ball tracking w/ camera

[kamocat]

Any thoughts or code on the feasibility of using the camera to detect gamepieces?
I've been using the NI Vision assistant, and I came up with two methods so far.

The first one uses the "find geometric shapes" VI to find the circle.
The second one does a color threshold, and then uses the "Find circles" VI.

It seems like the second one should be more robust, but I haven't gotten it to detect the ball yet, because it's not quite a continuous circle. I think the gray stripes wreak havoc with actually trying to represent the ball as a circle.
However, I'm worried that the first method will pick up the goal target as well.

I've uploaded both scripts, and a sample image, so you can try. (It's zipped, because Chief Delphi doesn't allow an .scr file to be uploaded)