My thoughts on the MantisX training device.

[45dotACP]

Some while ago there was a thread on this forum that brought up the MantisX training device. I kinda dismissed it at first, but the owner, Austin, reached out to me, being an IL guy based out of Oswego and asked if I might be interested in stopping by to take a look at it, so I did. It was an interesting idea, being a device with an accelerometer hooked up via bluetooth connection to a cell phone. It measures the quality of a shot and provides a rating...sorta like a percentage...a hundred being the best, zero being you totally fucked it up. It provides an analysis of what you did wrong and offers hints...sorta like the chart used by bullseye shooters.

I was interested and decided to buy one just for shits and giggles. For a bit, I put it on the Glock 34...my only railed firearm. I used it pretty significantly for SHO/WHO shooting, given that "The Chart" in discussion was primarily based around bullseye shooting and maybe not all that applicable to freestyle shooting...or at least I wasn't sure. The device itself can be switched between right and left handed modes so I messed around with that a little. After a while, it got old just on account that it only gave a number and a suggestion. I was fairly deep into single stack at the moment as well, and starting to be interested in Berettas and straying from Glocks, so I didn't use it that much.

Pretty recently though, Austin released some software updates that I really like. The accelerometer tracing is now made available in one of the modes...it color codes the line of travel that the guns is experiencing before and after the shot breaks. I've found it to be infinitely more useful than the "Here's a number, stop slapping the trigger".

So here's a few pros:
-It shows travel of the gun before and after the shot and also during the trigger press. This is the main way I use it. Seeing if my trigger press is affecting, and how it affects my shot is a useful tool.http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161205/23c2988745e789c3106c8c4308fe4d8c.jpg
In this case, I was pushing the gun left, as it was during a SHO string
-It has a rechargeable battery instead of needing to change out the little thin mint batteries
-It works with apple or android phones.
-You can adjust it to a left handed or right handed shooter
-It will pick up freestyle shooting and provide feedback on the travel of the firearm after the shot as well. The tracing can indicate a straight up and down direction of the muzzle, but if your grip is off, it'll be different.

There are some cons:
-It won't really pick up rapid fire. You'll drop shots if you start blasting too quickly, so it's really more of a slow fire diagnostic...so for a higher level shooter, it may not be as useful....for a fairly low level shooter (hi there, nice to meet you) it'll give you some interesting feedback, especially for SHO/WHO shooting, which is a big problem for me.
-It will still, at times drop shots. I'm not sure if this is related to how well the device connects with the bluetooth on the phone or an issue with battery life...I cannot say. It's best adjusted for by using long strings of fire, or resetting the device itself.
-It uses a target of sorts beneath the tracing of the muzzle's motion...but the target itself isn't exactly where you aim. It will provide an interesting analysis of the wobbles of the firearm, not necessarily on target, but prior to the shot.

I haven't been shooting it for a very long time, but I have been seeing more dropped shots...maybe not great, but we'll see.

I'll be shooting it a lot more, especially to work on my SHO/WHO shooting. I'm interested in seeing what updates Austin continues to release and what some other shooters think of it as well.

(edit: Jesus...this photo is a bit too big, any way to shrink it?)

[BaiHu]

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[MantisX]

There are some cons:
-It won't really pick up rapid fire. You'll drop shots if you start blasting too quickly, so it's really more of a slow fire diagnostic...so for a higher level shooter, it may not be as useful....for a fairly low level shooter (hi there, nice to meet you) it'll give you some interesting feedback, especially for SHO/WHO shooting, which is a big problem for me.
-It will still, at times drop shots. I'm not sure if this is related to how well the device connects with the bluetooth on the phone or an issue with battery life...I cannot say. It's best adjusted for by using long strings of fire, or resetting the device itself.
-It uses a target of sorts beneath the tracing of the muzzle's motion...but the target itself isn't exactly where you aim. It will provide an interesting analysis of the wobbles of the firearm, not necessarily on target, but prior to the shot.



Austin from Mantis here. Thanks for the thorough write-up!

One of the difficulties with developing this product is sorting out the data from the noise. So much happens so quickly, and one of our philosophies is that we only want to give data/feedback if it is useful. So if the data is too noisy, or unclear, we discard that dataset (resulting in the occasional "missed" shot). We do this also to balance actual shots with false positives (you don't want to see racking the slide get scored). The data is all there, and the algorithms behind it keep getting better (we have some smart engineers doing some crazy stuff I don't even understand), so keep expecting improvements with our regular updates.

Rapid fire: A year ago, MantisX would record shots at splits about 0.55 sec apart or more. Currently, it's about 0.33 seconds, depending on the shooter. Expect that to continue getting better over time.

Target-tracking: With the live trace view (shown above), we just try to roughly center it, and assume you're trying to aim in the center as well. Obviously, there are variants there. :) Like he said, the key is movement magnitude and direction, and it allows you to separate sighting issues from shooting mechanic issues.

We're pushing out updates every 4-8 weeks, so look for more soon.

Cheers!
Austin

[Drang]

What does it cost, and where would one order it?

[Sal Picante]

Looking forward to trying this out ... I can see how this will be useful for prepping for Bianchi Cup.

[Peally]

Interesting. Don't see much use for USPSA (at 25 yards if you missed you can't pull a trigger or line up sights) but possible interesting nonetheless for other sports.