Tempostik

[Ty_Webb]

Hi all,

I did a search and didn't find anything. Visio putting has a new training aid for putting called the tempostik. It's an LED strip basically that moves the lights in line with an ideal tempo for putting. Whenever I go on a SAM puttlab, my backstroke is too fast relative to my through stroke and I just can't get the picture in my head of what I need to do to make it work. I think that a tempostik would be really helpful to help me understand how it should work.

The problem is I'm not sure if you can get it in the US and it's GBP495, which is absurdly expensive for what it is and it's only on android (WTF?). I suspect that you're paying a good chunk of change because it will adjust the speed and length of the stroke according to how long of a putt you input. That's pretty cool, but way more than I need, so I'm thinking about getting an LED strip and something like a raspberry pi and creating my own. It would only have one putt length built in - probably something around a 10 foot putt I would guess, but it seems like something that's fairly easily doable and for about $40-50, which is much more like what I'd be willing to spend. 

The problem with THAT idea is I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. I looked around on youtube, but most of what I could find was assuming at least a basic understanding of what you're doing and I don't have that. Does anyone on here have any thoughts on where I could find a "create your own programmable LED strip for beginners" type thing? 

Here's a link to the Tempostik

[iacas]

28 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I did a search and didn't find anything. Visio putting has a new training aid for putting called the tempostik. It's an LED strip basically that moves the lights in line with an ideal tempo for putting.

Hmmmmm.

So for about $500, you get an LED light strip and an app that controls it. An Android-only (for now?) app, that is. I agree that's kinda ridiculous. Maybe not for an instructor, or a Tour player, but… for a regular golfer? Yeah.

This is somewhat relevant in a timely sense because just before Thanksgiving break I asked everyone to find the beats of their putting stroke. I'm around 82 bpm… but that's just a continuous motion type thing. Back and through. A good "rhythm" or ratio is often about 2:1. The backswing is longer because it starts at zero, ends at zero, and accelerates to less than peak speed (impact) in the middle, while the downswing is just zero to peak speed.

But still… some people have faster beats than others, and so to hit a putt the same distance, they take a shorter backswing (and follow through). Does this device account for this sort of thing? Would Brandt Sneaker and Ben Crenshaw be able to use this?

28 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Whenever I go on a SAM puttlab, my backstroke is too fast relative to my through stroke and I just can't get the picture in my head of what I need to do to make it work.

Or is your downstroke too slow?

28 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

The problem is I'm not sure if you can get it in the US and it's GBP495, which is absurdly expensive for what it is and it's only on android (WTF?). I suspect that you're paying a good chunk of change because it will adjust the speed and length of the stroke according to how long of a putt you input.

But again, does it adjust based on your personality?

28 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

That's pretty cool, but way more than I need, so I'm thinking about getting an LED strip and something like a raspberry pi and creating my own. It would only have one putt length built in - probably something around a 10 foot putt I would guess, but it seems like something that's fairly easily doable and for about $40-50, which is much more like what I'd be willing to spend.

Yeah. Plus… you could pretty easily adjust the timing to account for Brandt/Ben types.

28 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

The problem with THAT idea is I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. I looked around on youtube, but most of what I could find was assuming at least a basic understanding of what you're doing and I don't have that. Does anyone on here have any thoughts on where I could find a "create your own programmable LED strip for beginners" type thing?

I'll poke around a little bit. Not today, but I'll be keeping this in mind, and will send some texts… etc.

[iacas]

Could you build something in GarageBand with tones? It wouldn't be as good as the lights, but I'm thinking:

• Three beats at your preferred "bpm" to count you in.
• One beat to start your backswing.
• One beat after 2/3 the time to indicate the transition.
• One beat at the time to mark to indicate impact.

For example if your BPM was 80, that means your stroke is 3/4 of a second long.

• three beats 3/4 of a second apart to count you in, like 1, 2, 3, GO.
• the GO beat sounds.
• half a second later, the transition beep sounds.
• a quarter of a second after that, the impact beep sounds.

