Like the best big-fish stories, tales of your latest shootaround can be ripe with embellishment. There was that time you hit 14 three-pointers in a row, but no one was around to bear witness. The time you hit 95 out of 100 free throws, matching Jeff Hornacek’s NBA-best percentage in the 1999-2000 season and coming within a rim-out of beating Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf’s 1993-94 mark. That time you totally dunked a volleyball.
The new ShotTracker system can help verify (or debunk) those claims with its sensors. It’s a three-piece system that consists of a net-mountable sensor, a diminutive wrist sensor, and a mobile app that connects to the sensors via Bluetooth to track your makes and misses. The complete kit, which goes for $150 and ships in early December, includes a wristband with a slot for the 1-by-2-inch sensor. Also included is a compression sleeve if you’d rather wear the wrist sensor that way.
There’s no built-in memory on either sensor module, so you’ll need to keep your iOS or Android device near the court for your stats to be registered. The mobile device receives input from the wrist and net sensors via Bluetooth, caches that data if there are any connection problems, and pushes your stats to the cloud for crunching and sharing with friends and/or coaches.
In addition to tracking your improvement in terms of buckets and bricks, the app also has a menu of workout options and lets you compete against other ShotTracker users and view their stats. The app features customization options for coaches, allowing them to create and share their own workout plans and simulate results using different player lineups.
While the next-generation version of the ShotTracker will register your position on the court—a prototype has been built that uses TDOA to pinpoint shots automatically—this first model will map your location based on the workouts provided by the app. According to ShotTracker co-founder and COO Davyeon Ross, the newer auto-tracking version will be available in mid-2015 and will be able to map your location on the court to within 4 inches.
Ross says you’ll need to recharge the lilliputian, water-resistant wrist sensor after eight hours of usage, but the net sensor gets up to three months of battery life per charge. The net-mounted unit is weatherproofed, and it’s designed to be used on both indoor and outdoor courts.
But can you fool the system by chucking the ball directly through the net and hitting the hoop sensor? Ross says it’s possible, but the wrist sensor’s six-axis motion tracker is programmed to make sure the shooting motion matches up. The system also has algorithms to ignore pump fakes, dribbles, and other non-shooting actions.
So if you really want to fake it out, you’ll need to mimic a shooting motion while a co-conspirator shoots layups. Or you could hire Ray Allen to wear your wrist sensor in order to boost your beyond-the-arc stats.
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