Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

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Pommy Chris
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Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:05 pm

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#16 Postby Pommy Chris » Wed Jul 25, 2018 8:49 am

Daniel Chisholm wrote:Hi Barry, I don't know if you want info/commentary from me (part owner of SMT), or if you'd prefer I stay out and leave it strictly to the owners/users...? Just say the word and I'll step back and stay mum.

SOLO is a low-cost "consumer" oriented design however you should expect to get topnotch performance from it - accuracy as well as reliability. Test it out, and don't settle for anything less (and if it is not up to your expectations, contact SMT and we'll make sure you get it working right)

Pommy Chris, glad to hear you are testing things. There is no provision in the software to tell it that you have braced your target in a fixed 3 degree nose-down attitude, it isn't necessary to do so. As an 8-mic system, SOLO measures the incoming shot angles (side and plunge) and automatically makes the appropriate corrections. As a side effect of this, you should find that the reported at-target speeds are going to look quite true and consistent. Also, for every new string you begin SOLO attempts to "auto-learn" the angle from which you are firing your shots; if the first three shots of the string are within a certain band, it then selects that as the "expected angles" of incoming shots and will reject incoming shots coming from grossly different angles (e.g. extreme crossfires) and not even bother the shooter with something which is clearly a shot they did not fire.

If you have any questions or thoughts please contact Aubrey or me, we want you to achieve top-notch performance from your gear (and it is pretty straightforward and simple to do so).

In particular, you mention that somebody shooting a couple of lanes down "triggers the mics sometimes". If by this you mean that a falsely reported shot showed up to the ordinary shooters on your SOLO this absolutely should not be happening and if you contact me I can help you figure out what is going on here and make it stop happening. It should not be necessary for a user to attempt to "shield" the mics from the sounds from neighbouring shots, and in fact is a lot more difficult and impractical to do than you might expect at first. FWIW a great deal of effort has been put into the design of theSOLO sensors in order to minimize their detection range of off-target shots. This allows us to deliver superior performance, especially in the area of "lost" shots on larger ranges with many lanes in use. By the time you have ten targets firing simultaneously our gear outperforms the cheaper system by a factor of 4X, and if you should be so lucky as to be operating your SOLOs on a range with 15 lanes of firing happening then our performance advantage grows to a factor of 6X.

HI thanks for the input,
I will need to contact you then as shots are being reported on the smt when shots were fired 2 lanes away. Apart mic shielding I dont know what to do to stop it.
Cheers
Chris

Daniel Chisholm
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu May 03, 2012 8:40 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#17 Postby Daniel Chisholm » Wed Jul 25, 2018 10:51 am

Hi Barry, a post I wrote on AccurateShooter a week or so ago might give you a better idea; if not, let me know and I can go into more depth.

Pommy Chris wrote:I will need to contact you then as shots are being reported on the smt when shots were fired 2 lanes away. Apart mic shielding I dont know what to do to stop it.


Chris - please contact me daniel.chisholm@gmail.com and let's figure out what's going on with your setup; we'll get it squared away. If you can email me a "backup.tgz" file (choose "gearwheel"->"spanner"->"Save/Restore data") and point out one or more bogus shots in a saved string, that would be a great place to start.

- Daniel
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disb
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Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#18 Postby disb » Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:48 am

Hi Daniel

Just read your post here and accurate shooter, just wanting to clarify if you’ve done any testing of other systems? Or if your claims are just assumptions?
Not particularly interested in a debate, I looked at the SOLO and ended up with a shotmarker - why, because for personal use the $2-300 AUD saving means I can buy more bullets or powder and shoot more. Poor setup will lead to poor performance with any system.
Our club has had an a SMT for 12 months now and it’s been fine. But you would hope so for nearly $5,000 AUD.

Simon

Pommy Chris
Posts: 441
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:05 pm

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#19 Postby Pommy Chris » Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:14 pm

Spoke to Aurbrey at SMT today and it seems we set the settings wrong in the setup menu there is a setting that says "All shots" which is what we have it set up on and we need to change the setting to only target face so that problem should be solved. Going to do tests tomorrow expecting very good results considering the target is far more secure than before and results were quite good before :)
Chris

Daniel Chisholm
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu May 03, 2012 8:40 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#20 Postby Daniel Chisholm » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:53 am

disb wrote:Hi Daniel

Just read your post here and accurate shooter, just wanting to clarify if you’ve done any testing of other systems? Or if your claims are just assumptions?
Not particularly interested in a debate, I looked at the SOLO and ended up with a shotmarker


Hi Simon, for all sorts of reasons I wish you had bought a SOLO instead as I am sure you can imagine however I completely respect your choice and I hope your Shotmarker does a good job for you.

