We are looking for a true crowd funding community interested in
helping people on the verge of production to bring their project to life.
Please support our campaign!
Imagine a youngster in an All Shot is overjoyed after making his
school's team. He beams even more as a live-stream comes to life.
It's his father, a service man near his current post half way around the world
in an All Shot. They do what fathers and sons do—they shoot some hoops,
together. To us, the All Shot is possibilities.
For years the basketball community has taken notice of the
eroding skills of American players, particularly in regards to shooting.
NBA players and personalities often denounce the current youth basketball
system for concentrating on playing games at the expense of skill
training. But truly the biggest problem is that skill training is more a
chore than a pleasure. Also the cost, availability, and necessary court
space leads to low accessibility for the majority of players. The All
Shot uses a four pronged approach to promote a more effective training
experience.
The All Shot is functionally superior to any training product in
its class. A shooter is able to take a full range of shots in
considerably less time. Also the shooter can employ a larger variety of
workout routines with widely differing shots. This leads to a far
superior workout in a shorter time as compared to other systems.
Because the All Shot creates (or renders) a shot in reference to
a selected position on the Shooting Platform sophisticated diagnostic systems
may be used to provide instant and long term cumulative feedback. This is
impractical or even impossible with old style systems that require the shooter
to chase around a court after a ball ejector. Systems such as Microsoft’s
Kinect (to quantify the shooter's movements) and 3D Doppler radar (to quantify
the ball's movements) are well suited for the All Shot.
A huge part of improving a player's game depends not only on how
much the player trains, but also on the quality of that training.
Connectivity is key to the higher level quality training the All Shot
provides.
The first level of connectivity is with the All Shot.
Customizable real-time diagnostic information is constantly generated by the
diagnostic package. Any information captured by this technology can be
streamed to the many monitors in the unit. Imagine a hologram of the
shooter's favorite player offering tips in real-time. Now imagine a
player working out all summer with a coach’s All Shot programs – the very coach
he hopes to play for in the fall. In fact, one of the questions we asked
while developing the All Shot was, “would a young daughter rather be trained by
a hologram of Diana Taurasi in the All Shot or a parent in the driveway?”
Another type of connection is with the world basketball
community. In the All Shot a coach could chime in with advice during a
shooting session. Anytime in a session a player could request help from
a specific trainer or make a less specific request for help from anyone on his
or her preferred list. With the All Shot's external connectivity we could
ask, “would your daughter rather be trained by her favorite player from across
town, or her favorite college coach who's three hundred miles away, or an old
friend who moved to the opposite coast, or, of course, by a parent... in the
driveway?”
The All Shot is a modern training device that is designed to
improve the user's game while providing entertainment. We conceived the
All Shot with the concept that it should be a place where a person would want
to hang out even if he or she didn't play basketball. It needed to be
entertaining without interfering with the training regimen. By
accomplishing this goal we create an environment that will induce players to
have longer, more energized workouts. We aim to make skill training
almost as fun as playing actual games.
In the end, the All Shot will fulfill the needs of the entire
basketball community, from the youngster just taking his or her first shot to
the superstar professional trying to consistently get through his or her 500
shot daily workouts. The All Shot expands the basketball training
consumer base; the league player, or even the weekend warrior, will have access
to a training facility more advanced than currently available to
professionals. Most importantly for the parents of young inspiring
players it relieves the dependency on inadequate, expensive, and limited access
facilities that rely on old “net around the rim” technology.
The All Shot performs four key functions to improve the training
experience: 1) it contains shot balls in the confinement area regardless
of the trajectory of the shot. 2) It collects shot balls and funnels them
into alignment for easy processing. 3) It passes the ball to the shooter
in a way as to recreate a variety of real game situations. 4) It creates
shots for you instead of you rushing to positions around the court to create
shots.
Containment is achieved by the compact size as compared to a
full or half court. An All Shot’s effective containment area is as small
as 20' by 35' (20' by 50' including Shooting Platform). While a full size
professional basketball court is 94' by 50' (more with the sideline area and bleacher
room found in gyms). In other words the containment area for the smaller
unit is about one fifth the size of a court. That alone saves a lot of
time spent chasing balls.
Shot balls are collected by the use of dampening material
strategically placed on a slanted floor, called the Slant Floor. The
material causes balls that land on it to stop bouncing and begin to roll under
the force of gravity. The Slant Floor directs balls away from the shooter
(on the Shooting Platform) towards the Ball Collector. This design has
been refined to be extremely effective for a typical shooting session (recent
tests indicate that less than 1% of shots taken from the Shooting Platform
would escape collection, regardless to shot trajectory).
The All Shot uses lift and channeling systems to return
collected basketballs to two ejectors that are on the sides of the containment
walls.
Unlike with “net around the rim” systems that have the single
ejector imprisoned directly under the rim, these ejectors are designed to
travel the length of the All Shot. This allows passes from nearly every
angle to target a multitude of shooter positions on the Shooting Platform –
just like in a real game!
By decoupling the containment, collection, and passing functions
from the rim and backboard the All Shot gains the freedom to incorporate modern
engineering technologies for the shot creation process. Instead of
frantically chasing a rim-fixed-ejector around a court to create shots, the All
Shot uses advanced software and automation to articulate the rim and backboard
to render any shot on the half court. This is a huge part of the
aforementioned efficiency improvement. In the time it takes one shooter
to shoot six alternating sideline-to-sideline jumpers on other systems, a
shooter can take three times as many similar shot sequences in the All
Shot. Rapid rendering technology allows radically diverse shooting
routines to be rendered in a fraction of the time.
