Pinned Caddie GPS

MotherTeresa10 · May 26

Anyone else try one out yet?

radiman · June 4

radiman · June 5

20 hours ago, radiman said:

I messed with that Pinned GPS yesterday. Took a while to charge. But apparently it's supposed to be able to last 4 rounds. So, battery may be decent sized.

I had to set it up and go through an update first. It definitely seems that they're releasing it with hopes of adding advertised functionality at a later date. I suppose generate revenue to fund the further development of the product.

I question the specs of the device. The 3D graphics are not overly complex nor are they some ridiculously high resolution. But, the device really seems to struggle rendering them. It's choppy and has a pretty slow response at times. The screen isn't very responsive and zooming in and out can take repeated effort and time just for it to frustrate you by zooming in more than you wanted or not enough, then lag behind and not register your touch.

They have a 2D version of the course and using that eliminates most of the lag from the device trying to render the 3D hole. However, if you have to manually set each and every hole to 2D. The default action for the next hole is for a flyover, which you can imagine, is pretty clunky. That can be disabled from the settings. Hopefully, they will enable an option to default to the 2D view. I prefer it to the 3D view they currently use.

On their site there is a bunch of features that look kind of cool that will be added later. So, it may turn into a pretty sweet device.

Oh, and the 45,000 courses that I have seen being touted as preloaded on the device? Not accurate. I will admit, I think the "re-loaded" comment has been from brand ambassadors in ads online and I have not seen anything specifically referencing that in their official materials. You have to connect it to wifi and you can download 15-20 courses (I think). That seems pretty lame as I am someone who's lucky if I remembered to charge the device let alone plan out whether or not my GPS has the course I am going to play using one of it's very few slots. Unless I am missing something. But at setup, they had me select up to 15-20 courses (again, I cannot remember the exact amount).

I may get a chance to use it tonight. I have a spot on my Zip Navigator I am going to try to figure out a way to attach it. The scorecard holder doesn't get used. So, may slip a piece of metal under the lid so the tablet can just grab onto that. Would be the perfect platform as they're almost the exact same size.

jwhite86 · June 5

I had the same feelings posted above.

Slow charge, good battery, clunky graphics so far

And my biggest pet peeve so far is that it seems to lag with my location. I'll be on the tee of a 320 yard par 4 and it'll tell me I have 800 yards to the hole. I'm hoping it's just something minor that'll be fixed otherwise I'll be reaching out for a replacement.

I do love the score keeping aspect and saving rounds. Looks like they just added the ability to delete rounds as well. Looking forward to when the entire catalog of things offered is made available.

I attached mine to my push cart using a stroller tablet holder. When I used it on a cart the magnet was fantastic and it didn't move (and I tried)

radiman · June 6

I used mine for 9 holes. It was ok. I think the 3D layout is kind of unnecessary. It's cool to see the layout. But trying to tap on the screen to get a yardage in 3D mode is kind of weird. Personally, I much prefer the 2D layout. The 2D will have a moveable target that you have to drag to a location to get a distance. It just defaults to half way between the green and the unit. I moved it to where I wanted, looked in my bag, looked at the GPS and it had moved back to just being half way again. Frustrating but not the end of the world.

One big annoyance was on the 5th hole, I found it at the main screen as if I just turned it on. I had to set up the round all over again. Could not find the round or any way to continue. I stopped tracking stats and score on it as it would be incomplete. The fact that there is no option to have it automatically move to the next hole had me confused when I looked at it for a yardage and saw it was two holes behind.

I am going to be quite frank here. The device is a very cool concept. BUT, it is just a mobile app on a low end tablet. There are a plethora of free apps you can get for your phone (or tablet I assume) that do a much better job presenting data and a more fluid user experience.

The software is really holding this thing back. If this were presented along with all of the other established GPS mobile apps, I think it would not rate very highly. There are too many bugs that had me messing with the device way more than I should have during a round. Graphics aren't great and performance seems lackluster. Thankfully, I am sure they can address a lot of this with future updates. But it definitely doesn't feel like this was a finished product when they released it.

As far as the advanced analytics, the data is simply fairways (hit, L, R, short), greens (hit, L, R, short), putts, penalty strokes. I lost my round so I stopped recording any of it once I got it back up. So, not really able to go over what you can do with that.

For $450, I would have expected a much smoother experience with less bugs. If an established app company like The Grint decided to partner or release their own, I think the Pinned Caddie would get left in the dust.

radiman · June 6

19 hours ago, jwhite86 said:

I had the same feelings posted above.

Slow charge, good battery, clunky graphics so far

And my biggest pet peeve so far is that it seems to lag with my location. I'll be on the tee of a 320 yard par 4 and it'll tell me I have 800 yards to the hole. I'm hoping it's just something minor that'll be fixed otherwise I'll be reaching out for a replacement.

I do love the score keeping aspect and saving rounds. Looks like they just added the ability to delete rounds as well. Looking forward to when the entire catalog of things offered is made available.

I attached mine to my push cart using a stroller tablet holder. When I used it on a cart the magnet was fantastic and it didn't move (and I tried)

This is the scorecard holder. I grabbed a metal bite pad I had for my Bushnell speaker and put it under the plastic cover.

it worked ok. I think a larger piece of metal would help keep it a little more solid.

jwhite86 · June 8

Not the best pic, but this is how I set it up.

also, after the update all of my complaints are null and void. Yardage updates quickly, is very accurate and didn’t have a single head scratching reading.

MountainKing · June 10

This thing looks really cool, I sort of wish Grint would make a stand alone device like this.

radiman · June 10

1 minute ago, MountainKing said:

This thing looks really cool, I sort of wish Grint would make a stand alone device like this.

If this thing does ok, I would not be shocked if they did. Their software is much more robust as that's what they do. They only need to come up with the hardware vs completely building something new.

jwhite86 · July 7

The second update came through this morning. Each time I use it I like it more and more. Stat tracking is extremely easy, and I'm excited to use the auto update and shotgun start feature.

The YouTube videos have been extremely helpful as well.