SwingByte and SwingByte 2 Discussion Thread

[nick kokonas]

The Android App has been updated to fix the issues you mention.

[tote]

I ordered one over a week  ago and just received my shipping tracking number/notice from a port in China (DHL) ???

and nothing sinc. Up to 5 days shipping? try a couple of weeks or maybe more .... I'll let you know

[x129]

I took 4 days from the time I got the notice to the time it showed up at my house. YMMV.

I hope people don't take my comment as being super negative. Read it as this is a beta product and if you don't like those you might want to wait a month or two and see if they resolve the issues.

Originally Posted by tote

I ordered one over a week  ago and just received my shipping tracking number/notice from a port in China (DHL) ???

and nothing sinc. Up to 5 days shipping? try a couple of weeks or maybe more .... I'll let you know

[Floydpt44]

In regards to the tempo, have you (Nick) found that tour players do adhere to the. 3:1 ratio? A la tour tempo.

[nick kokonas]

Regarding Tempo:

We are in the process of aggregating Tour data for a range of top players and various clubs.  Once we do we will have the data posted on our website for Swingbyte users.

Previously, most of the tempo numbers for tour players that I have seen have been generated from analyzing video frame by frame.  Given that a typical swing lasts about a second and broadcast video is at 30 frames per second, the actual ratios generated are an estimate.  With a club head traveling in excess of 100 MPH the top of swing and impact often happens between frames.

The Swingbyte generates 3 numbers in regards to tempo:  Start of backswing to top of swing / Top to impact / and the ratio between the two.  It measures to the nearest 1000th of a second.

In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v;=jPtrgGRwWf4 that we posted to show the accuracy of the Club Head Speed function vs. a leading (and very expensive!) launch monitor you can see the ratio of our own Brian Payne.  Brian played on the Canadian tour for several years, winning the 2001 Aliant cup.  He is also the winner of the Illinois Open.

You can see that Brian's swings are incredibly consistent with a tempo ratio right around 3.5 with a driver.  We have found that players of this level are right around that number -- and perhaps more importantly are wildly consistent.

In my own experience my numbers are pretty in line with that.  With a 7-iron swing speed of 83 MPH my start to top is right around .975 and top to impact of .280 -- 3.5 ratio.  With a driver the average of 20 swings was .893 to the top and .263 to impact... 3.4 ratio at 96 MPH.

As I work to increase club head speed on my drives I often generate more variable tempo numbers... 4.1 to 4.3.  On those I tend to lose flow and balance.  As soon as I dial back it falls more in line.  So I've personally found this to be very good instant feedback on how to stay balanced and with a proper tempo as I work to gain speed and distance.  In fact, that is what I have found to be most useful thus far with the Swingbyte as I am not currently working to change my swing plane.  That will come after the golf season.

[Floydpt44]

Thanks, I should be getting my unit any day and I am most looking forward to the tempo aspect. Along the same lines --have you found the short game is 2:1? By the way I am therapist who just got back from a TPI course (also certified in ART and SFMA) and think this will go nicely with some of my goals for me and clients. Georgie, PT, DPT

[nick kokonas]

Gentlemen,

I've been asked to stop posting lest it seem like I am plugging Swingbyte too much without being a paying advertiser.  That was not my intention -- I saw the questions on here and thought it a good forum to answer them to a number of people at once.  So for the time being I'll scoot over to other topics.... I'm enjoying the site and the boards.

Regards,

Nick

[dsc123]

x129 has had this for at least 2 days and 2 hours and still no word!??  haha.  i'm dying to see a review on here.

[tote]

I ordered mine 2 weeks ago and received a notice last Saturday that it was at a port in China I just checked the DHL tracking and it's still there

What gives? They pretty much guarantee a 5 day shipment period.

