to keep track of the score and whose turn it is to serve. During lunch we still had to manage walk-ins and phone calls so keeping track of the game was not always as easy as it sounded.

That simple problem sparked the original idea: a dedicated device that could handle scoring, service rotation and game tracking automatically. The first solution was fairly basic - it consisted of two physical buttons mounted under each end of the table tennis table which were pressed when a player scored. These were connected to a Raspberry Pi which ran a custom Python program to manage the scoring and service logic. The setup immediately proved to be a useful additional and was used every day.

When we moved into a new headquarters building the table tennis table was relocated outdoors which made the original Raspberry Pi and monitor setup impractical. By now I had a growing interest in microcontrollers, electronics and hardware design which led to the next step — creating a completely self-contained unit that could run from a portable battery bank and didn't require a screen.

That project became the beginning of a much larger journey…