Garmin Approach R10 Portable Golf Launch Monitor

[rlefig]

Hi, so I am hitting into a net and might have net/mat syndrome as distances were short. For more experienced users what to you all find is the best distance ball to net and R-10 to ball.

 

I am about 10ft from net and had the r-10 8 feet behind me but since it is my driveway I got space.

 

Thanks

[Spells]

25 minutes ago, rlefig said:

Hi, so I am hitting into a net and might have net/mat syndrome as distances were short. For more experienced users what to you all find is the best distance ball to net and R-10 to ball.

 

I am about 10ft from net and had the r-10 8 feet behind me but since it is my driveway I got space.

 

Thanks

Garmin now recommends 10-12 feet. I found that 9'8" from an impact screen, a Trackman and R10 were very close.

[rlefig]

2 minutes ago, Spells said:

Garmin now recommends 10-12 feet. I found that 9'8" from an impact screen, a Trackman and R10 were very close.

Thanks, when you say Garmin recommends 10-12 feet is that from net? I got that at 10 feet

[Spells]

6 minutes ago, rlefig said:

Thanks, when you say Garmin recommends 10-12 feet is that from net? I got that at 10 feet

Ball to back of the net. 12 feet is what I was told on a support call. Here they just say going beyond 8 feet may improve accuracy. The people I see reporting success are generally around 10'. However, I had less, just over 8, and found that my Trackman session had identical averages. So I think if you have 10 feet you are probably good.

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=b16KkS9ljZ1BRQGvWB6bX7

[rlefig]

20 minutes ago, Spells said:

Ball to back of the net. 12 feet is what I was told on a support call. Here they just say going beyond 8 feet may improve accuracy. The people I see reporting success are generally around 10'. However, I had less, just over 8, and found that my Trackman session had identical averages. So I think if you have 10 feet you are probably good.

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=b16KkS9ljZ1BRQGvWB6bX7

thanks what about R-10 to ball 8 feet good. I am hitting into my garage where the net is and I need to put cushioning on inside of garage door as a high lofted club can hit it and when it does hit the metal on inside of the door that ball can go flying

[tdeutmeyer]

I don't own a R10, but was just curious if a colored ball makes a difference in readings?  Especially a darker color.

Edited September 13, 2021 by tdeutmeyer

[JCP22]

2 hours ago, tdeutmeyer said:

I don't own a R10, but was just curious if a colored ball makes a difference in readings?  Especially a darker color.

It’s RADAR and I don’t think color should matter at all. 

Edited September 13, 2021 by JCP22

[Spells]

3.60 has been released, with a preliminary report that driver now looks accurate for longer drives. Maybe worth a try.

[dpvu]

I have tested v3.60 vs. v3.30 and for me the results were identical. Note that I've been one of the fortunate ones to be getting really good results in my indoor setup so it could just be that there was no real problem to begin with so the new firmware isn't doing much for me. We'll have to wait for more people who had issues to test. I also don't smash the ball quite like some others that have reported issues. That said, I still think driver is a hair short for me in terms of carry (maybe 10 yards still) and the roll factors are still really conservative. 

 

If you're happy with v3.30 you can probably update to v3.60 without any issues. If you have issues on v3.30 I hope this helps but I'm not sure it will. 

 

The first shot below is v3.60 and the second is v3.30. Both are on my indoor set up with about 6 feet R10 to ball and 10-11 feet R10 to net.

 

Edited September 13, 2021 by dpvu

[Sandhurst241069]

Well this reads positively.. hopefully involves some genuine refinement and improvement rather than crude hacks and data hedging etc.. (I work in software so I’m cynical 😂). Still waiting on my unit so will be watching with interest as the user feedback for 3.6 starts to appear online..

 

 

[Kirios]

They fixed my little waggle before my shot causing misreads!  Thank God!  I'm also reporting much better distances with my 3 wood and driver - still maybe 5-10 yards short but I'm also swinging it slower per the R10.  That's likely due to indoor swing so I'd say upgrade to 3.60 ASAP!

[whumber]

Got out to the range to test the R10 with the 3.60 FW update. Up to this point I've been reasonably happy overall with the R10 but I've actually been using the SC300 more often at the range as it seemed to be more accurate for carry distance with driver and woods. My main issues have been carry distance with driver/woods, driver spin, wedge spin, and chipping. When I first got to the range tonight I had a guy very close to my left hacking away at a furious pace; I noticed a lot of really weird readings for swing speed at this point but most of the ball data seemed fine. As soon as the guy left all the weird readings disappeared so it definitely seems there's still some data selectivity issues. To be fair though, the guy setup uncomfortably close to me and it's an open grass range with nothing in between.

