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Posted: 11/26/2018 12:07:09 PM EDT
A few usage tips from someone who has a LabRadar and uses it a good bit.
Rig: 1) The device is large and awkward - don't expect a cheap table-top tripod to work; it needs a pretty solid mount. There are threads out there on systems that have worked out. I'm not OK spending another $100 on their dedicated mount, so with some testing, I found a strong table-top tripod for around $20 that I'm really happy with, and packs up tidy. 2) The internal construction is a bit cottage-industry. They use a lot of manual screws to hold things together, and in my experience through the normal rough-life gun-field stuff sees, they can come lose. I ended up with some screws internally falling out and and rattling around inside, and eventually just took it apart to fix (easy to do). Combined with needing to be close to the muzzle to track, and it can take a little bit of a beating. On a bench platform, and trying to get even with the muzzle - this often means putting it right at the very edge of the bench. Be careful. 3) The integrated user-interface is pretty 1990's. Frankly it's just a bad interface - hard to use, non-intuitive, and involves pressing mechanical buttons that can shift your point of aim if not careful. It's also 1990's electronics, with slow internal processing and slower responsiveness than one expects of 2018 electronics. Do the FirmWare update, and get the BlueTooth App installed ASAP. 4) Aiming. The aiming notch is a bit primitive, but in my experience it works. the straw and other mods look like they may be easier and better, but you don't need to do that if you don't feel like it. 5) Setting, pistol/rifle/arrow. OK, you will get ODD numbers if you are on the wrong setting. Testing a pellet rifle to get velocity data so I could maybe back-calculate BC's, I accidentally had the LabRadar on the Rifle setting. And it was telling me rifle level velocities that were just nonsensical (like, 3000 fps). How the Hell does that work?? If it's bouncing a radar signal off the ass of the pellet, why would it give crazy erroneously high "Rifle" level speeds. But when I switched it to Arrow mode, now the speeds made more sense and were in agreement with air-rifle typical speeds. This bugs me. SD Card: 6) The SD card system isn't very good. It has to be formatted Fat32 to work; which you can't even do in Windows 10 (workaround - right/click widows Icon - PowerShell (Admin), type :format /FS:FAT32 H:" [Make Damned sure H: is the drive your SD card is in, or you just wiped out whatever H is] 7) The SD card must be smaller than 32 GB, and frankly the smaller the better. Also, it slows down the rig by about a factor of 10. I'm not kidding. Without the card, I can shoot, it will detect, track, and record in about 1 second flat. If I have an SD card in it, it takes a solid 10 seconds, if not more. 8) The track data on the SD card is spiffy; but in the end, pretty much a waste of time. In general you use the rig for muzzle velocities, and you don't really need to see the 50 velocity reads going downrange for that. I'm starting to find that for best results, just run the APP and leave the SD card at home. If you want to calculate ballistic coefficients (which I haven't been able to get good instructions yet on how to actually do), then more data is better - but you still don't need the SD card, as you'll have 5 of the 50 readings also stored in the rig, when not using the SD card, which can be used for the purpose. Power: 9) Power. People say 1 set of 6 AA's doesn't last long, but that hasn't been my experience. I run Enelope rechargables, and find a 6-pack of freshly charged ones are good for a solid 6 hour session running at least 50+ tracks. (that's a lot of tracks). And even better, it will run on pretty much any USB power/battery pack. APP: 10) The APP isn't bad. A lot of people beat up on it, but I think it's actually pretty good - you just have to run it a while to figure out its interface nuances. Biggest frustration is you will lose signal a lot. That's OK, the rig keeps running and logging the data, even if the APP loses connection. ProTip, it won't reconnect while the LabRadar is armed (orange), so you'll need to disarm (blue) and it'll reconnect (manually through the app) and resync fine. It would be nice if you have a setting ability to have it automatically try to reconnect all the time; no reason not to - it's not like you're ever going to be running the LabRadar and the App at the same time, and not want it connected. 11) The APP also has built-in memory. I just discovered this. So when you are done, you can analyze the data at home, without having to reconnect to the rig. 12) back to the APP, I wish there was a way you could label each shot. Series 43: "Lot 223-545, 68 gr Hornady, 23.3 gr MP530, 20" BBL", would be neat if I could just have a label text box for each series. 13) Speaking of the App, it's on a smart-phone, link it to weather.com or something and give me my barometric pressure, temperature, humidity, and area windspeed in there too. 14) App: there is a Apple and Android version. I forced the Android version onto a Kindle Fire, which I use as the interface in the field, and that works pretty good. I wish they had a Windows Mobile App though; as being able to sync it to a laptop via BlueTooth would be beyond bad-ass. But alas; no. Ok, the good stuff. Once you figure all that out and can make it sing, this thing is bad ass. It works day our night, shadow or not. It's very reliable at tracking every shot. And you get data of a quality and precision that you can trust (well... see Item 5 above). And with the APP, the usage is pleasant, as is the interfacing. It's a great rig and I'm really glad I have one. |
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From a technical perspective, one thing I really like about this technology is that it's not a reading based on all of 2 data inputs. Most systems use either two light sensors, or a short-length of the magnetic sensor. That's not a lot of inputs, and if the rig isn't aimed just right, or vibrates any, or whatever, you can get goofy numbers from a traditional chrony.
But with the LabRadar, it gets something like 50 readings as the bullet is tracking. And their internal decoding software appears to do a nice job of filtering out noise and the occasional odd reading in that data set. Which means you don't have the calculation based on just two numbers that you hope are right, but instead it calculates your muzzle velocity by an internal extrapolation of about 50 data points, starting around 5-10 feet away. From a statistical quality standpoint, I trust the numbers from a LabRadar far more than I trust the numbers from a traditional Chrony. In my experience, every day was a new day with an optical chrony; and you could get quite a bit of variability in MV from the same ammo in the same gun. I'm not sure if that's a factor of imperfect 90.00000 degree alignment, muzzle blast shakes, or what. And with a chrony, extrapolation back to true muzzle velocity was always based on a rough "and add about 0.8 fps per foot of distance to chrony" rule of thumb. (assuming the sun was bright enough that day for the chrony to even work). The LabRadar is Godsend compared to a traditional chrony. It costs a lot more..... for now, I won't be surprised if someone else doesn't release the same thing for about half the price at some point; there's not a whole one, and I can't help but feel like they're charge sole-provider pricing right now. |
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We already have a Lab Radar thread on page 1. https://www.ar15.com/forums/Armory/Lab-Radar/42-494564/
I have also set the toggle on that thread to keep it out of the archives. So this thread is a dupe and that's why I locked it. So copy/paste your posts from this thread into the above linked thread. |
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