VisTrak IRVC questions/issues

[COgolfengineer]

Hi,

I'm new to the golf simulator world and did a lot of research on the different launch monitors and sim software. A lot of options out there! I am an electrical engineer and find the technology very interesting. With covid and working from home, I decided to invest in a home golf simulator in my garage.

I decided to buy a VisTrak IRVC unit with the thought of possibly adding the Spin cam to it later. I also bought TGC 2019. I was drawn to GSA by the technology, low price, and also supporting a very small company with a passion for this stuff. Getting it going has been a struggle but it is functioning and distances seem close in TGC. Martin has been helpful in answering my questions, but he is pretty strict about his Tues-Thurs 12-3pm support times, and since I'm 2 hours behind him, I tend to email him after his 3pm shutoff, so I usually get a response the next day.

I'll get to my issues, but want to give a bit of a background to my setup.
1. Cameras are ~9ft above the ground and the unit is mounted sideways. I re-mounted the cameras appropriately.
2. The lighting is just the built-in 4 IR panels in the VisTrak IRVC. There's other lighting in the garage but nothing that shines directly at the ball.
3. My PC is a modern gaming PC; 9th gen Intel i7 and 8GB Nvidia graphics card.
4. Both cameras are assigned properly in the GSA Control Panel; camera 1 is the launch angle camera (Vcam C, USB2), and camera 2 is the VisTrak camera (Eagle, USB3).
5. I'm running v 9.4.9.5 of the GSA Control Panel.
6. The hitting mat is a FiberBuilt.

Ok, onto my question. I actually have a bunch, but I don't want to load this up, so I'll just keep it to 1 question or issue for now. So the VisTrak camera or Eagle camera seems to work just fine. It detects the ball without any issue and registers shots just fine. The launch angle camera, the Vcam C, however shows the ball on the Video Stream and the ball is in focus, but the Control Panel doesn't see the ball. I've messed with the camera gain, gray scales, etc and nothing changed, so not sure what else to do. Here's a screen shot of the Control Panel in case that helps.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

[keither5150]

Try raising your camera gain and then if it still doesn't pick up....lower the min ball grayscale. See the two pics. I have more light than you so, you just simply can't copy my settings. I also have that LED spotlight. More light allows you to drop your shutter speed which provides a sharper image. You want to the ball to be recognized and the image to be sharp enough so that it can distinguish the ball size between the two images.

[COgolfengineer]

Hi keither5150,

Thanks for your reply. I tried increasing the camera gain and still same result.

I will lower the min ball grayscale. Just for clarification, when you say to lower the grayscale, the number actually goes up such that the color square next to it becomes more white, correct?

I will also try to see if shining some extra LED light changes anything.

Thanks.

[keither5150]

Lower......number goes down.

[COgolfengineer]

Ok I tried lowering and increasing the min ball grayscale and nothing changed. i also shined a bright LED spotlight on it with changing the grayscales, and again nothing changed, not detecting the ball. I also tried reducing the shutter speed while shining the LED light on it and still nothing.

Martin asked to send him a video file and will look at it tomorrow. I have a feeling something broke with the latest CP update. I don't have an older version to roll back to. I think the previous version detected the ball, but I was sent a 12mm lens instead of a 25mm lens so the ball size was way too small.

keither5150, I saw in a different post you mentioned that you have the previous CP revisions. Do you have the most previous version to 9.4.9.5? I think it was 9.4.8.4 or something like that.

[COgolfengineer]

keither5150 nevermind about sending me the older CP revisions. I found them all under the Technical News page on GSA's site. Thanks.

[keither5150]

They won't work..... it will keep downloading the current version. PM me with your email address.

[COgolfengineer]

Martin got back to me about the Vcam not finding the ball. I have a FiberBuilt hitting mat and had one of those tees installed and light was reflecting off the tee and the Vcam thought that small light was the ball. So I removed the tee and the Vcam found the ball. I took a few shots and saw the launch angle was measured from the Vcam, awesome. I'm running the latest CP, v9.4.9.8.

A couple things I noticed:

1. The launch angle seemed decently accurate for low speed shots but when I took a faster swing with a 4-iron, it was reporting ~46deg when it should've been 15-20deg. I have the shutter speed set to 250us. When I would set it at lower shutter speeds, the Vcam wasn't as reliable at detecting the ball properly.
2. I don't see how to see the 2nd frame that the Vcam records; the 1st frame shows the ball at its original location and Frame 2 shows nothing. That's the same whether it's a slow or fast shot.
3. When I click on the Frame 2, the visible window shrinks; do you know why it does this?

Thanks.

[lexbury]

Hello COgolfengineer, I have a very similar set-up to you (with Vistrak IVRC) though my mat is the country club elite. I am having problems with Vistrak consistently finding the ball in "Camera 1", I have to manually click the "soft trigger" before each shot to find the ball. When it does find the ball, the shot data results are quite inconsistent. Have you been able to resolve your issues regarding the Vistrak finding the ball, and when it does, how have you fixed the launch angle?

Thanks!

[COgolfengineer]

Hi lexbury , I did some testing with the VcamC and mostly found the launch angle measurements to be accurate....when it worked. Most of the time when it didn't work, the VcamC camera (camera 1) was very dark, and as you mentioned, I would hit the Soft Trigger and then the image would show up. So something is causing the camera to get in a bad state sometimes. It worked maybe 50% of the time, if that. Because of that, I just unplugged that camera and just used the Eagle camera. The launch angle is fixed for a certain club selection though, so it's not a long term solution.

GSA has pretty much discontinued the VisTrak IRVC unit because the VcamC wasn't reliable. GSA does offer a free conversion kit to move the VcamC to the floor, which they then just call it the Vcam. So you could do that. I think some people on here who have the Vcam on the floor are getting pretty good results. An alternative is to buy another VcamC and mount both VCamC cameras to the sides of the IR unit, which then operates as the VisTrak Stereo. Then the 2 VcamC cams measure the launch angle and it seems this is pretty reliable. I didn't want any cameras on the floor, so I bought another camera but haven't installed it yet.

The GSA naming can be pretty confusing. In case you don't know, GSA only uses 2 different cameras in all their systems; a high speed camera (USB3.0, 590fps) and a high resolution camera (USB2.0). The high speed camera is known as the VisTrak camera or the VisTrak Eagle camera. The high res camera is used for everything else, so Vcam, VcamC, Stereo cams, Spin cam (I think), etc. This is actually nice because you can configure your cameras in many different configurations if needed.

[lexbury]

Thanks so much for your reply! Your advice is appreciated as I have found it difficult to get Martin's attention on these matters. I will review your advice and get back to you so we can share experiences. Best regards!