ABOUT
Thank you for taking the time to check out our website! My name is Fred Kemp and together with our team of developers, we have created QMotion.
Every pool player knows the frustration of missing shots. Pool instructors such as Mark Wilson, “Dr. Dave” Alciatore and Jerry Briesath will ALL tell you that the fundamentals are key to putting the cue ball where you want it consistently and repeatably. Which, in turn of course, means you making more balls when playing and winning more.
These fundamentals - not unlike the fundamental components of a tennis serve, a pitchers motion or a golf swing - are not difficult to learn individually. But, putting them all together at one time - and to do so consistently - is the trick.
QMotion does not teach fundamentals. You will have to go to an instructor, read about it or have a knowledgeable friend who can instruct you. But, QMotion does provide a way to identify the problem(s) you are having objectively and in real time as you are playing. It measures the straightness of your stroke before and after contact, the speed in the transition between the backstroke and forward stroke, the amount of follow-through after contact and if you finish the shot well. It also measures the stability of the bridge during the shot and gives an overall score for the shot. It can do this for every shot in real time on a monitor that shows the last 6 shots and scores.
As you look at your scores, it will tell you right after your shot if you popped up, if you didn’t follow through, you cue tip wasn’t moving straight . . . whatever it was. Or, if you did everything right, too! Sometimes you are surprised by the results. For example, you get a low score on the straightness of cue tip after contact and then look in disgust at the replay only to notice the cue tip was doing something funny in the follow through, a little curl or something.
And, a funny thing happens when you play QMotion because it “gamifies” the work of stroke training! Like a video game, you find yourself trying to get higher scores and these higher scores are genuine improvements in your stroke! You begin to put the cue ball EXACTLY where you want it more consistently. And you gain confidence that you can depend more on your stroke! So, when you are in a tense, high-pressure situation, you feel that your stroke will pull you through and you will make the shot! So, QMotion can give an real edge to players and improve their playing. And, it improves a stroke at a faster rate of than any other training method, in my opinion. All because it makes this training fun and challenging instead of a chore!
As you likely know by now, QMotion uses a fisheye camera directly over the table and so can see and analyze what is going on below it for every shot. From that basic, single-camera premise, I personally feel that this system opens up an all-new world of future possibilities such as automatically scoring games, interactivity with other systems such as laser training, networking tournament play to large central monitors, shot tracking and other analyzations. Further enhancements may involve studying body and elbow positioning, too. In short, we are just getting started!
QMotion records motion-only video so the dead time between shots is eliminated. If you string together these motion-only videos, it creates a highlights video of a game, match or an entire tournament automatically like what you see on YouTube. Using the QMotion generated WiFi hotspot, you can then download these videos easily to your smart phone and save or send them wherever you might want.
One caveat. Right now, while the QMotion can do a lot, it is not perfect. Sometimes a shot is missed. Sometimes, a score not made not correctly. But, these are getting more rare as time goes on because we keep training and improving all aspects of the system continuously. For example, if you saw where we were a year ago or 6 months ago, you would see that we have made a tremendous amount of progress! We will continue that progress, too.
Right now, the hardware requirements of the computer - similar to a gaming computer with a graphical processing unit (GPU) - and the camera and mounting system combine to make the price of QMotion systems high. Prices will drop over time but “they are what they are” as the saying goes and the QMotion system just requires a lot from the computer. However, we expect to have financing options in the near future that will make things easier on the pocketbook. Additionally, players will be able to pay $5 to $10 per hour (or whatever the commercial license holders want to charge) to see the very real results in their stroke without breaking the bank at a fraction of the cost of owning a system.
Thank you.
Fred Kemp, President
Kemp Engineering LLC