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Review Rapsodo MLM Thread

The Indoor Golf Shop
After a very long day at work I came home to a box (Thank you, Team Rapsodo and Callaway). Had to get out to hit a few. I think I still need to find the best way to position the MLM height due to the way the mats are elevated at the range. Here are a few screen shots for the first (and abbreviated) experience.

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someone got an unexpected fedex package last night.... charging up the Rapsodo right now then will be hitting the range after work to get some work in with it.
 
1664555302242.jpeg

Well hello... charging now and will hit it into my new net tonight or tomorrow.
 
I got out to the range for some practice, and I have thoughts.

But first, of course, I have a Friday afternoon meeting. :sick:
 
Damn the look of the app on the iPad is SOOOOOO much better than it was when I used my phone with it. Way more in depth and premium looking!
 
drp3434 said:
One thought I just had as I'm realizing my launch angles seem a bit low (I know they are in general) is I am curious of the importance of the unit being perfectly level to the ground where you are standing.
Click to expand...
This was an issue I saw when I had one last season. Same with shot shape. Level ground I'm guessing is pretty vital because my range was bumpy as well and it was impossible to find a spot that was as level as I wanted it to be. Led to shots tracers and launch numbers that were nothing like what I actually saw
 
Muchmore18 said:
This was an issue I saw when I had one last season. Same with shot shape. Level ground I'm guessing is pretty vital because my range was bumpy as well and it was impossible to find a spot that was as level as I wanted it to be. Led to shots tracers and launch numbers that were nothing like what I actually saw
Click to expand...
It will be interesting to see with all of us using it at the same time to see what kind of info we get.
 
@Scrap22 is going to the range today with a bag of white balls to hit along side the yellow range balls they have at this driving range. There could be issues tracking yellow balls that some ranges have.
 
Muchmore18 said:
This was an issue I saw when I had one last season. Same with shot shape. Level ground I'm guessing is pretty vital because my range was bumpy as well and it was impossible to find a spot that was as level as I wanted it to be. Led to shots tracers and launch numbers that were nothing like what I actually saw
Click to expand...
I played around with positioning this morning and didn't see any discernable difference no matter how I had it set up. I made sure to be able to gather a good amount of data this morning, so I'm just waiting to be able to sit down, go through it, and put it together in a good post.
 
So far, I am seeing the most discrepancy in numbers from driver. Range balls seem to give shorter distances vs actual, on course with real balls give me longer than actual distances.

Irons seem to be a little bit closer to what I expect.
 
First session with the Rapsodo MLM went well yesterday.

I concentrated on my GW, 7i, and Driver with all my shots.

After a quick warm up, I tried the 1st practice session with the 7i.

I took 10 swings with each club and didn’t delete any of my shots from the Rapsodo.

Video:
View attachment trim.2211DB0A-BCEF-4C57-A051-A3DD0DE017B0.MOV
























In all my swings I was aiming toward the white truck shown. The video above is taken directly from the app. You can change the speed of the video from .25X to normal speed. The video is fully editable if you want to include more of your finish as the video generally stops right after the swing, but it did take a couple seconds after the swing as well. You can also decide to save the video on your phone, save within Rapsodo, or send the video to anyone for example your coach.

One suggestion I would like to see updated in future software would be the ability to change the four categories shown on the video. You may want to show height apex to your coach, maybe you just want to see the smash factor, or ball speed. From what I have found you can not change what is shown on the right although many other categories are being measured.

I use my 7i from 145 to 150ish so looking at the chart below I felt the Rapsodo accurately measured my 7i.

Here is the chart below: The Rapsodo did catch all 10 swings on the 7i

211BEEC9-2B29-43A1-9696-AE4C48C0A326.jpeg
The one area I noticed that could use an improvement was the direction of shot category. You see that on my individual shots above 6 were considered ST (straight), but I would say that accurately measured those shots. Maybe you can say my club head was open and thus the ball when straight right or closed and straight left, but I would call if the ball goes over 10 yards right or left of the target that would not be considered straight. If these were all approach shots, my thought is only two would have hit the green. The other eight shots would be off either right or left unless the green was larger than 15 yards to the right or left of the pin.
 
Davidhibler said:
Just played a couple of holes.

This thing is not super fun to use on the course, but it was good to see how it performed with real balls.

I think I'm going to stick to the range for the remainder of the testing
Click to expand...
what makes it such a pain on the course?
 
Next, I grabbed the driver.

Here, the Rapsodo, I felt was off a little on measuring. I layered the white truck at 250 yards and the flags far left and right at approx. 200 and 185 respectively.

