Club member news

Sometimes news comes to me late… Just learned that club member Herbert Rossman died on June 5, 2023 at the age of 95. Herb was both the oldest table tennis player at the SCTTC, and the oldest person I had ever played. He was one of the first people I played with when I discovered the club. He played until he was 85. Great guy who had one of those defensive table tennis styles with the simple goal of just getting the ball back on the table. Sad to just discover this news, but it sounds like had a great life.

Read the obit on the Sentinel site.

Nice story and video about club member, Cyndi Ranii, and her competitive goals. Go Cyndi! Video also has appearance by club member Liz DeFrancesco.

Great story about club member Cynthia Ranii and her goal to compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics.

Check out the story in The Santa Cruz Sentinel about Cindy.

I try not to report on myself, but need to make an exception for this. On July 24, Tim and I competed against other (over 55?) SCTTC and community members in a fun doubles competition and took first place. Event took place at London Nelson Community Center. It seemed like everyone had a great time. Now that I know about it, I hope to participate next year.

View of Ronald’s village (says his home is on far left of image).

Former club-regular Ronald, sent a message letting me know he is still playing and just won the “Copa Del Rey” in the nearby city, and “won the league again”. He says hi to everyone and misses you all!

Top video: v1. Bottom video: v2

Club member, Pak, is on a mission to create a “let detector” AKA a notifier that a ball has hit the net on a serve. Please talk to Pak for more information and to see it in action! I hope this becomes an Instructable or other type of DIY project for both clubs and professionals.

Information from Pak:

Process

1. Identifying a sensor that senses “minute” vibrations of a table tennis net. After some considerations, I purchased this cheap accelerometer (ADXL335 3-Axis) from Amazon which claimed to have high sensitivity. I stay away from 6-axis accelerometers.
2. Identifying a microcontroller that has programmable analog components to interface with the “sensor.” This is easy since I am familiar with the Cypress Semiconductor PSoC. PSoC is a microcontroller with programmable analog components. In particular, I need a PSoC which has at least two analog to digital converters (ADC).

At this moment, I am using a Cypress CY3210 Evaluation Board to prototype the “let detector.” The main control loop is written in the “C” programming language. It took me about half a day to get everything working.

I coded everything from fresh and nothing is lifted off any websites.

This project was inspired by the introduction of TTR in ITTF world cup April 2025, and VAR in soccer.

What happens

Currently, when my “let detector” senses vibration of the net, it flashes an LED. The accelerometer needs to be hung off the net which probably is a violation of the official table tennis rules.

The 2nd version now has sensitivity adjustment.

Future

I have seen table tennis competition events which use microphones (sound) to assist the umpire to detect a “let.” Let’s see if I can also incorporate sound as a mean to detect a “let” in my “let detector” version 2.0.

Heard from Ronald the other day and he sent these great pics of him at his new club in the Córdoba area of Spain.

Ronald at his new club in Spain

Ronald at his new club in Spain

Long-time SCTTC member Ronald Donkervoort is leaving the farming, the rain, and more to retire in southern Spain. We are all jealous and hope he doesn’t forget us! Maybe he’ll send some photos/videos of playing table tennis in Spain. We had a great send off a couple weeks ago. He will be missed.