 

The first thing noticed is that club path measurements seem to be greatly improved. I hit 20 pitching wedges and all but one was in a range of 6.9R-8.1R degrees, big difference from previous sessions where I was used to seeing a range more like 2L-12R.

 

Driver distance and spin also seem better, but definitely not perfect. Where before I was consistently 10-20 yards short the carry numbers seemed pretty reasonable and spin seems more believable overall (averaging around 3400 RPM before vs 2500 RPM now), but there were a handful of odd shots where it was measuring ball speeds in the high 160s and yet giving carry distances in the 250-260 range.

 

Wedge spin seems better as well, before it was telling me I was averaging ~5000RPM with a 54 degree wedge where now it was averaging ~9000RPM.

 

Finally, played a few holes on HTH and to my delight chipping seems to be hugely improved. The previous attempts I'd made with HTH the chipping felt like it was completely random whereas this time every time I had to chip the distances seemed spot on.

 

Seems like a huge improvement for a first firmware update, has me much more optimistic about the R10 long term. Now if they could fix the course download issues and make it easier to export session data or at least make it easier to cycle through the detailed information from multiple shots.

[Dan13]

10 minutes ago, whumber said:

Got out to the range to test the R10 with the 3.60 FW update. Up to this point I've been reasonably happy overall with the R10 but I've actually been using the SC300 more often at the range as it seemed to be more accurate for carry distance with driver and woods. My main issues have been carry distance with driver/woods, driver spin, wedge spin, and chipping. When I first got to the range tonight I had a guy very close to my left hacking away at a furious pace; I noticed a lot of really weird readings for swing speed at this point but most of the ball data seemed fine. As soon as the guy left all the weird readings disappeared so it definitely seems there's still some data selectivity issues. To be fair though, the guy setup uncomfortably close to me and it's an open grass range with nothing in between.

 

The first thing noticed is that club path measurements seem to be greatly improved. I hit 20 pitching wedges and all but one was in a range of 6.9R-8.1R degrees, big difference from previous sessions where I was used to seeing a range more like 2L-12R.

 

Driver distance and spin also seem better, but definitely not perfect. Where before I was consistently 10-20 yards short the carry numbers seemed pretty reasonable and spin seems more believable overall (averaging around 3400 RPM before vs 2500 RPM now), but there were a handful of odd shots where it was measuring ball speeds in the high 160s and yet giving carry distances in the 250-260 range.

 

Wedge spin seems better as well, before it was telling me I was averaging ~5000RPM with a 54 degree wedge where now it was averaging ~9000RPM.

 

Finally, played a few holes on HTH and to my delight chipping seems to be hugely improved. The previous attempts I'd made with HTH the chipping felt like it was completely random whereas this time every time I had to chip the distances seemed spot on.

 

Seems like a huge improvement for a first firmware update, has me much more optimistic about the R10 long term. Now if they could fix the course download issues and make it easier to export session data or at least make it easier to cycle through the detailed information from multiple sh

Sounds much better. If the club path could be consistent to within 1 to 2 degrees that would be awesome. Do you think you actually are in to out by 7 degrees typically? If not do you think it was alignment?

[Sandhurst241069]

19 minutes ago, whumber said:

Got out to the range to test the R10 with the 3.60 FW update. Up to this point I've been reasonably happy overall with the R10 but I've actually been using the SC300 more often at the range as it seemed to be more accurate for carry distance with driver and woods. My main issues have been carry distance with driver/woods, driver spin, wedge spin, and chipping. When I first got to the range tonight I had a guy very close to my left hacking away at a furious pace; I noticed a lot of really weird readings for swing speed at this point but most of the ball data seemed fine. As soon as the guy left all the weird readings disappeared so it definitely seems there's still some data selectivity issues. To be fair though, the guy setup uncomfortably close to me and it's an open grass range with nothing in between.

 

The first thing noticed is that club path measurements seem to be greatly improved. I hit 20 pitching wedges and all but one was in a range of 6.9R-8.1R degrees, big difference from previous sessions where I was used to seeing a range more like 2L-12R.

 

Driver distance and spin also seem better, but definitely not perfect. Where before I was consistently 10-20 yards short the carry numbers seemed pretty reasonable and spin seems more believable overall (averaging around 3400 RPM before vs 2500 RPM now), but there were a handful of odd shots where it was measuring ball speeds in the high 160s and yet giving carry distances in the 250-260 range.

 

Wedge spin seems better as well, before it was telling me I was averaging ~5000RPM with a 54 degree wedge where now it was averaging ~9000RPM.

 

Finally, played a few holes on HTH and to my delight chipping seems to be hugely improved. The previous attempts I'd made with HTH the chipping felt like it was completely random whereas this time every time I had to chip the distances seemed spot on.