You could build in five or six seconds of silence, and then play that sound on a loop.

If @Pretzel and you and anyone else wants to check my math or whatever… please.

[Pretzel]

Not sure how Garageband works exactly since I don't think I've ever used the desktop version and know I haven't used the phone one since the iPhone 4, but if it allows you to compose based on measures and then adjust tempo independently this would be the easiest way to make something similar that's auditory (no flashing lights) and works similarly (assuming you're going for a 2:1 tempo ratio and using a 4/4 time signature):

1. 1 measure of lead-in clicks, one per beat
2. 1st beat of 2nd measure is a different and distinct sound from lead-in clicks
3. Silence for 2nd beat of 2nd measure
4. 3rd beat of 2nd measure is your downswing start click
5. 4th beat of 2nd measure is your ball impact click
6. 2-3 measures of silence for you to reset

Then you can adjust the tempo of the playback on the whole if you want a faster or a slower overall tempo while keeping the same rhythm to the putting stroke (that 2:1 backswing/downswing ratio), and you can set playback to loop. I can mess around with Garageband this afternoon now that I have an iPhone again and see if I can make something others could borrow/steal/use.

[Ty_Webb]

29 minutes ago, iacas said:

Could you build something in GarageBand with tones? It wouldn't be as good as the lights, but I'm thinking:

• Three beats at your preferred "bpm" to count you in.
• One beat to start your backswing.
• One beat after 1/2 a measure to indicate the transition.
• One beat at the 3/4 measure mark to indicate impact.

For example if your BPM was 80:

• three beats 3/4 of a second apart to count you in, like 1, 2, 3, GO.
• the GO beat sounds.
• half a second later, the transition beep sounds
• a quarter of a second after that, the impact beep sounds

You could build in six seconds of silence, and then play that sound on a loop.

If @Pretzel and you and anyone else wants to check my math or whatever… please.

Math looks reasonable to me - other than maybe I'd describe it as 2/3 of a measure and at 1 to indicate impact. 80bpm would be go, half a second, transition, quarter of a second, impact. I have (or had) the tour tempo app on my phone, which made beeps exactly like this. They use 3/1 for full swing and 2/1 for putting. You can tell it whether to use 18/9 or 16/8 or 14/7 etc. timing. 

Side note - I described it as my backswing being too fast because my downswing feels right to me. My backswing is getting to the right place for my downswing. I wind up with about 1.7/1 though. The beeps just never really resonated with me to get the timing to work. I think a set of lights to track would be great.

As to the other questions you had about how it adjusts for timing between a Crenshaw and a Snedeker player, I have no idea - I would hope (given the price) that they've built in everything you could possibly dream of, but I don't have one, so can't confirm.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Ty_Webb

[Pretzel]

I don’t know how to share a saved beat from GarageBand or even how to save a beat on my phone, but if you use the beatpad and turn the metronome on (it’s highlighted blue in the screenshot) this is similar to what I was thinking of.

I couldn’t make the beat longer than a single measure so in this example the tempo bpm is used to set the full start to finish duration of the putting stroke (i.e. a bpm of 60 means start of backswing to impact with ball takes 1 second). It has 3 lead-in beats and then the 3 different beats to signal start of backswing, start of downswing, and impact with ball.

Here’s what it looks like, should take about 10 seconds to set up yourself if you have the GarageBand mobile app and can find the beat pad (hit the button in the top left that looks like a grid).

Alternatively if you want faster lead in beats that give you a better sense of how long the backstroke should be, just add in extra lead-in beats to the 3rd portion of each beat like in the photo below. 

 

The lead-in beats for the first example are spaced a full stroke length apart. So if you were swinging the putter back and forth repeatedly you'd hear the lead-in beat once every time your putter passed the bottom of the stroke (where you'd be hitting the ball, approximately). The second example you'd hear the lead-in beat twice per stroke, once at the bottom of the stroke and once at the end of a stroke (forwards or backwards) if you were swinging the putter back and forth repeatedly.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Pretzel

[Ty_Webb]

 

I got my first crack at this underway. I took a rough shot at timings based on watching Brad faxon on YouTube. Skimming through it frame by frame and estimating how far back and then through he was after each frame. 