My driver will generally go an average total of 225ish. Shot scope has my average at 230 and Arccos has my average at 226. However, the Rapsodo was only measuring my drives at an average of 215. That could be a plethora of things from using range balls to simply just not hitting the drive well. I did feel I had some nice drives where the ball rolled closer to the truck and thus got over 225 in total.

Here was a video one of the drives:
View attachment trim.A20C6990-9F8F-4EAB-93B0-D0BF5B3BD1B9.MOV



















The Rapsodo missed two swings on this set of 10. Not bad, but one of the swings was really nice and I would have liked to see the numbers on that one.

Below is the chart for the eight swings the Rapsodo captured:
A305FB3A-9C7D-4D88-AF48-A788F8765FDD.jpeg
One of the areas I wanted to point out was the grey row marked “OUTLIER”. I hit a very poor drive and liked that Rapsodo was able to mark that as an “outlier” and did not measure it with my total data set or averages.
 
Slowmo said:
what makes it such a pain on the course?
Click to expand...
Honestly finding a flat spot at an appropriate distance, then the time it takes to set it up and make sure the correct club is selected.

this overlay shows my shots from the first tee through the second tee.
Because it is designed for the range, it assumes I took all of them from the same spot.

I think a cool feature would be to have it follow you and Mark shot location so on course use is easier, but I don't know what all is involved with that.
7784F62D-2952-4B75-A8FF-DFCA082F2752.jpeg
As an example of the distance discrepancy I saw -
In this picture, the circled blue dot was where Rapsodo said my tee shot carried.
I saw the ball bounce short and right of the fairway bunker and it came to rest near the red X


And no. This was not into a head wind.
 
fuffle master said:
Next, I grabbed the driver.

Here, the Rapsodo, I felt was off a little on measuring. I layered the white truck at 250 yards and the flags far left and right at approx. 200 and 185 respectively.

My driver will generally go an average total of 225ish. Shot scope has my average at 230 and Arccos has my average at 226. However, the Rapsodo was only measuring my drives at an average of 215. That could be a plethora of things from using range balls to simply just not hitting the drive well. I did feel I had some nice drives where the ball rolled closer to the truck and thus got over 225 in total.

Here was a video one of the drives:
View attachment 9124234



















The Rapsodo missed two swings on this set of 10. Not bad, but one of the swings was really nice and I would have liked to see the numbers on that one.

Below is the chart for the eight swings the Rapsodo captured:
View attachment 9124235
One of the areas I wanted to point out was the grey row marked “OUTLIER”. I hit a very poor drive and liked that Rapsodo was able to mark that as an “outlier” and did not measure it with my total data set or averages.
Click to expand...
Great stuff here @fuffle master
 
Lastly, here is the GW.

My GW measured perfectly, in my opinion. I will use my GW for 100 yards out and generally I am good with that club.

Here is a video:
View attachment trim.7AB9D406-953D-4B78-BFED-9EC4F3594538.MOV






















Again, the Rapsodo missed two swings. But overall a very positive reaction with the first session.

Here is the chart: I will talk about another area called session insights in the next posts and try the combine game session today on the range.

322FEE15-2E2C-4796-89D3-D36527D7A2B3.jpeg
 
Davidhibler said:
Honestly finding a flat spot at an appropriate distance, then the time it takes to set it up and make sure the correct club is selected.

this overlay shows my shots from the first tee through the second tee.
Because it is designed for the range, it assumes I took all of them from the same spot.

I think a cool feature would be to have it follow you and Mark shot location so on course use is easier, but I don't know what all is involved with that.
View attachment 9124236
As an example of the distance discrepancy I saw -
In this picture, the circled blue dot was where Rapsodo said my tee shot carried.
I saw the ball bounce short and right of the fairway bunker and it came to rest near the red X


And no. This was not into a head wind.
Click to expand...
Could where the camera is facing have more of an impact on the course? For example could it be that the camera was aimed slightly left of where your body was aiming.
 
I got the MLM out on the range today. And I think it did a pretty good job on picking up my shots. I would say that we have range balls on the higher end of quality. Certainly not a range with premium, but a mix of TaylorMade and Pinnacle, in white, and a whole load of Bridgestone in yellow. I used mostly white balls in the practice and combine that I did.

We have a chamber of commerce day here in NE Ohio. Bright blue sky, with few to no clouds, providing excellent lighting, which may be quite critical for optimal performance of the unit.

Generally, I felt the MLM did a good job tracking the initial flight, and matching the tracer line to the shot shape. Looking at the satellite view of my session, the center line was basically where I was intending to start my ball, and the shots landing left and right of it I think were pretty close.

Screenshot 2022-09-30 at 1.32.59 PM.png
(the tee for our range is not ideally aligned to the range)

I didn't seem to have any problem with missed shots, for the most part. I did a performance combine at the end, consisting of 24 shots, and some of the best drives that I absolutely pounded high and deep were missed by the monitor. Of course, I snap hooked the shots after those.

