Although shooting baskets is an important part of basketball training in and of itself, it would certainly be helpful to know how many of your shots actually result in the ball going through the hoop – is your success rate increasing or dropping, and if so, by how much? The Hoop Tracker system is designed to let you know.
Hoop Tracker has two main physical components: a watch that you wear on the wrist of your non-shooting arm, and a magnetically-attaching shot detector that is mounted on the rim of the basket, using an included pole. The watch is powered by a lithium-polymer battery, that should be good for at least seven days of use per charge.
Every time you take a shot, an accelerometer in the detector registers the vibrations made by the ball hitting the basket and/or backboard. If the ball proceeds to fall through the hoop, it will flick a lever attached to the detector, letting the device know that the shot was good. If it doesn’t go through, however, then the lever remains unflicked, and the detector registers the shot as a miss. In either case, the shot data is wirelessly transmitted from the detector to the watch.
In the case of an “air ball,” in which the ball doesn’t even make contact with the basket, the detector won’t register the shot at all. The user instead presses the air ball button on the watch, to manually record the shot as a miss.
While you’re still on the court, you can look at the watch display to view data from your current training session, or any of up to nine previous sessions. Not only will it show you how many of shots were makes or misses (your “shooting percentages”), but it also keeps track of the location from which each shot was made, how many points were scored, how long the session lasted, and other statistics.
Once you’re back home, you can also use the watch’s USB port to upload data from it to your free account on the Hoop Tracker website. There, you can track and analyze various parameters of your performance using a number of displays, plus you can compete against friends who also have accounts.
Hoop Tracker isn’t available just yet, but potential buyers can make their interest known via the link below. It’s expected to be in stores by the first quarter of next year, priced at US$199.
The following video provides an overview of the Hoop tracker system.
Source: Hoop Tracker