I got a 1 meter led strip that has 144 leds on it. Then used an elegoo mega kit I found on Amazon for $50 that includes all the other bits and pieces. I’ve also watched an inordinate amount of YouTube videos about programming these things. Arduino is the coding system I used. Couldn’t figure out how to do it elegantly so went with brute force. Basically turn on this led, wait xx milliseconds and then turn that one off and the next one on. Rinse and repeat. 
 

Mr Faxon’s timing is absurdly good. It’s literally exactly 18 frames until top of backswing and then the 27th frame there is no light between club and ball but it hasn’t moved yet. I have the 2:1 timing on my strip down, but the flow doesn’t seem quite right yet. I’m going to take a look at some Sam PuttLab output and see if I can get it better somehow. I think I’m a bit slow half way back and a bit fast 80% of the way back. This however is where my brute force method is annoying. Have to find the right spots to update the timings. 
 

After that I’m going to add a ball to the lights. I think 3 pixels will do the job nicely. Just have to leave them still until impact and then move them away at the right relative speed vs the putter. 

[iacas]

7 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

I think I’m a bit slow half way back and a bit fast 80% of the way back. This however is where my brute force method is annoying. Have to find the right spots to update the timings. 

It’s not linear, of course. It accelerates and decelerates.

Yours seems to have some momentum, though. Just not quite right? Record it next to a pendulum in slow mo?

But a great start I’d say!

P.S. Please upload videos to UouTube or Vimeo.

[Ty_Webb]

40 minutes ago, iacas said:

It’s not linear, of course. It accelerates and decelerates.

Yours seems to have some momentum, though. Just not quite right? Record it next to a pendulum in slow mo?

But a great start I’d say!

P.S. Please upload videos to UouTube or Vimeo.

Okay - I’ll put it on YouTube sorry. 
 

Regarding the timing, if it’s a pendulum then the acceleration profile should look like a sine wave (with some impetus to get things going smoothly) - in an ideal putting stroke would you expect there to be any acceleration other than gravity on the way down? Or is the player just along for the ride at that point? 

 

[iacas]

47 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Regarding the timing, if it’s a pendulum then the acceleration profile should look like a sine wave (with some impetus to get things going smoothly) - in an ideal putting stroke would you expect there to be any acceleration other than gravity on the way down? Or is the player just along for the ride at that point? 

Yes there’s more than gravity.

The period of a pendulum is determined by the length of the pendulum, so if there was not more than gravity everyone would have the same timing.

A good putting stroke should resemble a pendulum but possibly on a different planet where gravity is stronger.

My putting stroke is faster than what gravity would do, but the acceleration profile still resembles what it would look like if it was a pendulum.

On 8/13/2014 at 4:10 AM, iacas said:

And to be clear, I'm not advocating a "pure pendulum" swing - you'd often have to take your putter back quite far to hit even a 20-foot putt - but one in which your muscles fire to mimic a pendulum motion, or basically, to have a smooth acceleration curve that peaks (reaches max speed) at or before impact with the golf ball.

And…

You can see the shape of the lines in the graphs.

And since the backswing is only half of a full arc, it only reaches about half the speed. The backswing starts at zero and ends at zero with the goal of moving it to a point where the downswing becomes a matter of only accelerating (with possibly the tiniest bit of deceleration at the very end).

That’s why it’s often roughly twice as long and half the peak speed.

So, kinda like a sine wave, but the backswing is a complete cycle and the downswing is half of one at twice the magnitude.

Or, 1.5 sine waves. With the 0.5 being a different size.

[Ty_Webb]

I updated my code a bit to use Tiger’s acceleration profile. I think this is now looking pretty good.