Been a lurker for six months and this forum helped me put my first build together. Fairly simple build, but thought I'd share in case some of the specific lessons learned and product choices are helpful to others. I am greatly appreciative to the thoughtful and open minded community here that shares their feedback and advice so willingly.
Build location: Finished basement in a new construction home. Space dimensions: 12' wide, 17' deep, 9.5' high (with a soffit/ceiling drop behind the hitting area for hvac; does not interfere with driver swing).
Main equipment used:
- Golf Mat: CCE 4x5
- Flooring: To match CCE height: 1) 1/4" cork underlayment (Home Depot), 2) 1 inch EVO interlocking tiles (Amazon), 3) 1/2" putting turf (Rubber Flooring Inc)
- Screen & Enclosure: Custom order from Carl's Place for a 11.5' x 9.25' x 1.5' (LxHxD) enclosure and matching premium screen that provides 10.75' x 8.5' viewable screen (approximately 4x3). I also ordered the four foam inserts (they are listed on this page as #4 as of this posting) for the DIY enclosure border to prevent ricochets. I am not using anything behind the screen to further reduce bounce back. The screen is 12" from rear wall and 9' from tee position.
- EMT: Standard 1" from home depot. They wouldnt cut it for me, so I just bought a cheap pipe cutter and was easy to cut it myself.
- Projector: Benq TH671ST (I had also ordered Optoma GT1090HDR but ultimately returned it because it required significant tilt up to account for the vertical offset which led to a lot of keystoning issues in the image)
- Sensor: Uneekor QED
- Software: TGC + Ignite (the pic below shows E6 because I downloaded the demo version of it while I waited to resolve a registration issue with TGC)
- Computer: Had an old computer I had built ten years ago and was on the higher end at the time (~$1.4K without monitors). After checking the specs, it needed a new graphics card but everything else was still good. So I got whatever graphics card was in stock (EVGA GeForce RTX 2060) at a store nearby as the inventory for graphics cards everywhere was quite low or non existent or significantly marked up by resellers.
- Golf putting cups: A friend 3D printed them for me at my requested depth of 34mm so they sit at the right height. We got the 4" template from thingiverse and he cropped it to size.
Still to do, but wont get to it for a few months:
- Put a clean border around the floor edge.
- Setup computer desk.
- Beautification!
- Mount a larger second screen on the side wall for Ignite view.
- Slow motion camera integration
- IFTTT integration with Google home so I can turn everything on with "Hey Google, lets play golf" and also turn it off.
Time taken:
- Since I did not have any major construction work that needed to be done, I worked alone on the assembly 6-7 hrs per day. 2-3 days worth of work spread over four weeks while I researched, ordered products, did measurements, etc to have a plan. Once I had all the materials, flooring, enclosure, and ceiling mounting for projector/sensor took 1 day each. And another day for install and learning of software and setup. Some of the product choices cost more because I only had time during Christmas break so I needed all supplies beforehand so availability of the product did play a role in my choices.
Some things I learned during the assembly:
- FLOORING: Interlocking tiles on top of cork doesn't move much so no adhesive was needed. Even the turf does not move due to its weight on top of the tiles, but I did put double sided carpet tape on the perimeter around the golf mat to prevent the turf from lifting up when fitting the CCE mat tight into the opening as the lifting up would make a putt bounce at the edge if the turf doesnt sit flush.
- MAT/TURF SHEDDING: The CCE mat sheds quite a bit initially so keep a vacuum or sweep handy. This mattered to me as I was working in a finished basement and didnt want to have shed turf making its way to the rest of the house as my family walks around. Once everything is in place, I havent noticed any shedding.
- CCE SLIPPAGE: It does slip on the LVP flooring I have even though it is snug with the flooring on three sides. I used a thin non slip pad to keep it in place.
- BOUNCE BACK: My tee position is 9' from screen. There was bounce back at initial setup of screen as I used bungee cords for all the holes grommets in the impact screen. With testing, I removed bottom five bungees around the impact area to reduce the bounce back. I say reduce because I actually like having some bounce back as it means less work to get the balls. Basically when I hit high or low irons or driver, the ball rolls back after two to three bounces to the front of the CCE mat which is perfect for me as I can just keep using the same ball again and again without needing to walk to get the ball if there was lesser bounce back.
