Stringing a badminton racquet is a somewhat complicated job. It needs to be done well if the racquet is to perform well and the player is to succeed. To that end, [kuokuo] built a machine of their own to do that very task. Even better, they’ve made it open source so other hobbyists can benefit from their work.

The build is named PicoBETH, which stands for Pico Badminton Electronic Tension Head. It’s based around the Raspberry Pi Pico, as you might imagine. The Pico is charged with controlling the stringing procedure via a stepper motor and lead screw, while using a load cell to measure string tension during the process. A small two-line character LCD serves as the user interface, along with some buttons, LEDs and a buzzer for feedback. The electronic stringing gear is mounted on to a traditional manual drop-weight stringing machine to execute the process faster and more accurately, at least in theory.

Files are on Github for those that wish to explore the build further. It’s not the first stringing machine we’ve featured here, either! Video after the break.