It's a neat thing--when you can get it to work.
I'm going to give it another go. See if I can find a way to make it work more reliably. Even with the issues I've had, it's already improved my swing tempo and I'd swear I'm putting better.
Blast Motion Golf - THP Review Thread
I'm going to give it another go. See if I can find a way to make it work more reliably. Even with the issues I've had, it's already improved my swing tempo and I'd swear I'm putting better.
I wonder if I have a defective sensor?
Got it back out of the box and re-mounted it on my putter after dinner, last night. It was back to performing the way it did when I first installed it. E.g.: The app shows 23 putts last night. IIRC, it only failed to register one or two. Went downstairs to practice this morning. Mind you: The club was untouched from the night before. Registered the first putt. Missed a couple. Registered a couple more. Missed some more. The longer I went, the more it would miss before registering another. Eventually I set my PuttOut Pressure Putt Trainer aside and just hit balls for consistent distance. Nothing. Increased the distance--which meant striking the ball a bit harder. Nothing. Increased again. Nothing. It had stopped registering putts entirely.
Just tried it again. It's back to registering putts, but very inconsistently. E.g.:
Those dots along the right are one foot apart, and the green one in the lower-right is eight feet from where I putted. The only putt that registered is the ball on the lower right.
Did the sensor reset and tried again:
Same thing, except I swung slightly harder (and more consistently). Again: Only one of the five putts registered.
Mind you: Last night I was putting only five feet. Misses were going only a foot or so past my target. So I was striking the ball more softly. It makes no sense to me, unless the sensor is intermittently defective.
Got it back out of the box and re-mounted it on my putter after dinner, last night. It was back to performing the way it did when I first installed it. E.g.: The app shows 23 putts last night. IIRC, it only failed to register one or two. Went downstairs to practice this morning. Mind you: The club was untouched from the night before. Registered the first putt. Missed a couple. Registered a couple more. Missed some more. The longer I went, the more it would miss before registering another. Eventually I set my PuttOut Pressure Putt Trainer aside and just hit balls for consistent distance. Nothing. Increased the distance--which meant striking the ball a bit harder. Nothing. Increased again. Nothing. It had stopped registering putts entirely.
Just tried it again. It's back to registering putts, but very inconsistently. E.g.:
Those dots along the right are one foot apart, and the green one in the lower-right is eight feet from where I putted. The only putt that registered is the ball on the lower right.
Did the sensor reset and tried again:
Same thing, except I swung slightly harder (and more consistently). Again: Only one of the five putts registered.
Mind you: Last night I was putting only five feet. Misses were going only a foot or so past my target. So I was striking the ball more softly. It makes no sense to me, unless the sensor is intermittently defective.
Edsland
Active member
Intermittently like that seems like a defect. ID get hold of them after the holiday and see what they say. I have one coming later in the week hope it works.
Yup. If it was performing with any kind of consistency at all, e.g.: Misses most putts at five feet but registers most of them at eight or ten, I'd say it's just a sensor sensitivity thing. And, while disappointed, I wouldn't be too awfully surprised, because that carpeting rolls pretty fast. I've putted on greens that are as fast, but not many. But it's wildly inconsistent.
I had requested a return yesterday, and they pretty quickly sent me an RMA. Return shipping on my dime, of course
I just sent them what I posted above, sans photos, but with a written description of what those photos depict. We'll see what they say.
I had requested a return yesterday, and they pretty quickly sent me an RMA. Return shipping on my dime, of course
I just sent them what I posted above, sans photos, but with a written description of what those photos depict. We'll see what they say.Edsland
Active member
Most places are pretty good customer service, hope your next on works correctly, seems like a great thing to play with during the winter.
They're responsive to communications--I'll give them that. I had a response to the message I left them yesterday afternoon by the time I sat down at my computer this morning
All they did, however, was suggest what I'd already tried--and told them in my request I'd already tried: Make certain the sensor mounting "boot" was on the top of the grip firmly (the bottom of the sensor pocket has to sit firmly on the top of the club's grip) and to make certain the sensor is correctly aligned.
So I'll take it back off, put it back on, and try one last time. Since I'm 99-44/100% certain all that is correct already, and the performance of the sensor changed without me touching a thing (the other point they seem to be missing), I expect it'll be futile. But I also expect it's like working with first-line tech support at your ISP: You can know your Internet connection is down because you can see the wire laying on the ground where it fell from the pole and they'll still ask you "Have you tried rebooting the modem?"
I may have figured it out. It may have been the archer, not the arrow
From "Troubleshooting Blast Golf":
I'm going to experiment more, later.
