Skytrak and night use

[ganders75]

hi guys, could really use some help here. I've been trying to use my skytrak at night with just the light from the projector (benq 1080st+) and it will not pick up shots, it gets maybe 1 or 2 in 10. Sometimes you can hit 10 in a row and have it miss all of them. It's basically useless, and it's super embarrassing if you have someone round. The laser goes out for about 1-2 seconds, then just comes back on. I've moved ball position to various places, still misses more than it captures. Behind me everything is shrouded in black velour-type theatre curtains, but still nothing is picked up.

ive tried various lighting, to no effect. Room lights are LED spots, I've tried a floor light at various places in the room, nothing has helped. Last night I even tried left hand mode, hitting over the unit. Directly beyond the ball was a black sheet. It would not even pick up a shot as being hit, so laser stayed on the whole time. Tried moving ball position all over the place, no effect.

So, is this "normal"? I've seen people saying lighting should make no difference, but surely I can do something to improve it. Do LED lights cause problems? Anyone using their unit in a dark room and actually having it work? Is mine just broken and needs to go to skytrak for repairs?

[Anthony422]

Not normal my unit picks up 99% of the shots did have that problem but my voice attack software was putting me into putt mode prob cause my wife called me a putz and it went into that mode

[dborden0]

I play in a dark shop, no lights and I have no issues. Maybe 1 or 2 missed shots a round, but those are usually shanks. It seems like flop shots don't pick up consistently for me though.

[mikeingp]

Is it working perfectly with the lights on?

Edit; sorry, I see you said you've tried it with the lights on. SkyTrak has stated lights don't make a difference;

http://golfsimulatorforum.com/forum/skytrak/110624-v2-6

Mine's in my garage, sometimes I'll turn on all the lights and sometimes I'll just use the projector lighting...doesn't make a difference for me.

[ganders75]

So, a quick update. Didn't work at all on friday or saturday nights, got to the point where it very nearly ended up going out the window... then on sunday night in frustration I think I messed with the dark curtains behind me and moved them slightly. Shouldn't have made any difference, but seemed to start picking up shots again. Basically "CGWT" - Came Good While Testing.

SkyTrak_Seth, my thinking is that there is something environmental which is causing it not to pick up the ball when in IR mode. Is there any chance of some kind of "debug utility" - by which I mean one where you can connect it to the unit and get it to display the actual image(s) that it has captured? It wouldn't have to run at the same time as either the Skytrak app or TGC - just something stand alone to help with debugging your environment when these niggling issues become 100% no-reading disasters. I'm guessing you have something similar to this in your office for debugging during development? Rough and ready would be absolutely fine, I realise this isn't something which you market as a feature, and wouldn't be offering any support on...

[penrose]

For me, if I use the skytrak application to practice before I start TGC I get what you are getting. Hit the ball, top light goes red and nothing ever happens. I have to reboot the PC.

[ganders75]

Yeah, ok - I haven't seen that before to be fair - one to be aware of though. When it's working normally I've always been able to switch between the two, so long as both aren't running at the same time it doesn't seem to cause any problems at all...

For me, I'm still in the skytrak range application. TGC is not running, as this is from cold boot. When I hit the top light is green, as in "armed" or whatever SkyTrak call it. Immediately as you hit top light goes to "disarmed" or red while it's checking for a shot, but - and i'm just guessing here - seems like it doesn't find anything so it resets itself after 1-2 seconds back to green, green, green.

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Yeah, you cannot have both running at the same time - that may what's happening when switching for you penrose .

ganders75 , hitting in the dark shouldn't be any problem at all. If you turn the lights on, does it start picking up shots? Are you using white golf balls?

[ganders75]

Using brand new white balls. Same problem. The lights actually make no difference at all - if anything maybe actually worse to be honest. When it's not working, turning them on doesn't seem to help one way or the other - which I find odd. Do the camera's only switch to IR mode when it gets dark enough - I always kind of assumed that would be the case? Are they colour the rest of the time, or just black and white?

I'd really, really, really like to see what those camera's are seeing - i'm sure there is some kind of interference it's picking up on. I've changed the curtains behind me for a longer set - there is now an extra 3ft of drop to mess about with. That means that I can have them a lot looser and move them about a bit more. It has been much better behaved since I hung them.

Have to bite the bullet this week and get my mate back around. It picked up literally 1 in 10 of his swings the other night - don't think he was buying my excuse of "it never normally missed a shot" after the 100th time...

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Ok, that makes more sense at least. The unit is always using B/W images with infrared lighting. Is it possible your older set of curtains was reflective? Like had a sheen on them? You could tell by just taking a picture with a camera flash.

[Sledge0001]

Make sure you have the base of the unit level with the mat. I've noticed that it needs to be perfectly level as well as on the same plane as your mat!

[ganders75]

Curtain material is the same, just larger piece. I use theatre curtains from thomann.de - they're acoustically dead too which is a nice bonus.

Last night it was doing it again. Would not pick up driver for love or money (or large amounts of swearing). My 9i & 3w it got everything. I use tee claw with tomahawk tees when I hit driver. I changed to a new tomahawk tee and binned off the tee claw, and it started picking up driver again.

More testing required, but hopefully some progress. I have an IR wildlife camera which I'm going to re-purpose and see if there's any weird reflections going on...

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Maybe try moving the tomahawk tee an inch or so to the right of the laser dot. Could be catching the tee in the pic with the driver shots.

[ehallin]

What kind of mat are you hitting off of? I've found the dust particles from my Mat obstruct the picture and I get crazy miss reads when this happens.ill hit my 58° like 175 lol. Easy fix is vacuuming my mat to clear the dust particles. Have to do this about once every 2weeks...

[BadEddieKit]

Ive found clothes/shoes to be a main culprit for me. Make sure there is no white or silver on your legs or feet.

[Miura Mario]

I have a white wall background and wear completely white shoes and have never had an issue regarding background.. hit well over 7k shots.. i would play with ball position.. keep moving the ball back - culprit could likely be your launch angle