ProTee Interface Settings - VCam

[gene438]

I am trying to tweak my VCam, specifically the launch angle of my driver. I normally hit a low drive that draws and rises. I use a 9.5 degree driver. However, in the simulator, about 1/3 of the time, I get a launch angle reading of 18 - 27 degrees even though I know from feel plus where I hit on the impact screen that I have hit my normal low shot. Where do I look to adjust?

One question I had was what is the purpose of the "offset on tee" settings on the vcam settings page. I notice there are settings for driver, irons and wedges.....how do these work? What do they do?

Thanks in advance.

[dclindner]

I'm not an expert, but it is my current understanding that offset is only used in some of the camera processing methods. For PT5, for example, I don't believe it cares what the offset is...it'll look for the longest streak.

Regarding your problem, I've seen this, too, and looking at the camera preview screen, it was always picking up something else and not the ball. To be honest, I'm finding this part of the set-up and operations to be very frustrating. The HCAM seems to work fantastic, but the VCAM seems to get confused by other noise (noise that I'm not able to remove without affecting the ball streak, too). I sometimes wonder if the VCAM used color and I used an orange ball, for example, it would never get it wrong. ;-) Perhaps something to consider. Anyway, for me, I don't have that many misreads to be an issue, but they do happen on occasion.

Check the VCAM captures on the Protee interface the next time this happens (remember not to pass over the hitting sensors or the images will reset). It's a good chance it's missing the ball streak and picking up something else.

[gene438]

Thanks for the input. I think you may be right about the camera perhaps picking up my clubhead or something....but if that is the case, what are some things that can be done to eliminate that? I really don't understand shutter speed, gain, and all the other camera settings and I hate fumbling around in the dark because I'm afraid I will mess them up even more.

If anyone has a good understanding of how to tweak the cameras and what settings do what...I would appreciate any input

Yes, I have read zmax's :how to setup cameras, etc.

[aja]

Default settings out of the box seem to work the best. Those suggested by ZMax (quite some time ago) did not work well at all.

When ProTee did an online session with me they basically set everything back to the default settings and it's worked fine since then.

[dclindner]

First, I find using the Protee Interface to adjust settings like fps and shutter interval is not worth the time. It seems to default back to the driver settings at reboot anyway, so your best bet is to always use driver application FlyCapture to adjust these settings. Also, what I was missing at one point is that the shutter speed and frames per second are directly linked. The frames per second is automatically adjusted so that shutter interval x fps = 1 second. For example, if you need a shutter interval of 25 ms to ensure proper exposure of a frame under your lighting conditions, the frame rate will always be 40. BTW, that works best for the VCAM in my set-up and follows the recommendation in the camera set-up thread.

Now, the actual settings used during frame processing to reduce noise and focus on ball streak is in my view hit or miss. There are too many variables that can come into play, and while it gets it right more often than it gets it wrong, it can be tolerated. I do think there's lots of room for improvement though.

However, I have found leaving filter settings from the Protee Interface at their default setting works the best. Messing with them seemed only to cause it to mis-read more often.

So, once you get the exposure reasonable to show a consistent ball streak in the captures, and then leaving the filter settings to their default settings, along with PT5 for VCAM and PT1 for HCAM, seems to work reasonably for me.

It would be nice if this was more deterministic.

[inorkuo]

you want the fastest shutter speed you can get so that you get the longest ball streak possible. framerate and shutterspeed offset each other, so for me, if i set my framerate at 30fps, i can get my shutterspeed up to 34. the gain setting depends on your lighting situation. i've got my garage pretty dark and use a gain of 8.7db. you want the ball to appear white and the background to be dark gray. it helps if you don't have anything light colored in the background. my black side curtain covers most of my background.

zmax recommends pt5 and that's what i use. i have the minimum grayscale slider all the way down at 5 for the driver. the faster the ball is moving the less white it will be. when you hit a ball and get the streak in the bottom panels of the vcam setting page, you can mouse over any part of the ball streak to see how gray or white it is. my offset is set at 180. these settings work well for my driver and even with a white head, it rarely picks up the club instead of the ball.

[aja]

Check what's going on by hitting balls with the ProTee Interface started and the VCam window open. You will see what the camera is picking up, be it the ball, club or something else. If it's not consistently picking up the ball then you need to make changes. Make sure you specify the club you are hitting in the VCam window as well so it reacts appropriately.

Even better, set up an online session with ProTee.