I think if you are going to try to get left-right data, alignment is critical. I laid an alignment rod down parallel to my target, and it was very difficult to get the alignment line in the Rapsodo app to align with it. One thing with the shot traces, is that you really get a weird sense of what is a straight shot, since the camera is aligned between your feet and the ball, a straight shot looks like a dead pull with the shot tracer. When I did the combine, you can choose to do a warm up, which I found useful to confirm the alignment. I hit a few shots that were online within a few yards, and the device kept saying I was 10 yards off. That took some time to tinker with. Not sure how to make that easier.

I'm not 100% sold on the numbers just yet, but the video is extremely valuable. I noticed that I am still lunging at the ball a bit too much with my driver. Need to hang back.

The premium app view shows the apex height in the shot tracer video, which does not show up when you share the video (see below). In the shot list, the apex height does not at all match what shows up in the video. For example, I hit a driver and the shot tracer video shows an apex of 73 feet. A touch low, but realistically what I did. The apex height shown in the shot list is 166 feet. A complete garbage number.

I think I had a bit of an outlier on the swing speed with driver. I was comfortably in the 105-108 range, and one got up to 114 mph.

Screenshot 2022-09-30 at 1.48.13 PM.png

I'll only post one video, and this one was a funny one. Nice little hosel rocket 4 iron.

View attachment Shank.mov
 
captaincaution said:
I got the MLM out on the range today. And I think it did a pretty good job on picking up my shots. I would say that we have range balls on the higher end of quality. Certainly not a range with premium, but a mix of TaylorMade and Pinnacle, in white, and a whole load of Bridgestone in yellow. I used mostly white balls in the practice and combine that I did.

We have a chamber of commerce day here in NE Ohio. Bright blue sky, with few to no clouds, providing excellent lighting, which may be quite critical for optimal performance of the unit.

Generally, I felt the MLM did a good job tracking the initial flight, and matching the tracer line to the shot shape. Looking at the satellite view of my session, the center line was basically where I was intending to start my ball, and the shots landing left and right of it I think were pretty close.

View attachment 9124242
(the tee for our range is not ideally aligned to the range)

I didn't seem to have any problem with missed shots, for the most part. I did a performance combine at the end, consisting of 24 shots, and some of the best drives that I absolutely pounded high and deep were missed by the monitor. Of course, I snap hooked the shots after those.

I think if you are going to try to get left-right data, alignment is critical. I laid an alignment rod down parallel to my target, and it was very difficult to get the alignment line in the Rapsodo app to align with it. One thing with the shot traces, is that you really get a weird sense of what is a straight shot, since the camera is aligned between your feet and the ball, a straight shot looks like a dead pull with the shot tracer. When I did the combine, you can choose to do a warm up, which I found useful to confirm the alignment. I hit a few shots that were online within a few yards, and the device kept saying I was 10 yards off. That took some time to tinker with. Not sure how to make that easier.

I'm not 100% sold on the numbers just yet, but the video is extremely valuable. I noticed that I am still lunging at the ball a bit too much with my driver. Need to hang back.

The premium app view shows the apex height in the shot tracer video, which does not show up when you share the video (see below). In the shot list, the apex height does not at all match what shows up in the video. For example, I hit a driver and the shot tracer video shows an apex of 73 feet. A touch low, but realistically what I did. The apex height shown in the shot list is 166 feet. A complete garbage number.

I think I had a bit of an outlier on the swing speed with driver. I was comfortably in the 105-108 range, and one got up to 114 mph.

View attachment 9124246

I'll only post one video, and this one was a funny one. Nice little hosel rocket 4 iron.

View attachment 9124247
Click to expand...
Great stuff here @captaincaution, really food write up.
 
I did forget to mention I tried to use the auto-club detection, and I was not able to get that to work. I'll review the instructions for that just to make sure I'm not a total dunce.
 
Got a little range sesh in at lunch, only issue with the rapsodo was a) I hit like every third shot like I was digging a grave and b) my Iphone overheated and cut data collection short.

Distances check out with what I have seen on the course/GCQuad but the swing speed was a little off. 84/85 with a 9I is probably juiced a touch, but carry distance is really what I am concerned about. Looking forward to get back to it tomorrow and get a little more shade so my phone doesn't heat up.

More to come!
 
So, if you're using this with an iPad that is WiFi only, and there isn't WiFi at your range, you need to log in to the app before you go to the range at home using WiFi.
 
goalie said:
So, if you're using this with an iPad that is WiFi only, and there isn't WiFi at your range, you need to log in to the app before you go to the range at home using WiFi.
Click to expand...
I create a hotspot with my phone to get service to my iPad at the range.
 
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