- WIRING: One benefit of the new construction was that I had the ceiling pre-wired for an outlet and ethernet cable which made the wiring have a cleaner look. I didnt know at the time I would go with a ceiling sensor though. Therefore the ceiling ethernet goes back to the switch in utility room. But I have another ethernet running from the switch to where the computer is so what I did is just use an ethernet coupler to connect the ceiling ethernet with the computer ethernet at the switch and this approach works for QED.
- ALIGNMENT OF MOUNTING: I used a laser level with plumbing ceiling/floor dots to help with centering projector, and QED mounting alignment to tee position (which is off center). Without it I was just guessing and this aid made locating the exact spots on the ceiling in reference to the rest of the setup very easy.
- ISSUES WITH OPTOMA GT1090HDR: The image is definitely brighter than BenQ, but because the projector had to be tilted up to reduce the impact of the vertical offset, it led to significant keystoning issues where the screen was perfectly in focus on either the bottom half or the top half but not everywhere at the same time. Not sure if my unit was defective or if this is normal. The BenQ was just easier to work with even though it has less features for image positioning. For example, it does not have horizontal keystone adjustment so it was important to mount it perfectly in the middle which I was able to do with the laser level.
- SOFTWARE: Only thing to note (which has been mentioned several times in other posts) is if you want to use TGC with Ignite then you dont need to use Pod application that comes with Uneekor. You use either Pod with TGC or Ignite with TGC. Not both Pod and Ignite as the sensor wont read your hits. Kind of obvious now, but following instructions at setup it was very confusing.
- PUTTING CUPS: I cut out holes in the interlocking tiles and turf, so the cups are sitting on the cork underlayment. Total heigh is 34 mm and the cups work perfectly. We used an existing file from thingiverse and resized it from 4 inches to 34 mm. The middle cup is not centered on the turf. The reason is that I wanted to be able to put straight from the 18" wide sensor zone for QED on the mat to the hole.
Again, thanks to all the members on this forum!
Build location: Finished basement in a new construction home. Space dimensions: 12' wide, 17' deep, 9.5' high (with a soffit/ceiling drop behind the hitting area for hvac; does not interfere with driver swing).
Main equipment used:
- Golf Mat: CCE 4x5
- Flooring: To match CCE height: 1) 1/4" cork underlayment (Home Depot), 2) 1 inch EVO interlocking tiles (Amazon), 3) 1/2" putting turf (Rubber Flooring Inc)
- Screen & Enclosure: Custom order from Carl's Place for a 11.5' x 9.25' x 1.5' (LxHxD) enclosure and matching premium screen that provides 10.75' x 8.5' viewable screen (approximately 4x3). I also ordered the four foam inserts (they are listed on this page as #4 as of this posting) for the DIY enclosure border to prevent ricochets. I am not using anything behind the screen to further reduce bounce back. The screen is 12" from rear wall and 9' from tee position.
- EMT: Standard 1" from home depot. They wouldnt cut it for me, so I just bought a cheap pipe cutter and was easy to cut it myself.
- Projector: Benq TH671ST (I had also ordered Optoma GT1090HDR but ultimately returned it because it required significant tilt up to account for the vertical offset which led to a lot of keystoning issues in the image)
- Sensor: Uneekor QED
- Software: TGC + Ignite (the pic below shows E6 because I downloaded the demo version of it while I waited to resolve a registration issue with TGC)
- Computer: Had an old computer I had built ten years ago and was on the higher end at the time (~$1.4K without monitors). After checking the specs, it needed a new graphics card but everything else was still good. So I got whatever graphics card was in stock (EVGA GeForce RTX 2060) at a store nearby as the inventory for graphics cards everywhere was quite low or non existent or significantly marked up by resellers.
- Golf putting cups: A friend 3D printed them for me at my requested depth of 34mm so they sit at the right height. We got the 4" template from thingiverse and he cropped it to size.
