Skytrak internal hardware

[JRachner]

Does anyone know what’s inside the Skytrak?

There’s three things that the Skytrak could improve to be nearly perfect.

1. Lag time from ball strike to being displayed on the screen.

2. Putting accuracy.

3. Accommodating both right and left handed players.

Number three will not change, which is fine as all but one friend I golf with is right handed.

Number two would be great if they offered an accessory for putting similar to protee/GSA. Ideally an overhead camera so you don’t have to putt over a sensor.

I’d really be interested if there was any fix to minimize the delay below the 3-4 second mark.
Obviously having a decent gaming PC and decent internet connection helps, but best case scenario seems to be about 3.5 seconds.

Is is there an internal processor on the Skytrak that one could upgrade to help reduce lag time?

[shimonko]

Here's the patent which covers what's inside it - http://www.google.com/patents/US20140028838

It was the lag time that made me nearly not buy a Skytrak, but it hasn't bothered me as much as I thought.

Fortunately SimConsole's (JNPG) preprocessing of putts makes it a believable experience - it's extremely rare I can say the SkyTrak was at fault. However there's no preprocessing for anything over chips, and one is at the mercy of SkyTrak's barely adequate accuracy there.

#3. Left and right handed - I suggest that the SkyTrak is cheap enough to have two of them, along with software changes to incorporate handle both. However SkyTrak has a lot of redundant hardware in it so it can cater for a both, so there are a few things they could have done there.

The PC does most of the hard work - could be worth seeing what delay you see between devices, including mobile.

[penrose]

about a year ago someone took one apart and posted pic of it - it was soon taken down - I guess it was considered some type of crime. Seem silly, but is life.

[Tytow]

I was experience a ton of box disconnects with TGC and got a 15' micro USB cable and connect the ST directly to the computer. It help tremendiously with the box disconnections but one added bonus was the lag time reduced dramatically.

[shimonko]

How much do you mean by dramatically?

USB is undoubtedly faster than Wifi, but unless you have really congested Wifi, I'd expect you'd see about the same as me, about 0.6 seconds.

I get an average of 3.7 seconds on USB, average of 4.3 seconds on Wifi.

[Jwheels9876]

The skytrak is an Amazing piece of technology for the price. I upgraded to a GC2 but I got used to the slight delay after a while. The putting did stink unfortunately with all the missed 3 degree random readings from it. For around $1500 though I'd buy it again in a heartbeat and deal with the issues if I couldn't afford the GC2. Plus you get a couple options in e6 golf and creative 3d for a smaller fee to try out instead of paying a boatload to purchase up front.