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IEMI Labs
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SportsDesign complete (stages 1–6) + rev A2 QuietHours + rev A3 CourtLight, not built

PickleQuiet

Court noise evidence both sides can trust, quiet-gear hours checked court by court, and booked courts released and lights off when nobody turns up

Counts paddle pops and logs A- and C-weighted noise levels on the device, with no audio stored or sent, so a court owner and the neighbours share one record. A QuietLight on each net post checks quiet-gear hours court by court and, new in rev A3 CourtLight, takes a CHECK IN press for each booking: if nobody checks in or plays within 10 minutes the court is released and its floodlights go off.

Who buys it
Tennis and pickleball clubs and councils with floodlit, bookable courts; parks departments and HOAs with courts near homes; acoustic consultants who rent fleets.
Why it pays
Continuous noise evidence for $899 + $39/mo against the cost of a closure or repeated consultant studies (est.). CourtLight: at £4–7.20 per court-hour of lights, a 4-court club with 3 no-show lit hours a week saves about £600–1,100 a year in lights and gets those hours back for members (est.).
Target price
$899 unit + $39/mo, or $1,200 per 60-day study rental; QuietLight with CHECK IN key $169 per court; 4-court CourtLight Kit $699 (4 lights + 2 floodlight relays, electrician extra); radar option +$149 (target)
First-minute wow
At 18:10 the court nobody turned up for goes dark and its screen says "Free court · booking released 18:10"; next door, the players who pressed CHECK IN keep their lights until 5 minutes after their hour, with an amber flash before they go off.
See the CAD designConcept page
PickleQuiet concept: the idea and where each part goes
The concept. The CAD design is below, under Printable CAD.

What the research found

And how this design answers it

  • Booked courts left empty and floodlights burning for no-shows (Edmonton and North Hudson void a booking after 10 minutes, ClubSpark clubs after 10–15; lights £4–7.20 per court-hour and tied to the booking, not to who turned up) → a CHECK IN key on each net-post QuietLight, play heard or radar presence also counts, release and lights off at start + 10 minutes, amber warning before any switch-off, curfew honoured
  • Quiet-gear rules nobody can check (Laguna Beach ordinance, Cupertino dawn–9 am and 7–9 pm request, Carmel banned play because quiet gear "would have required monitoring") → a QuietLight on each net post judges each pop by pitch, glows green or amber for the players, and gives the park per-court counts, no audio and no camera
  • Lawsuits and closures over pickleball noise → continuous, signed, hash-chained hourly records plus a before/after view that proves mitigation
  • Plain dB meters miss the impulsive ~1 kHz pop → on-device classifier (onset sharpness, 0.8–2 kHz spectral peak, duration, rally rhythm) with pop counts and an impulse penalty
  • Microphone privacy worries in parks → audio only in a 21 ms RAM buffer, no code path to store or send it, audio module open-sourced
  • MEMS mics are not type-approved meters → honest Class 2-target claim, per-unit check against a Class 1 reference, a 1/2-inch stalk for calibrator drift checks, and wind/rain/noise-floor flags
  • ICS-43434 is end-of-life → Infineon IM69D130 mic, with TDK T5838 as the second source
  • CourtPulse alone is a weak sale → the same pole unit and the same customer as PickleQuiet

Use case

A Tuesday-night no-show at a floodlit club

Club secretaryMembers with a bookingMembers waiting

  1. 01Trigger: courts 1 and 2 are booked 18:00–19:00 with lights; the floodlights come on at 17:55 for warm-up
  2. 02Detection: court 1 players press CHECK IN at 18:03; on court 2 nobody presses and no pops are heard by 18:10
  3. 03Alert: court 2 lights go off, its screen says "Free court · booking released 18:10", and the club gets one no-show line
  4. 04Action: the waiting members book court 2 on the app and its lights come back on; court 1 gets an amber flash at 19:00 and goes dark at 19:05

Outcome: One lit court-hour not wasted and one court back in use, with no staff on site (value est.)

How it works

Architecture

  1. 01

    Sense: an IM69D130 mic on the fence-line unit for what neighbours hear; an SPH0645 mic and a CHECK IN key in each net-post QuietLight; optional HLK-LD2450 radar

  2. 02

    Decide: each QuietLight judges pops by pitch for quiet-gear hours and, with the booking feed, decides check-in, release and lights per court

  3. 03

    Send: QuietLights to the fence unit over ESP-NOW; the fence unit drives a DIN-rail relay on the floodlight contactor and sends LTE-M MQTT over TLS

  4. 04

    Tell: green, amber or flashing halo and e-paper on each court; shared dashboard with quiet-gear calendar, no-show list and lit-hours report

Hardware

Real parts, buyable today

Bill of materials: about $155 per fence unit with radar, about $55 per QuietLight with CHECK IN key, and about $45 per court for the floodlight relay share (est., many prices unverified).

BlockPartWhy this part
MCU + DSPESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N8R8Fast enough for real-time weighting, FFT and the classifier; secure boot and the DS signing peripheral
ModemNordic nRF9151 SiP + Ignion NN03-310LTE-M/NB-IoT with PSM, keys kept in the modem, no park Wi-Fi needed
MicrophoneInfineon IM69D130 (alt TDK T5838) + GORE GAW334 membrane≈25 dBA self-noise, 130 dB SPL AOP; the membrane keeps water out
Radar (CourtPulse)Hi-Link HLK-LD245024 GHz multi-target x/y tracking for a court polygon, $8.89, no camera
QuietLight (per court)XIAO ESP32-S3 + SPH0645 I2S mic + 1.54in e-paper + 12-LED ring + 2000 mAh LiPoJudges each pop by pitch at the net post and shows players green or amber; about 2 weeks per charge (est.)
Floodlight relay (CourtLight)Shelly Pro 2 DIN-rail relay + 16 mm IP67 CHECK IN key per QuietLightSwitches the existing contactor coils, fitted by an electrician; the club timer stays as fallback (est. $85 per two courts)
PowerTI BQ25798 MPPT + 2× IFR32700 LiFePO4 + 10 W panel38 Wh: 10 days without sun for PickleQuiet, 5 with the radar; optional 12 V DC input
EnclosurePrinted white ASA, TPU gasket, V-saddle pole/fence clampFits 38–60 mm posts with hose clamps; the panel above shades the box

Mechanical

Printable CAD

12 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.

See the CAD parts render
PickleQuiet printable parts, rendered from the CAD
Render of the printable parts from the actual CAD. Not yet printed or photographed.

Loading the CAD…

Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways

Open risks we are working on

  • Booking systems may not export a live feed; a manual weekly upload is the fallback
  • Players may resent lights going off; the halo warns first, play heard counts as a check-in, and lights never go off inside a checked-in booking
  • Quiet and standard paddles may have overlapping pitch for some models and balls; commissioning refuses a court that cannot separate them
  • Players may read amber as an accusation; the screen never names anyone and the light never stops play
  • Courts and councils may treat MEMS-mic data as weak evidence; the unit is not a type-approved IEC 61672 meter
  • The pop classifier may confuse tennis or basketball impacts on shared courts
  • Buyers may want only a one-off study, not a subscription
  • LD2450's quoted 6 m range may miss the far corners of a court; BGT60TR13C is the fallback

Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.