Tenergy 05 Table Tennis Blogs

Newgys are made in Gallatin TN USA. They have suffered terrible floods there and about 20 people have died there due to the floods or Tornadoes. I am sure may robot has been delayed if I am an lucky and if I am not lucky I may never get it. Gallatin is just NE of Nashville where the Grand Ol Opry house is
xaminer~y2010m5d5-Slideshow-Nashville-flooding-cleanup--FEMA-funds-on-the-way-for-Tennessee-flood-victims-photos
http://www.examiner.com/x-12837-US-Headlines-Examiner~y2010m5d5-How-to-h...
You can see the Grand Ol Opry House did do too well either.

I will be sure to let you all know when I get theNewgy and provide a full review.

The Newgy 2050 was late but it really expected to see it next week.
It works well but I should have bought more balls. It came with 48 balls but two got stepped on within the first 20 minutes :( Many of the balls build up a static charge from being shot out by the rotating wheel and they repel each others and don't go down in the sump to be recycled. More balls would add extra weight that the static charge couldn't overcome.

Setup was easy and it can be put on and take off the table in less than a minute. This part is very good. The Newgy comes with a CD that shows the features of the Newgy. I believe it is Brian Pace, the same guy that does the Butterfly Tenergy, Bryce and Solcion videos, that does the Newgy video. There is also software on the CD that can be installed on a laptop. This software can be used to program the Newgy.

The Newgy has 3 basic modes. Normal, Drill and PC. Normal mode allows on to adjust the speed, left most ball bounce and the right most ball bounce locations, the wait between the balls, 3 random settings for speed locations and waits and a left and right hand option. This is all I/we played with today.

The drill mode allows one to select from 32 drills that are permanently encoded into the Newgy. The are another 32 programs that can be programmed using a PC or laptop. The programming looks easy. The programs can be saved on the PC shared with others.

The Newgy robot itself is two motors. One makes the head go left and right and the other motor controls the speed. The head can be rotated around the axis of the ball shot. This controls the spin. This is a one head robot so there is always spin. The higher the speed the higher the spin. The spin is extreme at high speeds. When set for back spin the ball will shoot slowly across the room with the Magnus effect keeping the ball flying horizontal or even floating higher. It is eerie because the balls seem to float by. When set at a more reasonable and slower speed the balls will hit the table but there is still so much spin that getting these balls back is difficult. The same goes for the side spins. The topspin can be extreme because the speed can be set very high and the ball will still hit the table. The top spin alone is not a problem. I can adjust the time between balls to about 0.9 seconds between balls. I got tired quickly when the time between balls was adjusted to 0.8 seconds.

Another feature I like is the ball unloading. The robot will shoot the balls at low speed but high rate into a bucket. The bucket of balls can be used then for serving practice.

I have videos and pictures but I most compress the video before posting.

i have been using a IPONG Training Buddy which cost about $250 and does the job nicely for me, but then i have not used a proper machine so have no idea what the real deal is like. I do get sick of picking up balls though! What i am using doesnt get much chop or topspin really but for simple getting the basics right im stoked and its very easy to operate and put away. Have no idea on warranty though and i wouldnt call it the most robust machine, so i am keen to read all about what is a serious piece of equipment being the Newgy

I was tired when I got done with recording and I didn't play today. I stayed home and enjoyed the nice weather and avoided the Portland traffic and gave the Newgy a chance to rest :)

ok, but im pretty average at that type of thing as you can tell by my other reviews. all i can tell you is that people at my club are beginning to get quite concerned as to how to play me now....an im loving being able to loop on my forehand .

however, there is a bill loop and a good players loop...the two are very different at the moment :-)

The Newgy controller reset itself when incrementing the speed. In other words it crashed. It also got stuck in a mode where the ball loader motor is in reverse. I had to unplug the controller, wait and then plug it back in to fix it. I did spend some time practicing returning double bounce serves, with a lot of back spin, with top spin flicks. I turned the Newgy's head upside down so it produces back spin. Normally the Newgy will shoot the ball directly over the net but this has too much speed for double bounce servo so like a double bounce serve I pointed the head down to the table so the ball bounced up just high enough to clear the net. The ball would then bounce many times on my side as the back spin was almost enough to stop the balls forward motion. Simply getting these serves back with a push is easy. Getting these serves back using a top spin flick is tough. Getting these serves back with enough speed and placement so the opponent does take initiative is very difficult. Correction there are three motors. There is a bottom motor that feeds the balls.

Mechanical parts wear out. It must be expected. The Newgy documentation has what looks like a complete breakdown of the robot. All the parts are shown and how the machine is assembled. There is a list of part numbers too. I will have a better idea of how good the support is when I get my robots firmware fixed.

Today the machine motor ball loader motor ran in reverse again. Again I powered off the machine and started it back up. Then it worked well for the rest of the practice session. I practiced more serving and returning double bounce serves with strong back spin. This time I used the random feature for the angles. I couldn't vary the speed much because if the speed went too fast the serve was no longer a double bounce serve.

I know that the firmware in my robot is written by rookies that don't use the the robots. It works most of the time but it will crash, run the ball feeder motor in the wrong direction, get locked up in some state where the keys don't respond or the screen will garble. Unplugging the machine and plugging back in seems to reset the problem but then I lose my settings. I have contacted Newgy about my problems and they said my firmware is old but I have had it for less than a month now. I bought in on 29 APR and it came 8 days later. I have version 2.29 and the latest version is 2.34

There is no easy way to update the firmware using a serial port or PC. The firmware is 'burned' into a ROM ( read only memory ) in a Microchip controller. To update the firmware the whole Microchip controller chip must be replaced. The Microchip controller is a 40 pin chip that is in a socket so it is field replaceable. The chip must be carefully inserted so no pins are broken or bent and this should be done in a non-static environment. Since I am a experience software engineer I am familiar with doing this so it isn't a problem for me.

The robot itself is very good but the electronic controller part is the worst micro controller product I have seen in years.

I am going make a few suggestions that will make the program more user friendly but issue I have is whether their programmer can actually make the changes. If the programmer actually used the robot he could see what changes need to be made to make using the controller more convenient without being told.

I posted my reply here so keep all the Newgy stuff in one place.

thanks for the newgy review for the 2050, but can anyone tell us about the 2040? If it has a more basic computer system it may run into less problems.