Welcome, Guest. Please Login
SLINGING.ORG
 
Home Help Search Login


Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Send Topic Print
Velocity drop over 20m with a tennis ball (Read 146 times)
IronGoober
Interfector Viris Spurii
*****
Offline


...and now, No. 1, the
larch...

Posts: 1327
California
Gender: male
Velocity drop over 20m with a tennis ball
Jan 16th, 2023 at 6:43pm
 
I just did this to try and figure out what is going on with my radar gun. Thought it was interesting and that I should share.

I put my camera at 120 fps about 35m from where I was throwing (to minimize parallax) and measured the speed of a tennis ball over the 20m. (used a range finder). From what I could tell, there was minimal parallax. My armspan varied by about 2.5% over the whole field of view and wasn't linear which was weird, may be from the swaying of the camera due to wind.

Not sure what else to say. It was a pretty new tennis ball with the "extra duty" fuzz on it.
Back to top
 

John R.
 
IP Logged
 
TOMBELAINE
Funditor
****
Offline


Slinging Rocks!

Posts: 583
france
Gender: male
Re: Velocity drop over 20m with a tennis ball
Reply #1 - Jan 17th, 2023 at 4:55am
 
Smiley Good and interesting test  Smiley
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
joe_meadmaker
Slinging.org Administrator
*****
Offline


Slinging Ice is Cool!

Posts: 2372
PA, USA
Re: Velocity drop over 20m with a tennis ball
Reply #2 - Jan 17th, 2023 at 7:12pm
 
The graph is a great visual representation.  Looks like a drop of around 10 m/s.

With the drop in speed happening that quickly, what is the thought on radar devices having a little variance in the reported speed based on when the object is actually detected/measured?
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
IronGoober
Interfector Viris Spurii
*****
Offline


...and now, No. 1, the
larch...

Posts: 1327
California
Gender: male
Re: Velocity drop over 20m with a tennis ball
Reply #3 - Jan 17th, 2023 at 11:33pm
 
I'm pretty sure their algorithms just report the highest "velocity" recorded.

Altthough I don't know all the guts, in essense, the unit pulses a radio signal out, it reflects off the traveling object and then it receives a radio signal back. It then takes a Fourier transform of that (giving frequency) and whatever the highest/lowest frequency it sees, it reports back the shift from the initial frequency as the speed (converted to velocity of course). If the object is traveling toward you  the frequency shifts up, if it's going away, the frequency shifts down.  So, as long as it can detect something far enough away, it should just report the highest velocity "seen".

I'm not sure how it determines what amplitudes of signals to filter out (like noise or other weak radio signals), but that can cause issues.

The other thing that could potentially cause issues is the end of the sling itself. The geometrical problem that if something is moving at an angle away from the radar gun, if it goes fast enough, the velocity away from the radar gun could be fast enough to be the fastest thing picked up. I thought I wasn't having this problem, but the above graph makes me unsure at this point. I'm going to have to do some more testing.

One thing that I can determine is that if i'm 1 or 2 m behind the radar gun and sling over the top, It affects the speed by 1 or 2 m/s (seems to be about 1m/s per m at the beginning).
Back to top
 

John R.
 
IP Logged
 
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Send Topic Print
(Moderators: Curious Aardvark, Morphy, Chris, Rat Man, Kick, vetryan15)