Yes I have done testing. I was able to buy a Shotmarker and I confirmed that their sensors are at least 7x more sensitive than SMT's SOLO sensors. By this I mean that a carefully controlled test sound was detected by Shotmarker sensors at a distance 7x as far away as the distance at which SOLO's sensors ceased to detect the same sound.

(For open sensor e-targets, overly-sensitive sensors are a disadvantage, not a good thing.)

Barry Davies
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Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:11 pm

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#21 Postby Barry Davies » Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:25 am

Hi Daniel,
That does not really mean much unless you qualify it with the Actual distances measured.
Barry

BATattack
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Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#22 Postby BATattack » Thu Jul 26, 2018 11:06 am

Daniel Chisholm wrote:
disb wrote:Hi Daniel

Just read your post here and accurate shooter, just wanting to clarify if you’ve done any testing of other systems? Or if your claims are just assumptions?
Not particularly interested in a debate, I looked at the SOLO and ended up with a shotmarker


Hi Simon, for all sorts of reasons I wish you had bought a SOLO instead as I am sure you can imagine however I completely respect your choice and I hope your Shotmarker does a good job for you.

Yes I have done testing. I was able to buy a Shotmarker and I confirmed that their sensors are at least 7x more sensitive than SMT's SOLO sensors. By this I mean that a carefully controlled test sound was detected by Shotmarker sensors at a distance 7x as far away as the distance at which SOLO's sensors ceased to detect the same sound.

(For open sensor e-targets, overly-sensitive sensors are a disadvantage, not a good thing.)


But shotmarker uses a similar algorithm to disregard errant shots to what the SMT does. So the shotmarker can "hear" 7x as much but is programmed to ignore more. Much like male vs female :-)

Pommy Chris
Posts: 441
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Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#23 Postby Pommy Chris » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:13 pm

SMT was set up correctly ie only score shots on target face but still having issues of it scoring shots from next door. Sent as requested backup file. So far not blown away with accuracy, but clearly something is amiss so hopefully issue is linked to both.
Chris

Daniel Chisholm
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu May 03, 2012 8:40 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#24 Postby Daniel Chisholm » Fri Jul 27, 2018 3:09 am

Barry Davies wrote:Hi Daniel,
That does not really mean much unless you qualify it with the Actual distances measured.
Barry


OK Barry but I hope I don't put people to sleep.

SOLO sensors have a detection range of about 7m for highly supersonic bullets like you would have at 200-600Y. If you are on a tight-pitch range with 7.5'-8' centre-to-centre spacing (typical of US designs), this means that our sensors "see" about 2.5-3.0 "lanes" of shots on the left, and the same number on the right. If you are on a range with 16' centre-to-centre spacings (typical Canadian, UK, AU and NZ range designs) then that is 1.3-1.5 "lanes" worth of interference on each side of your target.

Shotmarker is at least 7x as sensitive; when I was doing the measurement comparing Shotmarker sensors I physically ran out of room to be able to find the distance at which it would NOT detect shots. So all that I know for sure is that it WILL pick up 7X as many lanes of shooting as SOLO sensors will, just how many more though I do not know exactly; I suppose with a wide enough range I could find the limit at which it will no longer detect a shot however it is almost of academic interest.

What his means is that on a range with target on 8' pitch (US-style) this means that Shotmarker sensors can pick up shots fired from 20 lanes on the left and 20 lanes on the right; for most practical purposes, Shotmarker will detect shots fired on "every single target on the range". And on a 16'-pitch range, it will pick up at least 10 lanes on the left and 10 lanes on the right

-----

What does this "X lanes worth of shot interference" actually mean in shooting terms? It all comes down to how many "lost shots" are going to happen.

Once you know how many "lanes" worth of interference you are getting, you can run it into a mathematical model which predicts the fraction of lost shots (the other key parameters are the "vulnerability window" time, which is typically 8 milliseconds, and the firing tempo). This model shows excellent agreement with real-world live-firing results.

If you care, I can give you example shot-loss rates for common scenarios (or whatever scenario you might like to ask about). Better not do it in this post, though!

