I bought an abandoned 8‑lane bowling center in a rural mid‑west town and found the score‑keeping system installed in 2008 was a six‑figure, proprietary setup.

The original equipment calculated ball speed, trajectory, and pin detection, managed fouls, animations, and the pinsetting machine—yet it cost between $80‑$120k for a full replacement and $4000 per lane pair for parts.

I built a prototype using ESP32s and ESPNow with an RS485 fallback, reporting to a Raspberry Pi that runs Redis and a state machine. Each lane has microcontrollers wired to relays, optocouplers, and IR sensors, all communicating over a star‑topology mesh.

The system streams events to Redis, which a React front‑end can consume for UI and animations. Repairs swap a lane pair in under ten minutes, and the whole rig costs about $200 per lane pair. I call it OpenLaneLink and plan to open source the stack.