DIY Golf Launch Monitor using the OPS243-A Doppler Radar.
Warning
This project is in active development. Features may be incomplete, unstable, or change without notice. Contributions and bug reports are welcome!
OpenFlight is an open-source golf launch monitor that uses Doppler radar to measure ball speed, club speed, launch angle, spin rate, and carry distance.
- Ball Speed: 35-200 mph range with ±0.5% accuracy (OPS243-A)
- Club Speed: Detected from pre-impact readings (OPS243-A)
- Smash Factor: Ball speed / club speed ratio
- Launch Angle: Vertical launch measured by K-LD7 angle radar (deprecated — see below)
- Club Path: Horizontal aim direction measured by second K-LD7 (deprecated — see below)
- Spin Rate: Via rolling buffer I/Q analysis (the hardest radar measurement — see Limitations)
- Carry Distance: Computed from ball speed, launch angle, and spin
| Component | What it does | ~Cost |
|---|---|---|
| OPS243-A Radar | Ball speed, club speed, spin | $249 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | Runs everything | $130 |
| 7" Touchscreen | Shows shot data | $46 |
| SparkFun SEN-14262 | Impact sound trigger for shot capture | $18 |
| Power supply + accessories | $27 | |
| Subtotal, no angle radar | ~$400 | |
| TI IWR6843LEVM + cable | Launch angle (vertical + horizontal), club path | $156 |
| Total with angle radar | ~$556 | |
| K-LD7 (×2) + FTDI adapters | Launch angle + club path (deprecated) | $140 |
Without an angle radar you still get ball speed, club speed, smash factor, spin rate, and estimated carry. The angle radar adds measured launch angle and is what club path is derived from.
⚠️ The K-LD7 angle radars are deprecated. The supported angle radar is now the TI IWR6843. Don't buy K-LD7s for a new build; their software support remains for existing builds only. See the full parts list for details and links.
The IWR6843 needs custom firmware — the stock TI demo doesn't expose the raw radar cube OpenFlight needs. A validated prebuilt image ships in
firmware/releases/, so flashing it doesn't require the TI toolchain. See the IWR6843 Operator Guide.
See the Parts List for everything you need with purchase links.
Follow the Sound Trigger Wiring Guide to connect the SEN-14262 to the OPS243-A. The (deprecated) K-LD7 modules connect via USB — no wiring needed.
Adding the IWR6843 angle radar? The Pi cannot power both radars over USB, so the OPS243 moves to the Pi's GPIO UART header while the TI board takes the USB port. Do it in this order, validating each step before the next — doing both at once makes any failure ambiguous:
- Move the OPS243 from USB to the Pi GPIO UART — rewire and confirm the OPS still triggers on its own.
- IWR6843 Operator Guide — wire, flash the firmware, mount, aim, and measure geometry.
If your OPS243-A has WiFi, you cannot use the GPIO UART — its WiFi module already drives the radar's UART receive line. Use a separately powered USB hub instead; see the operator guide's Option B.
Flash Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit), plug in the radars, then run the interactive setup:
git clone https://github.com/jewbetcha/openflight.git
cd openflight
./scripts/setup/setup.shThe script installs everything and walks you through the one-time hardware configuration (radar flash setup, K-LD7 device naming, auto-start) with prompts — no manual config editing needed. It's safe to re-run any time. See the Raspberry Pi Setup Guide for details and troubleshooting.
# Default: rolling buffer mode with sound trigger
scripts/start-kiosk.sh
# With the IWR6843 angle radar (OPS243 on the Pi GPIO UART).
# Geometry values are examples — measure your own; see the operator guide.
scripts/start-kiosk.sh --iwr6843 \
--ops-port /dev/ttyAMA0 \
--iwr6843-tee-m 1.372 --iwr6843-net-m 4.064 \
--iwr6843-tilt-deg 5.5 --iwr6843-radar-height-m 0.229 \
--iwr6843-ball-height-m 0.021
# With K-LD7 launch-angle geometry defaults (deprecated hardware)
scripts/start-kiosk.sh --kld7-geometry
# Development mode (no hardware)
scripts/start-kiosk.sh --mockThe IWR6843 geometry flags are not optional — a wrong value silently biases
the launch angle rather than failing. --iwr6843-ball-height-m is 0.021 off a
mat and 0.040 off a tee, which is about 0.8° of launch angle.
Then open http://localhost:8080 or use the touchscreen.
OpenFlight can push your sessions to the FlightWeb cloud so you can review
shots from any device. It's opt-in, and raw radar data never leaves your
Pi — only shot results and session metadata are uploaded (verify with
openflight-cloud push --dry-run).
setup.sh offers to enable this and link your Pi. To do it by hand:
openflight-cloud link # pair this Pi (enter a short code in your browser)
openflight-cloud status # linked? queued? parked?Once linked, sessions sync automatically (on session end and via a ~10-minute timer that heals wifi outages). See the Cloud Sync Guide for details.
OpenFlight also serves a fullscreen-friendly browser display for tablets, TV browsers, or a Chrome tab cast to Chromecast.
- Start OpenFlight as usual with
scripts/start-kiosk.sh. - Find the OpenFlight host IP address on your LAN.
- Open
http://<openflight-host-ip>:8080/displayfrom another laptop, tablet, or TV browser. - For Chromecast, open the display page in Chrome and use Chrome's built-in Cast feature to cast the tab.
This is browser/tab casting only. OpenFlight does not include native Cast SDK support yet.