I'm not impressed

[x129]

I don't really have the tools to validate their numbers. The clubhead speed and tempo seems right but the rest are a lot harder to verify.  I think most of the other numbers depend on aligning the unit properly which is subject to user error. The latest android fixes some of the crashes but I find in general the UI is pretty bad. It isn't one thing but a bunch of little ones. For example it says "use current club". How the heck am I supposed to know what the current club is. Tell me the current club is a 5 iron. I  also spend a lot of time navigating around when I want to compare swings. I am also never really sure when it captures a swing. Now some of that I think is because I am doing some of the testing with an almost golf ball into a net and am thinking the contact might not be hard enough. Outside it has been tricky to use since the sun makes the screen almost invisible (not really their problem). I think the product has a lot of promise but it is probably 1 or 2 revs away from being a most have item.

Originally Posted by dsc123

x129 has had this for at least 2 days and 2 hours and still no word!??  haha.  i'm dying to see a review on here.

[dsc123]

I got an email saying mine shipped 5-6 days after I ordered.  I received it a day or two later.

[tote]

Ok my swingbyte doesnt seem to work

everything is set , blue nd green light on

I press add and select the club

swing and hit stop and nothing is recorded

Am I missing something?

[dsc123]

Make sure you have it upright; logo on bottom, lights on top.  I find it to be very buggy, but also very cool.  Sometimes it connects quickly, sometimes it doesn't connect.  Sometimes I can't pull up my history.  The upside is that judging from the discussion on another forum, it looks like the developers are quick to respond with assistance and even send a new unit if yours isn't working.  You should just shoot an email to tech support.

I'll try to sync it up with my wife's iPad because I can't take screenshots on my Android phone.  Once I do that I'll post some pictures.  It's a pretty cool device.

[Joshua Holmes]

Originally Posted by jamo

I saw that, I was just wondering if they were intending on expanding to Macs and PCs. I'm about 90% sure the answer is no, but I figured I might as well ask.

They are going to be having a web portal where you can view from any machine then the same info you see on your device..  Perhaps at that point it will create a small app that will interface with Bluetooth

[LovinItAll]

This sounds interesting. I wouldn't even care if swing speed isn't exactly accurate as long as it's consistent. For example, if I know that I swing driver 99mph on FlightScope and this device says 95 but every mph difference is right (if I swing 1mph faster, both devices detect 1mph faster), that would suffice. The tempo accuracy means a great deal to me, though, as I've read many articles stating a commonality between bs:ds ratio in professional golfers' swings. Would like to see an instructor here weigh in on that. Btw, did the company ever send Erik a demo for review? I know he's a TrackMan guy, but hopefully we can get an unbiased review if he gets his hands on one of these.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by LovinItAll

Btw, did the company ever send Erik a demo for review? I know he's a TrackMan guy, but hopefully we can get an unbiased review if he gets his hands on one of these.

Nope. And I like Flightscope just as much. I have no loyalty to Trackman.

[LovinItAll]

Nope. And I like Flightscope just as much. I have no loyalty to Trackman.

Those are both high dollar units, right (FS/TM)? What I meant was that comparing an inexpensive unit like the SwingByte to those is probably like apples to oranges. Hard to believe that a $150 piece of equipment is ever going to impress someone that's accustomed to regularly using top of the line gear, not that you would intentionally write something negative because of some loyalty or whatever, if that makes sense. Anyway, it's too bad they didn't shoot you a unit. Your recommendation would have probably led more than a few people to buy one.

[dsc123]

Originally Posted by LovinItAll

Those are both high dollar units, right (FS/TM)? What I meant was that comparing an inexpensive unit like the SwingByte to those is probably like apples to oranges. Hard to believe that a $150 piece of equipment is ever going to impress someone that's accustomed to regularly using top of the line gear, not that you would intentionally write something negative because of some loyalty or whatever, if that makes sense.

Anyway, it's too bad they didn't shoot you a unit. Your recommendation would have probably led more than a few people to buy one.

I think the point of comparison isn't to see if its better than a doppler system; its to see if the swingbyte is accurate enough to be useful in its own right.

I have one but I've only used it once or twice.  As I promised a few weeks ago, I'll try to get a review up here soon.  Maybe after I do that I'll send it to Erik to borrow.  I'd like to know how accurate it is.