01-09-2020, 10:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2020, 11:10 PM by lazyengineer.)
I've been running one for a couple years now, maybe even 3 years by now. I probably have close to 5,000 rounds if not more on it by now.
While it's a great tool, it's construction is fragile. I've had to open it up mutiple times, to take out loose screws. Of the 6 screws that hold the inside screen to the housing, 4 of them are now broken; with blown-out plastic anchor points. They spec'd a pretty cheap brittle plastic for the housing. When the last two screws go, it's basically going to be laying in there loose, with no really easy way to reattach it internally. I'll figure it out at that time, but not looking forward to it. I will say, after opening it up, a very significant portion of the cost of this thing is the fact that it's a cottage-industry product. If Amazon wanted to mass produce these things - they could probably do it for about $45 (or less).
The factory trigger on the LabRadar isn't that good. You basically have to mount the unit even with the muzzle, to get it to trigger. Which means the muzzle blast is beating the Hell out of the innards (see above). I think I'm going to try that trick with the external microphone, that's an interesting suggestion. I have some external microphones anyway for the PC - so.. FREE! Also, some people are doing some sort of rigging up of accelerameters now, and just putting that on the picatinny rail of whatever is being fired. Which is also a very cool idea.
If you put an SD card in the unit, it will record a much higher resolution of data, with like 50 distances reported, rather than just 5. Fun to play with, but not really needed. Beware of SD card annoyances, it has to be below a certain size and I think formated FAT32 (or something like that). Since this thing is pretty much 2000's (if that) era internal electronics, the act of writing 50 number entries onto an SD card is super intense and so slows down the LabRadar between shots by as much as 5+ seconds at times. Frankly, this is absurd, but that's how it is. It's faster without the card.
I've tried using my LabRadar to back-calculate ballistic coefficients. It provides sufficient data to technically be able to do that. That was a very eye-opening experience; as I was getting highly inconsistent numbers all over the place, and very rarely agreeing with factory reported BC's. I don't think this is necessarily a LabRadar failing actually, and just an artifact of the science and of ballistics out to under 100 yards. I see now why factory reported BC's and 3rd party reported BC's aren't often the same - there's a lot of noise to backing out BC's apparently.
The interface is almost primitive, and grossly non-intuitive. The BlueTooth app brings it into the 21'st century at least, but still a bit dated and very slow. Biggest problem I have there is the thing loses blue-tooth connection way too often, and you can't reconnect while it's still armed. I have their APP on three devices; one of which is a cheap Kindle Fire; which you can force their Android APK file onto. This is tidy as that way you can have a cheap $40 Kindle Fire tablet as the dedicated range controller for the LabRadar.
For power, it will eat up 6 AA's in one session. I run rechargeables, and they usually are good for 3 hours or so. I always bring an external battery pack as well, and often just run that.
To be honest - I think $600 is a lot for what these guys deliver. The made their one model, and basically walked away. Maybe the guy died; this product has all the trappings of a retiree's pet-project and then he just lost steam. And it's a very very cool pet project, I'd be increadibly proud to have released this as my version 1 in 2016. And kind of embarrased to still have this my flag-ship rendition, in 2020. Any serious company would have released a more modern and cost effective Version 2 by now. I'm surprised nobody has made a much more cost effective knock-off by now.
While it's a great tool, it's construction is fragile. I've had to open it up mutiple times, to take out loose screws. Of the 6 screws that hold the inside screen to the housing, 4 of them are now broken; with blown-out plastic anchor points. They spec'd a pretty cheap brittle plastic for the housing. When the last two screws go, it's basically going to be laying in there loose, with no really easy way to reattach it internally. I'll figure it out at that time, but not looking forward to it. I will say, after opening it up, a very significant portion of the cost of this thing is the fact that it's a cottage-industry product. If Amazon wanted to mass produce these things - they could probably do it for about $45 (or less).
The factory trigger on the LabRadar isn't that good. You basically have to mount the unit even with the muzzle, to get it to trigger. Which means the muzzle blast is beating the Hell out of the innards (see above). I think I'm going to try that trick with the external microphone, that's an interesting suggestion. I have some external microphones anyway for the PC - so.. FREE! Also, some people are doing some sort of rigging up of accelerameters now, and just putting that on the picatinny rail of whatever is being fired. Which is also a very cool idea.
If you put an SD card in the unit, it will record a much higher resolution of data, with like 50 distances reported, rather than just 5. Fun to play with, but not really needed. Beware of SD card annoyances, it has to be below a certain size and I think formated FAT32 (or something like that). Since this thing is pretty much 2000's (if that) era internal electronics, the act of writing 50 number entries onto an SD card is super intense and so slows down the LabRadar between shots by as much as 5+ seconds at times. Frankly, this is absurd, but that's how it is. It's faster without the card.
I've tried using my LabRadar to back-calculate ballistic coefficients. It provides sufficient data to technically be able to do that. That was a very eye-opening experience; as I was getting highly inconsistent numbers all over the place, and very rarely agreeing with factory reported BC's. I don't think this is necessarily a LabRadar failing actually, and just an artifact of the science and of ballistics out to under 100 yards. I see now why factory reported BC's and 3rd party reported BC's aren't often the same - there's a lot of noise to backing out BC's apparently.
The interface is almost primitive, and grossly non-intuitive. The BlueTooth app brings it into the 21'st century at least, but still a bit dated and very slow. Biggest problem I have there is the thing loses blue-tooth connection way too often, and you can't reconnect while it's still armed. I have their APP on three devices; one of which is a cheap Kindle Fire; which you can force their Android APK file onto. This is tidy as that way you can have a cheap $40 Kindle Fire tablet as the dedicated range controller for the LabRadar.
For power, it will eat up 6 AA's in one session. I run rechargeables, and they usually are good for 3 hours or so. I always bring an external battery pack as well, and often just run that.
To be honest - I think $600 is a lot for what these guys deliver. The made their one model, and basically walked away. Maybe the guy died; this product has all the trappings of a retiree's pet-project and then he just lost steam. And it's a very very cool pet project, I'd be increadibly proud to have released this as my version 1 in 2016. And kind of embarrased to still have this my flag-ship rendition, in 2020. Any serious company would have released a more modern and cost effective Version 2 by now. I'm surprised nobody has made a much more cost effective knock-off by now.