If there were one word that could be used to sum up the All
Shot's advantages over any other training system it would be –
flexibility. This system will serve as a platform for creative basketball
minds to thrive. The degree of programming freedom allowed by a shot
articulating rim, two mobile passing ejectors, and multi-modal configurations
result in staggering customization possibilities. A few of the All Shot
features users can take advantage of in their programs are:
The rim and backboard is capable of rendering shots in 3D space
(up to 12' and down to 6'). A program could raise the rim to 12' to
practice arc on the jump shot. Or the program could lower the rim to 6'
and position it close to the shooting platform so smaller kids can shoot with
proper form at a much earlier age.
The Slant Floor can be configured to a horizontal position with
enough support to allow training activity. Every post shot can be
rendered, from 5' floaters, low post drop steps, to baseline fall away
jumpers. Also the rim can be lowered for finishing practice... and yes,
that includes dunk practice. The rim assembly is reinforced to provide
support for responsible dunk practice. In fact there is a dunk cam (part
of the diagnostic package) and connectivity to the internet for real-time
uploads and streaming.
The transitional rate for jump shot shooting with the floor
slanted to post move training with the floor horizontal is under a
minute. By the time the “net around the rim” systems can be collapsed and
properly placed in a storage closet the All Shot can go from a three point shot
to a close-in kid's shot to post practice, with time to spare.
The diagnostic package generates an overwhelming amount of data,
much of which can be used in programs as conditions for rendering the next shot
and/or pass. For instance a condition could be that a player must make
five shots in a row before the next shot and/or pass in the program is
rendered. Everything from foot and/or arm positioning during the
shot, ball rotation, made baskets, near misses, etc. are tracked by the
software. A player's specific problem can be addressed with customized
programs.
The player has control of some of the environmental elements
such as music selection, monitor content, and lighting. Alternatively
some environmental elements can be incorporated into the program; maybe the
program will select music from the shooter’s play list that is in tempo with
shot sequences or to correspond to successful program goals met.
The All Shot is designed to contain enough balls and a software
control system to make sure a ball is ready to pass from each ejector
immediately after the player shoots (for most program logic). This opens
up the possibility for programs that address multiple player shooting
activities.
A simple user interface to create programs is included in the
All Shot software.
Almost from the start, there has been a plan to build an
advanced training facility with useful cutting edge technology including four
All Shots as the main attraction. Initially we followed the plan that
most successful high-tech companies implemented to reach success. We
built a highly functional prototype, including custom control software.
We built the conceptual 3D model. We developed engineering drawings and manufactured
some major assemblies of the actual All Shot product... But that's when we
decided “The Plan” wasn't going to be Our Play.
Connected people with their networks of financiers, branders,
and special interest didn't have much interest in our desire for accessibility
or affordability. They didn't share our concept of the All Shot being
about possibilities. The only “possibility” they saw was to make money
with the old business models that they knew and trusted. Yes, we found
some appeal in the powerful networks presented to us, but we knew the most
powerful network of them all was out there – the Internet! We came up
with a plan of our own:
Up until this point the success of this project depended on our
small group of dedicated professionals making something from nothing with next
to nothing to get it done. Now that we have a plan that injects and
integrates the All Shot into the consciousness and raw power of cyber space we
know from this point on success is more a function of the internet. Out
there we know there are people and fair minded corporations who understand and
are ready to support our vision. We are confident that this network is more
powerful than any network presented to us.
We appreciate your faith in us in purchasing
memberships to our facilities, although it may take some time before a facility
is built near you, we plan on expanding rapidly through franchising. We are making the membership cards transferable
so if desired the original card holder has the ability to sale their card or
give it as a gift (One time transfer from original card holder only). We will also provide a platform on our
website to help original owners who are interested in selling their membership
cards to connect with potential buyers.
From the start, we knew in order to build the All Shot a team of highly talented, dedicated individuals would have to be assembled. The team had to surrender a huge amount of collective time, which often required long hours added to a long day of work or job searching.
Equally as important for the team, these professionals would have to know the enormity of the problem and the scope of the solution. After all, we only had to create the most innovative basketball training system in nearly a century that was accessible to most anybody, and do it on little to no budget. Oh yeah, it needed to be done in a timely manner.
To form the team we conducted the typical “short range” crowd sourcing among family, friends, co-works, and neighbors. A team was assembled that included engineers, manufacturers, software developers, graphic artists, and lawyers; many of us being hoop lovers completely dedicated to the All Shot. As the All Shot development process has advanced, we have established relationships with vendors, consultants, manufacturing specialists, and two fully equipped machine shops. The team is fully capable and ready to deliver.
The advantage of putting together a network of people, vendors,
and consultants to endure the long development process in bringing the All Shot
to its current state has minimized the risk. With a project this large the
primary challenge is getting the facility operational on time. Being a start-up
with a project of this magnitude required a state of the art large scale
machine shop. Fortunately, we have developed a strong relationship with such a
shop. Unfortunately for us Toyota was there first. Although they are timely and
very efficient you never know when Toyota will put in a large scale order,
which shifts shop resources and may cause delays. Another potential source for
delay is from the approval process required to open an All Shot Facility.
Because the All Shot places machinery above peoples head local municipalities’
permit and inspection processes have an unpredictable time cycle, adding the
possibility of more delays.
Our challenges in building our first facility have mostly been
addressed. The challenge that awaits us is the task of duplicating and proliferating
variations of All Shot facility franchises on a global scale. Our intent is to
address this upcoming challenge early in our marketing and franchising
meetings. For now the first All Shot facility is our primary focus.