-----

BATattack wrote:
Daniel Chisholm wrote:But shotmarker uses a similar algorithm to disregard errant shots to what the SMT does. So the shotmarker can "hear" 7x as much but is programmed to ignore more. Much like male vs female :-


With respect, and without trying to be argumentative, that is not how it works. This is not a problem that can be fixed by software/programming; the problem happens at the hardware and measurement level, before the measurements are available to the software.

(Once your target's sensor is triggered by a sound made by a bullet on a neighbouring target lane, there is a time interval of several milliseconds during which it is not capable of detecting the sound made by YOUR bullet. As a matter of statistics sooner or later you will be unlucky enough for your bullet to arrive during this "dead time" / "recovery time", the measurement will be lost and the software will never see the data necessary to calculate your shot position.)

The more sensitive a sensor, the more lanes of "rogue" traffic there are to trigger this vulnerability. And there is absolutely nothing that any software can do about that.

Better sensor designs can mitigate this problem. If you want, but only if you ask, I can bore you with how much time and effort SMT has spent on sensor designs, and why our sensors are so very much more expensive (e.g. why we pay 20X as much for the core sensing element, in a retail-oriented product in which we have tried to realize every possible manufacturing cost saving)

!Peter!
Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2016 6:35 am

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#25 Postby !Peter! » Fri Jul 27, 2018 5:18 am

Thank you Daniel for that detail.

Am I correct in concluding that all external acoustic targets are going to be susecptable to lost shots due to the "deadtime" / "recovery time" inherent in the sensors?

Daniel Chisholm
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu May 03, 2012 8:40 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#26 Postby Daniel Chisholm » Fri Jul 27, 2018 6:18 am

!Peter! wrote:Thank you Daniel for that detail.

Am I correct in concluding that all external acoustic targets are going to be susecptable to lost shots due to the "deadtime" / "recovery time" inherent in the sensors?


Yes. How much is a matter of degree, depending on the factors you list, plus the number of neighbouring targets within the sensors' detection zone, plus the firing tempo.

If there are no neighbouring targets within the sensors' detection zone, the shot loss rate will be zero.

!Peter!
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Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#27 Postby !Peter! » Fri Jul 27, 2018 6:25 am

Thanks again for posting that detail.

Barry Davies
Posts: 1383
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:11 pm

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#28 Postby Barry Davies » Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:48 am

Thanks Daniel,
It appears to me that the possibility of " lost " shots is very real considering the range of the sensors. That raises a number of questions.
If the sensors are capable of detecting shots from several targets either side ---then why don't they?
Why is my screen not overcrowded with shots from other targets?
There are other questions but that will do for now.
Barry

pjifl
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Location: Innisfail, Far North QLD.

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#29 Postby pjifl » Fri Jul 27, 2018 12:29 pm

When we tested the Mareeba SM target (4 sensor type) in Mareeba there were no active adjacent shots. The log file was used to record reported positions of impacts on the target which eliminated transcription errors and reduced the complexity of the task to something doable. Remember, there were over 100 shots to measure and compare with the log file positions which was a formidable task.

Later, the SM target was used in Herberton - some of the time during a 'normal' day's shooting while shots were being fired on an adjacent Hexta.
And later in Cairns the SMT target was tested at the same time that two Hextas were also being fired on. The SMT target was on one end with two Hextas alongside, thus one was more distant from it than the other.

In both the latter cases involving adjacent shooting, the log file showed many many 'ghost shots'. The log file showed these up to 40 feet away from the SMT target but they were included within the SMT log file. Until we understood what was happening this was disconcerting and eventually involved considerable manual 'filtering' on our part.

The SMT display the shooter saw did not show these shots because the SMT software had been set to not show any shots on the monitor beyond a certain radius from its target centre and was effectively filtering out these confusing 'ghost ' shots. But they were recorded in the log file.

We had no lost shots due to concurrent shots on adjacent targets causing momentary sensor inactivity. Just how many lost shots would occur in a day's shooting with a large bank of targets I have no idea. The number of targets in use, and the rate of fire would be factors increasing the likelihood of this happening.

Hope this helps to explain the SMT behavior.

Peter Smith.

Barry Davies
Posts: 1383
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:11 pm

Re: Silver Mountain SOLO ET's

#30 Postby Barry Davies » Fri Jul 27, 2018 2:23 pm

Thanks Peter, that satisfactorily explains my questions.
I would think that on a range such as ours where no more that two targets would be in used any one time, the possibility of this happening would be so remote as to not give it consideration.
However a question remains -- would a more sensitive sensor(s) contribute to increased accuracy in reporting the position of the shot hole?
Barry


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