Butterfly Table Tennis Question and Answer

Question:

Good evening: I am currently playing with Butterfly Professional robot, I am thinking about upgrading to Amicus Prime with the upgrade kit, can I see a difference in performance after the upgrade.
Thanks

Answer: 

This Ask the Experts question was answered by Larry Thoman. He is a Table Tennis Robot Guru. Larry’s response is below:

Shazad,

 I don’t think you’ll see much of a difference in the way the robot actually throws a ball, but you will see a big difference in the ease of use and quality of the user interface. These improvements include:

Software can easily be updated to fix bugs and add features.

Pre-programmed drills include a video clip of a top player demonstrating the drill. You can add videos to your own custom drills.

Includes a Mirror Switch that allows exercises to run correctly for either right or left handed players; or alternatively, to instantly produce a new variation of an existing exercise.

Provides visual diagrams of each drill, making it easier to understand exactly where the balls will land and what spin type, spin amount, speed, trajectory, and position each ball will have. Top view and side view diagrams change in accordance with each ball as it is added to the exercise.

Wireless (Bluetooth) connectivity between controller and robot for neater appearance and more flexibility. You will no longer need to use the thick, heavy cable to connect controller to robot.

More customized settings. For instance, with Professional, Cycle is restricted to 20/10, 40/20, 60/30 or 80/40 play/pause periods. The Prime has those settings as quick set options, but you may also customize them to any amount between 10 and 120 seconds for play periods and 5 to 60 seconds for the pause period. You may also set the play period by number of balls thrown instead of elapsed time.

Name drills anything you want for easier recollection instead of being limited only to a number.

Rearrange drills in any order you desire instead of being forced into a strictly numerical order.

More easily make changes to existing drills as you can re-order, delete, and duplicate the existing balls in an easier manner.

What is called Cluster Mode on the Professional is much more elegantly implemented and much easier to understand on the Prime, where it is now called Sequence Mode.

Use the search function to quickly locate an drill. Especially handy when a large number of drills are saved.

Share drills with, or send messages to, your Facebook friends direct from the tablet. Or use email to share with friends not on Facebook.

Drills can have more balls (10) per drill than the Professional (8).

More exercises can be saved with Prime. Number of exercises is only limited by amount of storage on the tablet. And that storage limit can be increased by adding a micro SD (TF) Card. Professional is limited to 99 drills.

Prime has a more complete and better written Owner’s Manual in English (written by native English speaker) than Professional and the manual is viewable within the app on the tablet.

Onscreen Calibration process takes you step by step through Calibration.

Amicus just released a new software version that includes the following additional features:

3rd Ball Attack Training—the Prime tablet will sense the ball bounce of the player’s serve, and then start the drill. This allows the player to serve a ball using natural timing, and then the robot will begin throwing the balls in the drill after the serve bounces on the robot’s end of the table. Prime is the first robot to have this functionality.

Sector Switch—set a range of placements for one or more balls within an drill. So instead of specifying +4 as the Placement, you can now specify +2 to +6 as the range and the robot will randomly throw that ball within the desired range.

Ball Frequency setting (Ball/min) is now saved with other settings so you don’t need to remember the ideal frequency for each drill.

Save To File—Drills can now be saved to a micro SD (TF) card inserted into the tablet. Great way to back up your custom drills or swap drill files with a friend when there is no internet connection.

Hope this helps.

 Larry

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