2020-12-27 Update
Which I did, twice more, for another 30+ putts. I think it missed only two strokes in all of those. So I believe the mystery of my "malfunctioning" sensor has been solved.
In the meantime, I received another reply from Blast, in response to my positing my theory as to why my sensor had been giving me grief:
And all this may have, in the process, uncovered a flaw in my putting stroke--if pausing/stalling at the end of a putting backstroke is considered a flaw.
From "Troubleshooting Blast Golf":
At times during my putting practice, in seeking what they claim is the ideal 2:1 backswing:downswing ratio, I've slowed my backswing. This all-of-a-sudden occurred to me when I was just testing. I did 35 putts, of which the sensor failed to register only three. Then it occurred to me: Today I'd been seeking that 2:1 ratio by speeding-up my downswing. So I did an experimental putt slowing my backswing, instead, and, as I'm certain I'd been doing before, pausing ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, at the back of the backswing. It failed to register the putt.
I'm going to experiment more, later.
2020-12-27 Update
Which I did, twice more, for another 30+ putts. I think it missed only two strokes in all of those. So I believe the mystery of my "malfunctioning" sensor has been solved.
In the meantime, I received another reply from Blast, in response to my positing my theory as to why my sensor had been giving me grief:
This makes me very happy, because the sensor is very cool
And all this may have, in the process, uncovered a flaw in my putting stroke--if pausing/stalling at the end of a putting backstroke is considered a flaw.
Last edited:
Just finished 42 practice putts. The sensor missed only one putt, and I'd purposely slowed my backswing way down as an experiment on that one. Otherwise it performed flawlessly.
Church is still out on the utility/accuracy/what-have-you for the "face angle at impact." One would think a negative or positive face angle would result in somewhat predictably missing the cup high or low. That does not seem to happen. At least not anywhere w/in ±1° or so of face angle difference at the distances I was putting today.
I think I'm going to have to do a practice session and take notes on when the ball goes "high" or "low," and look at the other per-stroke stats, such as backstroke and forward stroke rotation.
I will say this: My putting has improved already, just improving my swing rhythm/tempo.
Church is still out on the utility/accuracy/what-have-you for the "face angle at impact." One would think a negative or positive face angle would result in somewhat predictably missing the cup high or low. That does not seem to happen. At least not anywhere w/in ±1° or so of face angle difference at the distances I was putting today.
I think I'm going to have to do a practice session and take notes on when the ball goes "high" or "low," and look at the other per-stroke stats, such as backstroke and forward stroke rotation.
I will say this: My putting has improved already, just improving my swing rhythm/tempo.
pablogomezpt
Active member
Had mine for two days now. It makes practice at home really fun and addicting. I was a very slow backswing guy so getting to .60 for me is hard and feels like I'm jabbing at the ball but already becoming more natural.
Question about using this to for at home fitting. With my quicker stroke I'm starting to miss left every time with too much of a closed face. My face rotation is between 5-7 deg and I'm getting back to fairly square...just slightly closed. I'm using a spider x faces balanced putter. Would my stroke better suited to something with some mild toe hang or is 5 deg fairly straight back straight through?
Question about using this to for at home fitting. With my quicker stroke I'm starting to miss left every time with too much of a closed face. My face rotation is between 5-7 deg and I'm getting back to fairly square...just slightly closed. I'm using a spider x faces balanced putter. Would my stroke better suited to something with some mild toe hang or is 5 deg fairly straight back straight through?
They are addictive 
I'm practice putting more often, and longer, now. Is your "face angle at impact" way negative consistently?
I'm practice putting more often, and longer, now. Is your "face angle at impact" way negative consistently?
pablogomezpt
Active member
Averaging about .7 deg closed with my rotation change.
I'm callin' it quits with the Blast Motion Golf sensor. It's a cool thing--when it works. But I cannot, for the life of me, get that thing to register reliably. It'll register putt-after-putt for a while, then nothing. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to its behavior. As a result I keep messing with my swing to get the verkakte sensor to register a swing, rather than the get the ball in the hole.
That's no way to practice putting, so out it goes.
I'm glad I paid "only" $75 for it. If I'd paid the entire $150 I'd be damned annoyed. Even then: It's unquestionably been my worst golf training aid purchase so far.
That's no way to practice putting, so out it goes.
I'm glad I paid "only" $75 for it. If I'd paid the entire $150 I'd be damned annoyed. Even then: It's unquestionably been my worst golf training aid purchase so far.