 

Seems like a huge improvement for a first firmware update, has me much more optimistic about the R10 long term. Now if they could fix the course download issues and make it easier to export session data or at least make it easier to cycle through the detailed information from multiple shots.

How are the AOA numbers looking at this stage? Good that path has been stabilised (hopefully through genuine refinement) and if AOA is also good they have some chance of estimating spin and spin axis within reasonable tolerances (I do wonder whether they will eventually defer to club entry to assist with the spin calcs)

[whumber]

25 minutes ago, Dan13 said:

Sounds much better. If the club path could be consistent to within 1 to 2 degrees that would be awesome. Do you think you actually are in to out by 7 degrees typically? If not do you think it was alignment?

To be honest something like 7 degrees is high but probably isn't out of the question as I've been drawing the ball a bit too much the last week or so. That said the absolute value of the path isn't really all that important to me, I'm much more concerned about consistency. I also didn't put all that much effort into aligning the unit other than kind of eyeballing it with an offset alignment stick.

[jeg208]

3.60 seems really great to me as well.  Club speed is fixed (which also fixed smash factor), AoA looks even better.  Woods and driver distances look right now up to 160mph ball speed.  I dont pay too much attention to path as I can feel that pretty well, but it does look to be a little better too.  Connectivity seems better too as I havent had any timeout/sleep issues on 3.60.  All in all, very happy with this update.

Edited September 15, 2021 by jeg208

[Sandhurst241069]

10 minutes ago, jeg208 said:

3.60 seems really great to me as well.  Club speed is fixed (which also fixed smash factor), AoA looks even better.  Woods and driver distances look right now up to 160mph ball speed.  I dont pay too much attention to path as I can feel that pretty well, but it does look to be a little better too.  Connectivity seems better too as I havent had any timeout/sleep issues on 3.60.  All in all, very happy with this update.

And yet there are others in the R10 user group saying that 3.60 has taken them materially backwards. Its so hard to get a gauge on this product..

Edited September 15, 2021 by Sandhurst241069

[JCP22]

1 hour ago, Sandhurst241069 said:

And yet there are others in the R10 user group saying that 3.60 has taken them materially backwards. Its so hard to get a gauge on this product..

I think I’ve read a majority of ‘good’ reviews. 

[jigdagod]

Left handed player. I've had my R10 for about a week and took it to the range each time to use it. First 5x I took it out to use it I felt like I had a bad device. Shots were all over the place, shapes was nothing like I was hitting. I tried all types of setups from the leaving on the ground to elevating it to the mat height. So the fifth time I decided to build an alignment guide with a string from the device to the ball to make sure it was aligned right and still the same results. I couldn't play HTH or E6 due to how performance. I tried the range on E6 and it was the same.

 

I said I'll wait for an update to see if it improves. I updated to 3.6 and took it again. It performs 100 better. All shots was 7ft from ball and on the ground behind mat. I plan to elevate it next session. I was able to play HTH and E6 with great shots. All shots was picked up. It was also raining (not sure if it had anything to do with this) and my device kept blinking green to red quickly. I'll step in front of the device and it stopped blinking red. I stepped away and it went back to doing it at times.

 

On the range a lot of my shots are either not going far enough right or far enough left from the target line about 10-40 yards. Depending on the club distances are short about 10 yards or too long about 10-20 yards. 

 

I can't comment on the other data points as I'm not sure what I should be, but I would like to be able to export data to compare with my Trackman and Mevo+ data I have. Hopefully they'll implement that soon. It's really difficult to navigate through different shots without it being a hassle. I like the way Mevo+ provides a table view to see everything clearly.

 

There are times where I felt the device was tracking the ball and would tell me my carry distance when it was close to landing, but there were a lot of times it would read it as soon as I hit it. I felt like it wasn't tracking the ball well. 

 

There is still a lot of room for improvement, but I definitely see this being a great bargain device once everything is ironed out. I'm not looking for Trackman/GCQuad performance, but what they advertise it to be. I'd like to be able to use this to dial in my numbers and improve certain aspects, but right now I still can't trust it all the way.

 

Pros
•Quick connect and setup
•The battery life is amazing. I was at the range for 3 hrs. My Mevo+ would have died or I'd have to hook up a battery pack
•HTH
•E6
•Price

 

Cons
•Distance are off all directions
•HTH various course won't download. Especially home courses
•No Export of Data
•Portrait Mode
•Having to pay to use HTH on different devices. Implement a way to have multiple license for all devices so you can only pay once for HTH and use whatever devices you have.  

