When the city unveiled its first-ever “smart basketball hoop” last month, a host of television crews and city officials crowded into Tompkins Square Park to herald its arrival.
A week later, the huupe, as the gadget is called, stood alone, quite literally on the sidelines of the court, while two friends went one-on-one at the newly refurbished “dumb” hoops a few feet away.
The huupe is meant to be an all-star player’s companion, combining elements of a personal coach with an internet-connected portal to another country, tracking shot accuracy, and mapping shot location. It can also stream music and television, and connect to other huupe players around the world.
It has a sticker price of around $10,000.
On Friday, the Tompkins huupe displayed a “no internet connection” alert and was restricted to counting shots made vs. shots missed.
“You can do that with your brain!” remarked a passerby.
The company’s agreement with the city’s parks department stipulated that the Tompkins huupe would remain disconnected from the internet to avoid the potential risk of people streaming inappropriate content to the public device, huupe CEO Paul Anton wrote in an email.
Anton, who is based in New York City, said the company’s employees are scattered “all over.” Huupe launched in 2015 and raised $11 million in venture funding, TechCrunch reported.
The company donated the huupe for a short pilot period at no cost to the city, Anton wrote.
A parks department spokesperson said that the Tompkins huupe would be up through early October, and confirmed that the city spent nothing on the digital hoop.
“It looks like an extra large iMac,” said Angelo Guifarro, a financial analyst who said he moved to the neighborhood a year ago and plays in the park every week.
Guifarro took three shots, sinking two of them. The shot tracker lit up: “50%.” He speculated that his first basket didn’t count, as perhaps it was just telling the machine to turn on.
A few hard bricks off the backboard to test its resilience bounced back easily with no apparent damage.
Guifarro found the huupe interesting, but would not want his tax dollars spent on it or further NYC huupes.
Although there was only scant human interaction with the huupe on Friday morning, online reactions to it have been more vocal.
“We want elevators in every subway station, not backboards with video cameras in them,” wrote one user on X. “No one asked for this.”
“Cops putting surveillance cameras on backboards,” wrote another.
The company stressed that the camera attached to the backboard does not stream or record video, and “does not output footage that humans can even decipher,” wrote Anton, the CEO. “The camera tracks ball movement only and is not used for surveillance.”
While Anton said he’d love for the city to pick up the huupe permanently, there are no metrics for success in this pilot phase beyond love of the game and “a few more smiling happy faces,” he wrote.