Update
Gave the Blast Motion Golf sensor another chance. Have seen a couple updates come along and thought maybe they'd improved the product. Nope: Same pattern of behavior. Same as I reported in my previous post.
What I find somewhat curious is they know certain swing variances cause their sensor to ignore a swing, yet they don't report on when this happens or why. It's a training aid, right? If it's not registering because it "thinks" something's not a valid swing, due to variances outside certain tolerances, would it not make sense to report it? I don't get this thinking.
I'm not certain how useful the thing is, even when it does work. Examples: It'll claim my putt was N° open or closed on a certain putt, yet the putt, itself, goes straight and true, right for the middle of whatever it is at which I'm putting. It reports on average tempo (by which they really mean rhythm [another thing they steadfastly refuse to address]) and average face angle at impact, as well as min and max for each, but they don't report standard deviation. SD is easily as important as average and way more important than min and max. You can be all over the map, with wild extremes, and still have a good average. They report a wealth of other stroke-by-stroke information on each putt, they they don't report averages for these other numbers--much less SD. The data appears to be shareable, which would allow one to load it into a spreadsheet and run their own stats on it, except that doesn't work--at all.
It's back in the box again. I haven't quite gotten to the point of deleting the app, but I'm close. I certainly cannot recommend the product.
Gave the Blast Motion Golf sensor another chance. Have seen a couple updates come along and thought maybe they'd improved the product. Nope: Same pattern of behavior. Same as I reported in my previous post.
What I find somewhat curious is they know certain swing variances cause their sensor to ignore a swing, yet they don't report on when this happens or why. It's a training aid, right? If it's not registering because it "thinks" something's not a valid swing, due to variances outside certain tolerances, would it not make sense to report it? I don't get this thinking.
I'm not certain how useful the thing is, even when it does work. Examples: It'll claim my putt was N° open or closed on a certain putt, yet the putt, itself, goes straight and true, right for the middle of whatever it is at which I'm putting. It reports on average tempo (by which they really mean rhythm [another thing they steadfastly refuse to address]) and average face angle at impact, as well as min and max for each, but they don't report standard deviation. SD is easily as important as average and way more important than min and max. You can be all over the map, with wild extremes, and still have a good average. They report a wealth of other stroke-by-stroke information on each putt, they they don't report averages for these other numbers--much less SD. The data appears to be shareable, which would allow one to load it into a spreadsheet and run their own stats on it, except that doesn't work--at all.
It's back in the box again. I haven't quite gotten to the point of deleting the app, but I'm close. I certainly cannot recommend the product.
A bit over a year later. Getting back into golf. Decided to give this thing another go. New version of the app and new firmware for the sensor since I last used it.
Perhaps the new sensor firmware has improved it? Who knows? But I just did did eleven putts and it registered every one of them. That's encouraging. Plus there were a couple times it "saw" putts that were not putts, but me moving the ball back into position from my putting target. I don't recall it doing that in the past. It correctly noted and disregarded those.
I'm cautiously optimistic. I've had the thing appear to be working well for me for a time, before, then stop working. Only time will tell.
Welcome, very welcome, change to the app: Now, when you review your session, there's a sliding window at the top that gives you stats (low, average, high) for all swing data, not just Tempo and Face Angle At Impact. Woo hoo!
ETA:
So much for optimism. It's only missed one out of twenty-two putts, but, in that time the app lost connectivity with the sensor a half-dozen times or more, which is new behavior. Tried force-quitting and restarting the app, rebooting the phone, resetting the sensor. None of those helped.
I'll reach out to them to see what they have to say, but, for now, the thing's going back in the box.
ETA2:
Blast Motion was very responsive... until they weren't.
As with my prior interaction with them: They were quick to offer suggestions for things to try. Then, after several exchanges, with nothing working, they simply went radio silent--not responding to my last email or, when I wrote a follow-up "I guess you're out of ideas?", not responding at all to that, either.
So I suppose back in the box it goes, eventually to get tired of looking at it and it'll be off the the landfill.
At this point I cannot recommend this product. I suppose I should have lent more credence to the many poor reviews on Amazon.
ETA3:
Now I have to eat my words. It turns out the connectivity problems I've been experiencing probably aren't the fault of the Blast Motion Golf sensor at all, but, believe-it-or-not, my Bluetooth-connected Oticon MiniRITE-R hearing aids!
I came to this discovery entirely by accident. A couple times, recently, I'd found my hearing-aid app disconnected from my hearing aids. Never happened before. After it happened the second time a coincidence occurred to me: I'd used my Apple AirPods for voice-control for the OnForm app, prior to that, both times.
