R10 not functioning in rain ?

Yep same problem I had today errors when rain started. Once rain stopped all ok again

Hi.

Yes, same issue for me. First time on range while raining, and it reported interference from other radar sorces and unable to pick up shots. No other radar sources were there, so I assume it detects reflections from rain drops and report it as interference.

Hi.

Yes, I'm aware that radar signals get reflected by rain.

I do have a PRGR with same technology that works in rain though, it seems like R10 is more sensitive to it, and if it detects reflections it refuses to try..

In this particular set up I was on driving range with roof several meters in front of tee, and of course the Garmin was approx 2 meters behind that again. So approx 5 m from unit to rain drops.

This should be enough even for indoor use, so maybe the solution would be to have an indoor mode which would not pay sttention to any reflections beyond 5 m?

Currently my R10 is not working in rain on driving range, and when do You go to the range?

And living on the West coast of Norway raining is quite frequent to put it mildly.

And I don't have to look at rain on weather radars, I can look out the window.

I’m not sure how far forward the R10 looks, but rain “quite close” in front of you will create reflections from earlier radar bursts, which will then return to interfere with later (in time) radar bursts. Hence the R10 gets confused. It’s the radar equivalent of someone shining a strong torch in your face at night. They can be many metres away from you, but you are still blinded, even if you are trying to look at something in your hand.

I’d also imagine rain drops in Norway are quite large (…?) Here in Australia we either have “light rain”, or end-of-the-world flooding rain. I’ve found the R10 ok in very light rain… and in the heavy rain the range is under water… :-)

Hi Max

Yes, I'm also aware that reflections from previous transmissions will interfere with current transmission.

Radars in general is a transmit burst, and then listen for a period, before repeating.

But still I believe this to be a programming issue on the receive side.

Rain will make a rather steady reflection, and as such could be filtered away as background noise.

After all, the radar is only interested in a reflected signal that changes (club and ball), and unless the reflections from earlier transmissions is strong enough to mask out the wanted reflection, it should be possible to only focus on the wanted detected signal.

Compare this with Your light, which is quite steady, and if You could suppress that signal, it should be possible to see what's in Your hand.

Noice cancelling ear phones is a similar thing.

Since I've only recently obtained a R10, I have no experience with earlier sw versions. But it appears from a previous answer that the R10 has worked in rain before, at leat to some extension.

My experience was that it was 100% useless. It detected reflection, and then came up with a warning message. And it does not help to acknowledge this message, as the reflection is still there, and message came back again instantly.

I would prefer that it did not check for reflections, and as a result probably could not read some shots. After all if the unit reads 18 of 20 shots it's usable compared to 0.

Or at least the sensitivity shoul be in an order that the warning message only appeared when the unit was sure it could not detect anything.

I don't believe this to be the case as I do have a PRGR, also doppler based, and never had a problem in rain. That one can also measure club head speed without hitting a ball, another feature the community has asked for for a long time. And the R10 of course doesen't care if the ball is there or not when measuring club head speed, so why this is a difficult feature to implement Idon't know.

The R10 has a lot of other measuring points, so it probably needs the position of the ball as a reference. But a separate mode only measuring club head speed should be fairly easy even without ball. If nothing else, demand a ball to be on the ground, but measure club head speed as it passes the ball position (without actually hitting the ball). I can live with a lot of tweaks, but not working / not possible should not be the case.

The next thing I will try is to find a type of practice ball the R10 detects. Hitting a real golf ball in my back yard really demands me to hit the net, or I'm in trouble. The R10 will not detect foam balls or plastic balls as could be expected since these don't give strong radar reflections (yes, I have tried). Tried to wrap them in aluminium folie, didn't help. If my quest is successful, I will update. But again, this is something one should expect Garmin to try out, as I assume +90% of the buyers of this device would be interested.

Here are some general links on Radar, should you be interested…

Effects of rain on performance of maritime radars (porttechnology.org)

How Radar Works (bom.gov.au)

(PDF) The Effect of Rain on Radar Backscattering from the Ocean (researchgate.net)

radar - History of radar | Britannica

HESS - The accuracy of weather radar in heavy rain: a comparative study for Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden (copernicus.org)

From the Garmin support pages it states that spin is measured outdoors, but calculated indoors. So that will result in differing measures. Further it states that ball flight needs to be monitored for “…at least 20M.” So until you are at an outdoor practice range with a roof that provides a minimum of 20M coverage in front of you, you will have a significant amount of ball travel in the rain. The rain drops will provide multiple reflections, and distortions, which will very much depend on the conditions on the day. 

I’ve tried Googling to find the technical specification of the radar set-up within the R10, but no luck so far. I’ll try asking Garmin support, and see what they say. The frequency used, and the design of the transmitter, and receiver will all have an impact on how rain interferes with the signal. This could explain why you had better results with the PRGR you mention.

My practice range is also near a local (non-commercial) airfield. As a result we often get light aircraft flying over quite low. When some of these go over my R10 has a complete loss of ability to function, and will only restart once the aircraft has passed over. As noted in an earlier post, I’ve had perfect results in very light rain, but I’ve not used my unit in heavy rain yet. So other users might also have had success in specific weather conditions, while they might experience failures in others.

I agree with your point that software updates could minimise errors. However once the rain is heavy enough the physics of the situation will result in unrecoverable errors.

Interesting that some practice balls do not give good reflections. Good luck finding a solution!

This is what I'm looking for:

https://youtu.be/jgZyeHUM-YU

So my quest now is to get these as the R10 seems to be picking them up.

Wrong thread, but imagine the usefulness if Garmin could add an option to select practice balls in the menu or somewhere, and then allow the user to enter a correction percentage for each club?

If You look at the data from the test in the video, club head speed is measured correct, as expected. Ball speed ( and hence smash factor) is wrong, as can be expected when using practice ball or even range balls on driving range. And the difference will be bigger and bigger going down the clubs.

But what if You could increase the ball speed with lets say 7% on the lob wedge, going up to 15-20% for the driver? Optishot has this function, and that is only measuring club head speed and not ball at all. If there was an option to manually "calibrate" the ball speed, I'm pretty sure that the results with these practice balls would be quite accurate to real life, and would make practicing so much easier, and real time hero or other simulators so much more realistic and fun.

And it should be a very easy fix as well to implement.

So now we only have to wait 12 months for the development team to consider it.

I have ordered almostgolf balls as apparently these will be picked up by R10

Living in Norway no one sells them here, and amazon is not here either.

So I had to order from ebay in US, so will not srrive until August.

Not sure of weight though as not mentioned on their website http://almostgolf.com