[blues72]

11 hours ago, Sandhurst241069 said:

How are the AOA numbers looking at this stage? Good that path has been stabilised (hopefully through genuine refinement) and if AOA is also good they have some chance of estimating spin and spin axis within reasonable tolerances (I do wonder whether they will eventually defer to club entry to assist with the spin calcs)

I don’t have any way to validate this, but I believe AOA is still off.  I also think backspin is also still off.  I personally think the spin model is why the distances are still too short.  
 

Having said all that, I enjoy using the device and believe ball flight shape is pretty dang close.  I am very hopeful that Garmin will do what they can to get the unit to the best possible performance.  I only use the device inside by the way.

Edited September 15, 2021 by blues72

[whumber]

12 hours ago, Sandhurst241069 said:

How are the AOA numbers looking at this stage? Good that path has been stabilised (hopefully through genuine refinement) and if AOA is also good they have some chance of estimating spin and spin axis within reasonable tolerances (I do wonder whether they will eventually defer to club entry to assist with the spin calcs)

 

I hadn't really dug into the AoA numbers too much but looking at them now they don't seem nearly as credible as the path number. I'd say something like 50% of my wedge shots have no reading for AoA and then half of the ones that were read have a positive AoA. I do notice that the 4i and 2i shots seem to have more consistent readings and more believable numbers so I wonder if the issue with the wedges has something to do with the R10 picking up the divot. Driver numbers seem reasonable but with significantly more variation than club path although that may be real as I was playing around with my driver stance width during this session.

 

As an aside trying to post-process data through the GG app is a massive PITA. There's no way to easily switch between shots from the detailed data views and if you filter the overall shot list will randomly reset position and/or filters when you return to it so trying to flip between shots is just painfully difficult. It seems pretty clear that whichever team developed that GUI never actually tried to compare any meaningful data from multiple shots during development/testing.

[dpvu]

On 9/13/2021 at 7:07 AM, rlefig said:

Some guy I know is working on a program to export data it will be on github some day soon

 

This would be amazing. Additionally, Garmin now syncs your range sessions on the app (including video) across multiple devices so it is being stored in the cloud somehow. Just no way to download or view it.

[Therty]

How is the launch angle with 3.6? Opposite spin axis calc problems still?

[jeg208]

2 hours ago, Therty said:

How is the launch angle with 3.6? Opposite spin axis calc problems still?

 

Launch angle was always very accurate for me on 3.3 and 3.6 (assuming that the setup was decent).  I would assume spin axis will always suck with a radar system due to no way of understanding gear effect.

[dpvu]

20 minutes ago, jeg208 said:

 

Launch angle was always very accurate for me on 3.3 and 3.6 (assuming that the setup was decent).  I would assume spin axis will always suck with a radar system due to no way of understanding gear effect.

 

Same. I do think spin is a little better? Driver might be down a hair and I get fewer shots where the side spin doesn't work at all and you get a 0 for side spin.

[2four22]

10 hours ago, whumber said:

 

I hadn't really dug into the AoA numbers too much but looking at them now they don't seem nearly as credible as the path number. I'd say something like 50% of my wedge shots have no reading for AoA and then half of the ones that were read have a positive AoA.

 

Not sure why, but my local indoor driving range's Trackman 4 has often struggled to pick up my AoA, club path, face angle and other metrics with my wedges.  And the Trackman is like super exxy!!!  For the price, the R10 is good value.

Edited September 15, 2021 by 2four22

[Steve_N]

Anyone using an ipad/E6? I'm using an ipad air 2, which is NOT what E6 recommends.  It does work, but it's pretty bad graphics and choppy movements, using cord and tried casting, both pretty bad.  Wondering if anyone is using the recommended IPAD version from the E6 website if all looks well and what the experience is like.  Can't stand switching to HTH due to the fact it won't run in landscape mode.

[Mark Dwyre]

all of the You Tube Reviews SINCE July, have everyone pre ordering one, maybe deliver by Xmas..

 

$100 Subscription gets you playing ANY of 40k courses, AND while playing GAMES, you do not have to select which Club you are swinging, Radar tells it how far shot will go.

 

They say while practicing, after you swing - then- you put in which club you used, for gapping purposes.

[rlefig]

10 hours ago, Steve_N said:

Anyone using an ipad/E6? I'm using an ipad air 2, which is NOT what E6 recommends.  It does work, but it's pretty bad graphics and choppy movements, using cord and tried casting, both pretty bad.  Wondering if anyone is using the recommended IPAD version from the E6 website if all looks well and what the experience is like.  Can't stand switching to HTH due to the fact it won't run in landscape mode.

I have an an ipad air 2 as well I hope it works better. Will let you know this weekend

[JCP22]

My 7i distances on 3.3 were woefully short. Like 110 range. Now with 3.6 I am getting 165s consistently. Good development for sure.