Next time I wanted to do that, I took my hearing aids out and put them in the charger, thus putting them to sleep, before using the AirPods. The problem did not reappear.
Then, it occurred to me: I wondered if my hearing aids Bluetooth had been interfering with the Blast Motion sensor's Bluetooth connectivity?
I did four tests today: First connected my Blast Motion sensor to my iPad. Did two sessions of twenty-five putts each. The sensor didn't miss a beat. Then I re-installed the app on my phone, put my hearing aids on the charger, connected the sensor to my phone, and did another twenty-five putts.
Didn't miss once!
Then I put my hearing aids back in and tried it again. The Blast Motion app began losing connectivity with the sensor nearly right out of the gate.
ETA4:
My putting wasn't getting any better, regardless of whether the Blast Motion Golf sensor was telling me my metrics were getting any better or not. Then I made a couple changes to my swing. One of those changes, after watching the pros putt during a tournament, was to shorten my back-swing appreciably. Something my club guy at my LGS told me I needed to do and I'd forgotten.
The sensor was back to not registering putts, at all, but my putting became a lot better.
Back in the box.
Maybe I'll try it again in another year. Maybe, someday, they'll get their swing algorithms right.
And maybe Jennifer Aniston will ask me out on a date
Perhaps the new sensor firmware has improved it? Who knows? But I just did did eleven putts and it registered every one of them. That's encouraging. Plus there were a couple times it "saw" putts that were not putts, but me moving the ball back into position from my putting target. I don't recall it doing that in the past. It correctly noted and disregarded those.
I'm cautiously optimistic. I've had the thing appear to be working well for me for a time, before, then stop working. Only time will tell.
Welcome, very welcome, change to the app: Now, when you review your session, there's a sliding window at the top that gives you stats (low, average, high) for all swing data, not just Tempo and Face Angle At Impact. Woo hoo!
ETA:
So much for optimism. It's only missed one out of twenty-two putts, but, in that time the app lost connectivity with the sensor a half-dozen times or more, which is new behavior. Tried force-quitting and restarting the app, rebooting the phone, resetting the sensor. None of those helped.
I'll reach out to them to see what they have to say, but, for now, the thing's going back in the box.
ETA2:
Blast Motion was very responsive... until they weren't.
As with my prior interaction with them: They were quick to offer suggestions for things to try. Then, after several exchanges, with nothing working, they simply went radio silent--not responding to my last email or, when I wrote a follow-up "I guess you're out of ideas?", not responding at all to that, either.
So I suppose back in the box it goes, eventually to get tired of looking at it and it'll be off the the landfill.
At this point I cannot recommend this product. I suppose I should have lent more credence to the many poor reviews on Amazon.
ETA3:
Now I have to eat my words. It turns out the connectivity problems I've been experiencing probably aren't the fault of the Blast Motion Golf sensor at all, but, believe-it-or-not, my Bluetooth-connected Oticon MiniRITE-R hearing aids!
I came to this discovery entirely by accident. A couple times, recently, I'd found my hearing-aid app disconnected from my hearing aids. Never happened before. After it happened the second time a coincidence occurred to me: I'd used my Apple AirPods for voice-control for the OnForm app, prior to that, both times.
Next time I wanted to do that, I took my hearing aids out and put them in the charger, thus putting them to sleep, before using the AirPods. The problem did not reappear.
Then, it occurred to me: I wondered if my hearing aids Bluetooth had been interfering with the Blast Motion sensor's Bluetooth connectivity?
I did four tests today: First connected my Blast Motion sensor to my iPad. Did two sessions of twenty-five putts each. The sensor didn't miss a beat. Then I re-installed the app on my phone, put my hearing aids on the charger, connected the sensor to my phone, and did another twenty-five putts.
Didn't miss once!
Then I put my hearing aids back in and tried it again. The Blast Motion app began losing connectivity with the sensor nearly right out of the gate.
ETA4:
My putting wasn't getting any better, regardless of whether the Blast Motion Golf sensor was telling me my metrics were getting any better or not. Then I made a couple changes to my swing. One of those changes, after watching the pros putt during a tournament, was to shorten my back-swing appreciably. Something my club guy at my LGS told me I needed to do and I'd forgotten.
The sensor was back to not registering putts, at all, but my putting became a lot better.
Back in the box.
Maybe I'll try it again in another year. Maybe, someday, they'll get their swing algorithms right.
And maybe Jennifer Aniston will ask me out on a date
Last edited: