Lee Tracey

ICAS Correct!. But I have received many enquiries as to the potential of being able to produce a camera for the flight of the golfball, so I though I would be polite and try to make an answer.

With the advice from you guys I think I am on the right track to understand the necessary infrastructure of a practice area GOLFCAM.. Information has now come to me from a UK University of their success in tracking tennis balls - see JPEG above. The suggestion is that the technology can be applied to golf balls, and at a fraction of the cost of Trackman.

Hi K14: Very encouraging news. Based on 640 X 512 @ 300IPS in colo ur then the rate is 7.28 seconds per GB. I now discover that SSD memory has come down in price and 240GB is available for about $120 so that means the GOLFCAM-01 could offer ( by owner selection in firmware ) to record in RAW video and that would give 29.12 minutes - that is nearly 30 minutes of fantastic quality raw. For those who wanted longer then they could switch to H.264 compressed and a compression ratio of only 4:1 that would provide almost two hours. However H.264 can compress without serious loss at 60:1. The longer recording time might also serve a different application I learned today from a young Belgian golfer. While I have been assured by many that they would not bother with a camera once they were playing for real, the young Belgian golfer told that the club she belongs to often have practice sessions which are beyond the practice area and use the whole course. For those sessions she said they would provide the time to set up and use cameras. On the price front. News of what I am up to has filtered out a bit and I have been offered a new sensor - this new sensor is 640 X 480 and 480 IPS and global shutter. The key factor however is that in MOQ lots of 1000 it is only $20. The PB-01 is $200 - though I have been told that in large quantity it could be lower - let us say even $100. When you consider the mark up can be as high as 600% from manufacturing cost to end user price then a component cost of $20 is attractive. GoPro have introduced a Hero 3 camera in white at $299 but GoPro are powerful and do not have middle company distributors so they can work on a much smaller percentage - about 400%. $48 to $200.. With that ratio and the vast numbers they sell it is no wonder that their founder and CEO ( Nicholas Woodman ) is a multi millionaire, and then some. Lee Tracey

mchepp - thanks for that. My next task is to work out, or find out, exactly how much recording time is required per practice session. My golf ignorance suggests that it would average out at about two hours and as the GOLFCAMERA-01 need not be switched to RECORD ( by remote RF control ) until a few seconds before the actual club swing takes place then perhaps one hour of actual recording time is all that is needed. The current conception of the GOLFCAM-01 is raw 12 -b per pixel at 640 X 512 @ 300 IPS - 7.28 seconds/GB - this gives us 15.5 minutes of stored raw data on a proposed 128 GB of storage media. To obtain a longer recording time we then add H.264 algorithm compression. The ratio of the H.264 now depends on how much recording time we want and how much reduction in quality we can accept due to compression. A H.264 ratio of 4:1 would give us the one hour. Any advice from anybody? Lee Tracey

SAEVAL125: I am familiar with all those low cost cameras and I have a lab with about fifty different models in various stages of dismantle. But it is no use my trying to compete with these big boys. I could build a twin lens version of the Garmin vehicle unit and use the same SOC but Garmin make 30,000 a month. I have to find a unique niche design that is so different and so better featured that it warrants the higher price due to the lower production rate. In the police body worn world TASER make a poor resolution version which sells for a low price. My version is 100 times better but costs nearly $900 - the sale is about 1 to every 100 Taser.. I find the math and the design aspect easy but the marketing bloody hard. For about $120,000 NRE I can complete the full design and put about fifty fully finished pre-production units on the marketing table. But from then on to set up an in-house marketing operation that could shift thousands I would need another $3 million investment. In the UK just one competent sales engineer costs, with salary and expenses, £120,000 per year - and then still all the costly infrastructure to support them. he route that a small backstreet bum like me has to go is to do deals with about 200 distributors world wide. In the security industry that is difficult. The believe I have is that the golf community will be much easier to approach. Lee Tracey

K14 Hacker: - I will struggle to get the end user price down to the $500 mark as to achieve the 640 X 512 at 300 IPS I will have to use the GP-01 sensor at its component cost of about $200 and just not use its full potential. I have failed to find any other sensor that will reach 300 IPS. Lee Tracey

Finally accepted the attachment when I converted it to JPEG but refused it as a TIFF or PDF or Word or Coreldraw. Lee Tracey

MCHEPP - I only mentioned the Omnivision and Sony as being sensors I already had in my parts bin but I thought I had made it clear that they would not do the job. Below is the sensor I will use if this project does get off the ground. As for the lens: for my law enforcement evidence cameras I used a board lens that cost $4 - however for the GOLFCAM-01 I will not be able to get that cheap as the camera cannot afford the distortion that the $4 lens created, not that the police cared. Sorry! The forum refused to accept the attachment. Send me your email address and I will copy direct to you. Lee Tracey dvr@dsl.pipex.com

Many thanks for all the suggestions and hopefully more will come I am getting the aroma that 300 IPS is the target frame rate and that a resolution as low as 640 X 480 will do the job. Have to go back through my database to try to find a sensor that can meet this. At the moment I have an Omnvision that stops at 100 IPS and a Sony that stops at 164. The answer ( unless somebody knows better) is my 1.3M at 1000 but performance reduced to get to the 300 and a suitable resolution that means we can use SD cards - the component cost will not go down however so the final product may still be up towards $1,000, but at least it will provide a sensible mobile outdoor practice range camera with features specific for golf. Rainproof at IP65 is not a problem. Lee Tracey

The issue of storage brought up by many of you and especially Erik J. Barzeski has prompted me to look at this aspect in detail and the short sharp answer maybe that until a new storage media comes along my proposed 1.3M colour camera at 1000 IPS in easy mobile form may never see the light of day. If we start in raw video from the sensor then our resolution is 1280 X 1024 which will store about 400 consecutive frames per GB of memory with 12 bits per pixel. At 1,000 images per second that's only 0.4 seconds per GB in raw video. If we add H265 compression and fit an SSD 500GB memory for the mobile unit then we are defeated again as the SSD would cost about $2,000 - plus the bulk the camera would have to be for the battery pack as well. Our 1.3colour @ 1000 IPS would fit well in the indoor training studio for then we could buffer to DDR3 and USB3 out to a heavy duty mains powered storage unit. If we change the whole concept and select 2megapixel at 1920 X 1080 at 120 IPS compressed by H.264 then we would need 174 GB of storage per hour. But we could use a laptop hard drive. However that steps up our power source from 3.7V to 12V and a massive battery pack. Nothing but problems! It seems to me that my task is to discover what the minimum resolution is acceptable and what the minimum frame rate is acceptable and what price would be popular. I know I could design a low cost camera based on VGA ( 640 X 480 ) and 100 IPS plus a global shutter, but then so could anybody else so why has it not already been done? I could add the remote control facility and a few other features to make it different but is it worth the NRE investment - it would cost about $120,000 to design but additional money would be needed for the marketing stage or a prior deal with a strong marketing organisation. I will try to add a JPEG of the difference between a global shutter and a rolling shutter, but if it does not work perhaps somebody can tell me how to put it up on this forum. Lee Tracey

It would be easy to provide a remote control, say in an arm band style or large watch style, that would allow you to press the START record button just before you made the swing and then press the STOP record button. Each swing could then be recorded as a segment so that on REPLAY only the last segment ( numbered ) appeared but you could number step back to all previous segments ( swings). I am amazed that the Casio can do the job as I would expect the Casio to have a rolling shutter. Also at 240 the images would be interfaced and that again should( for RS) produce distorted artefacts and artefacts should mislead you as to your true swing. But thanks for the input as I am gaining knowledge of the golf world. Lee Tracey

For a long time now I have been designing high definition video evidence cameras for the international law enforcement and police community. Technology has now reached the stage that a specific golf purpose camera for the practice area could be designed and built, but it will cost more than the law enforcement versions. Is the golf community prepared to pay about $1,000 for such a camera? The camera would have a resolution of 1.3 megapixels and a frame rate of 1000 images per second and a global shutter. The key is the global shutter and the consequent ability to stop motion without false distortion and artefacts. Cameras such as the famous GoPro have rolling shutters in sensors that cost about $10 but a 1.3Mp sensor with a global shutter will cost $200. Existing high performance/high frame rate cameras have had global shutter sensors costing $700 and up. The new sensor suggests an end user price of $1,000. Will the golf world pay that price? The camera would and could work with all or any existing golf analytical software but would only be of value for the practice area. I am not a golfer but those I have managed to discuss this with all state that once on the fairway they could be bothered with setting up a camera. The research organisations say that over 30 million golfers exist in the world and that there are some 35,000 golf clubs with shops. If one does basic math then to sell only one camera to each club and achieve the 35,000 sale would produce a gross profit for the manufacturing company of over $5 million. So the idea seems as though it would be attractive to the commercial world but if golfers refused to buy it then it is a turkey? Lee Tracey R & D Engineer 9 Blackfriars Oswestry, Shropshire, SY11 2DU. UK dvr@dsl.pipex.com 44 (0)1691 659986