Technical look at the Optishot2 Swingpad - Making it work with other software

[alopresti23]

Hello,

I am a new member, but have used this site and two others to read up and learn quite a bit. Thank you.

I have built my own little setup for practicing and playing indoors using the Optishot2.

My background covers electronics and computer software, so I have poked around a little with the Optishot2 hardware and software.

I am writing this post because I am curious if anyone else would be interested in working to see if we can get the Optishot2 to work with other simulator software.

Protee, The Golf Club software have software development kit data published that explain the interfaces needed to make hardware work with the software, and it's really not that complex.

The Optishot2 swingpad is USB based and using just free USB analyzer software I have been able to determine the tempo, and swing speed data as it interacts with the Optishot software. I can also see Up/Down triggers and sensors being triggered so it appears all the club data can be determined. That is with the Optishot software running.

It will take more work to interact with the unit directly without that software running, and to write some software that can (using all the available physics data) calculate / estimate the ball data needed to make these other software packages run. Clearly some will be fully software driven since the sensor has limited datapoints it can provide, but I think it is doable.

Am I just geeking out, or do other think this is worth spending some time on?

Anyone willing to assist?

Let me know.

Anthony

[tomlars]

Dear Anthony,

I´m not able to assist you in your work however: If there´s a chance that the Optishot could work with TGC2019 or other simsoftware I would totally back you in terms of donations or whatever.

/Tom

[alopresti23]

tomlars If there is further interest I can look at what costs might be. A piece appears to be licensing of the APIs, so perhaps finding out about that upfront would be prudent. As it stands I was able to use some free software to show I can access the HW so confirming the needed elements can be generated for the interfaces, and building software to generate/calculate the data and all of the functions to send/received from the Simulators is what is needed but that is more time than external costs.

[Scamps]

Of that were possible it would make the optishot the best simulator out there, I have said the only thing that lets it down are the graphics and the ball rolling 9n the green or lack of, read somewhere that someone did use tiger woods 08 on the optishot once, don't know if that can be done,.

[Scamps]

optishot ball physics are shocking on the green, I know it's a launch monitor more than a simulator, but I used to play Augusta on tiger woods games using a swing stick and was more fun than the opti as the ball would roll with the slope of the greens, I do have the pro package on opti and love the device but just wish they would either better their own software or team up to maybe use e6 or some other third party software

[3on3putt]

You have that backwards. Optishot IS a simulator. It is NOT a launch monitor.

[huettl224]

I think this sounds like an awesome idea. I can’t say I’d be any help in figuring out how to make it work. But I’d be very interested in it, if it can be done!

[chefseg]

I am available to assist - I am a Mechanical Engineer with a bit of electronics and programming experience! I would love to interface with TGC and Optishot2!

[alopresti23]

I have not given up on this, despite not relying on the Optishot2 currently, so it went on the back burner somewhat. A few folks reached out, and I tried to contact them directly. If anyone is still interested, please send me a direct message. Thanks.

[Jerome]

Somewhat related, I've coded a set of "canned" mouse movements to cheat at the PC version of TGC19(don't judge). Seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to map inputs form Optishot to canned mouse movements or derive mouse movement code from Optishot input.

Seems wireshark could be leveraged to achieve this.

https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/USB

[NateShenner]

I have not given up on this, despite not relying on the Optishot2 currently, so it went on the back burner somewhat. A few folks reached out, and I tried to contact them directly. If anyone is still interested, please send me a direct message. Thanks.

I am very excited about this idea. I am a software developer. Let me know if you guys move forward with this.

[andygg1986]

I haven't played on Optishot before. I know it is just measuring the club face angle and speed and guessing what the ball would do based on that. Does the software display the ball parameters that it thinks are happening (horizontal and vertical launch angles, backspin, sidespin, ball speed)? If so, you could try to grab those with Cheat Engine and feed them into the protee golf interface using their SDK, which is how the GC2/GCQ data gets to TGC. You would need the $900 version of TGC to do that though, and I'm not sure the accuracy of the Optishot pad justifies that kind of outlay for the software. The canned mouse movements for the PC version is a cool idea, although the trick there is figuring out how to map the club info that Optishot provides to a mouse movement.

[alopresti23]

The sensor is seeing the club head speed, club face angle and swing path data based from what I can see. The position of the ball is known based on the Tee location. The rest is all estimated/calculated based on the club data provided. If we can get the sensor data, use some software calcs to generate the the data needed by the TGC interface, it should be doable. It's software to track the shot data for rewind, ensure ready to swing, etc. and provide the shot launch data to the program.

High level overview:

https://csc.protee-united.com/hc/en-us/articles/216279128-The-Golf-Club-SDK-v1-1

https://csc.protee-united.com/hc/en-us/articles/216279108-ProTee-Golf-Interface-SDK

I think that is easier than trying mouse movements. The math for the calculations is out there.