Still to do, but wont get to it for a few months:
- Put a clean border around the floor edge.
- Setup computer desk.
- Beautification!
- Mount a larger second screen on the side wall for Ignite view.
- Slow motion camera integration
- IFTTT integration with Google home so I can turn everything on with "Hey Google, lets play golf" and also turn it off.
Time taken:
- Since I did not have any major construction work that needed to be done, I worked alone on the assembly 6-7 hrs per day. 2-3 days worth of work spread over four weeks while I researched, ordered products, did measurements, etc to have a plan. Once I had all the materials, flooring, enclosure, and ceiling mounting for projector/sensor took 1 day each. And another day for install and learning of software and setup. Some of the product choices cost more because I only had time during Christmas break so I needed all supplies beforehand so availability of the product did play a role in my choices.
Some things I learned during the assembly:
- FLOORING: Interlocking tiles on top of cork doesn't move much so no adhesive was needed. Even the turf does not move due to its weight on top of the tiles, but I did put double sided carpet tape on the perimeter around the golf mat to prevent the turf from lifting up when fitting the CCE mat tight into the opening as the lifting up would make a putt bounce at the edge if the turf doesnt sit flush.
- MAT/TURF SHEDDING: The CCE mat sheds quite a bit initially so keep a vacuum or sweep handy. This mattered to me as I was working in a finished basement and didnt want to have shed turf making its way to the rest of the house as my family walks around. Once everything is in place, I havent noticed any shedding.
- CCE SLIPPAGE: It does slip on the LVP flooring I have even though it is snug with the flooring on three sides. I used a thin non slip pad to keep it in place.
- BOUNCE BACK: My tee position is 9' from screen. There was bounce back at initial setup of screen as I used bungee cords for all the holes grommets in the impact screen. With testing, I removed bottom five bungees around the impact area to reduce the bounce back. I say reduce because I actually like having some bounce back as it means less work to get the balls. Basically when I hit high or low irons or driver, the ball rolls back after two to three bounces to the front of the CCE mat which is perfect for me as I can just keep using the same ball again and again without needing to walk to get the ball if there was lesser bounce back.
- WIRING: One benefit of the new construction was that I had the ceiling pre-wired for an outlet and ethernet cable which made the wiring have a cleaner look. I didnt know at the time I would go with a ceiling sensor though. Therefore the ceiling ethernet goes back to the switch in utility room. But I have another ethernet running from the switch to where the computer is so what I did is just use an ethernet coupler to connect the ceiling ethernet with the computer ethernet at the switch and this approach works for QED.
- ALIGNMENT OF MOUNTING: I used a laser level with plumbing ceiling/floor dots to help with centering projector, and QED mounting alignment to tee position (which is off center). Without it I was just guessing and this aid made locating the exact spots on the ceiling in reference to the rest of the setup very easy.
- ISSUES WITH OPTOMA GT1090HDR: The image is definitely brighter than BenQ, but because the projector had to be tilted up to reduce the impact of the vertical offset, it led to significant keystoning issues where the screen was perfectly in focus on either the bottom half or the top half but not everywhere at the same time. Not sure if my unit was defective or if this is normal. The BenQ was just easier to work with even though it has less features for image positioning. For example, it does not have horizontal keystone adjustment so it was important to mount it perfectly in the middle which I was able to do with the laser level.
- SOFTWARE: Only thing to note (which has been mentioned several times in other posts) is if you want to use TGC with Ignite then you dont need to use Pod application that comes with Uneekor. You use either Pod with TGC or Ignite with TGC. Not both Pod and Ignite as the sensor wont read your hits. Kind of obvious now, but following instructions at setup it was very confusing.
- PUTTING CUPS: I cut out holes in the interlocking tiles and turf, so the cups are sitting on the cork underlayment. Total heigh is 34 mm and the cups work perfectly. We used an existing file from thingiverse and resized it from 4 inches to 34 mm. The middle cup is not centered on the turf. The reason is that I wanted to be able to put straight from the 18" wide sensor zone for QED on the mat to the hole.
Again, thanks to all the members on this forum!
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