┌─────────────┐ USB/Serial ┌─────────────┐ Callback ┌─────────────┐ WebSocket ┌─────────────┐
│ OPS243-A │ ───────────▶ │ Rolling │ ──────────▶ │ Flask │ ──────────▶ │ React │
│ Radar │ I/Q buffer │ Buffer │ on_shot() │ Server │ "shot" │ UI │
└─────────────┘ │ Monitor │ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘
└─────────────┘
▲
┌─────────────┐ USB/Serial │
│ K-LD7 (×2) │ ──────────────────── angle data ──────────────┘
│ Angle Radar │
└─────────────┘
- Sound trigger fires — SEN-14262 detects club impact, triggers OPS243-A HOST_INT
- OPS243-A dumps buffer — Rolling buffer I/Q data is captured and analyzed for ball speed, club speed, and spin
- K-LD7 correlates — The server uses the OPS243-A impact timestamp to find the matching ball burst in the K-LD7 ring buffer, extracting launch angle and club path
- Carry computed — Ball speed + spin + launch angle → carry distance
- UI updates — Shot data emitted via WebSocket to the React frontend
The OPS243-A transmits a 24 GHz signal. When it bounces off a moving object (the golf ball), the frequency shifts proportionally to the object's speed — this is the Doppler effect. At 24.125 GHz, each 1 mph of speed creates a ~71.7 Hz Doppler shift.
Place the radar 3-5 feet behind the tee, pointing at the hitting area:
Ball Flight Direction
======================>
[Tee] ←--- 3-5 ft ---→ [OPS243-A] [K-LD7 vertical] [K-LD7 horizontal]
The K-LD7 modules are positioned near the OPS243-A, one mounted vertically (launch angle) and one horizontally (club path / aim direction).
| Setting | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mode | Rolling buffer | Raw I/Q capture for spin + precise speeds |
| Sample Rate | 30 ksps | Supports up to ~208 mph ball speed |
| Capture | 4096 I/Q samples | ~136 ms around impact |
| Trigger | Sound (SEN-14262) | ~10 µs hardware latency via HOST_INT |
| Min Ball Speed | 35 mph | Filter club waggle and slow movements |
| DC Mask | ~15 mph exclusion zone | Reject body movement and environmental noise |
These are applied automatically — the one-time flash configuration is handled by the setup script.
from openflight.rolling_buffer import RollingBufferMonitor
monitor = RollingBufferMonitor() # auto-detects the OPS243-A
monitor.connect()
monitor.start()
print("Swing when ready...")
shot = monitor.wait_for_shot(timeout=60)
if shot:
print(f"Ball Speed: {shot.ball_speed_mph:.1f} mph")
print(f"Est. Carry: {shot.estimated_carry_yards:.0f} yards")
monitor.stop()
monitor.disconnect()- Cosine error: If ball doesn't travel directly toward/away from radar, measured speed will be slightly lower than actual
- Spin detection: The hardest radar measurement, especially indoors — the usable signal window ends when the ball hits the net, and short windows can't resolve low spin (commercial radar units have the same constraint and fall back to estimated spin indoors). Low driver-band readings (≤~3100 RPM) are reported at reduced confidence. When spin isn't measured, carry falls back to club-typical spin values. Improving this is an active focus.
- K-LD7 speed aliasing (deprecated hardware): The K-LD7 max speed is 62 mph, so it's used only for angle/distance, not speed
Reflective markings (aluminum stickers, painted dots) noticeably improve K-LD7 launch-angle extraction — the stronger return gives multi-frame tracking, higher SNR, and more confident angles. However, a specular patch produces a pulsed, non-sinusoidal amplitude modulation that the spin detector can't interpret as seam modulation, so measured spin degrades (typically locks to the top of the valid frequency band with low confidence). Low-confidence spin automatically falls back to club-typical values in the ballistics model, so the net effect of marking a ball is better angles with no worse carry estimates. A thin painted stripe (rather than a patch) is a reasonable middle ground if you want both — it rotates through the beam more like a seam.
To verify every component of your build in one shot:
uv run python scripts/hardware-test/diagnose.pyThe diagnostic walks through 6 checks:
- OPS243 connectivity
- OPS243 rolling buffer mode persistence
- OPS243 software trigger
- K-LD7 vertical (launch angle)
- K-LD7 horizontal (aim direction, optional)
- Sound trigger end-to-end (interactive — prompts you to clap near the sensor)
Missing optional hardware (like the horizontal K-LD7) is reported as a skip rather than a failure. Pass --require-all to fail on skips, or --no-interactive to skip the sound-trigger prompt in unattended runs.
openflight/
├── src/openflight/
│ ├── ops243.py # OPS243-A radar driver
│ ├── launch_monitor.py # Shot detection & club/ball separation
│ ├── server.py # Flask server, K-LD7 correlation, carry
│ ├── session_logger.py # JSONL session logging
│ ├── kld7/ # K-LD7 angle radar (deprecated)
│ │ ├── radc.py # FFT, phase interferometry, angle extraction
│ │ ├── tracker.py # Ring buffer, shot correlation
│ │ ├── geometry.py # Launch-angle trajectory fitting
│ │ └── types.py # Data types
│ └── rolling_buffer/ # Spin rate detection
│ ├── monitor.py # Rolling buffer monitor
│ ├── processor.py # I/Q processing for spin
│ ├── trigger.py # Trigger strategies
│ └── types.py # Data types
├── ui/ # React frontend
├── scripts/ # Utility & setup scripts
├── docs/ # Documentation
└── pyproject.toml
Contributions welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
Areas of interest:
- Better spin detection: A dechirped Doppler-sideband estimator is in development (
scripts/analysis/replay_spin_dechirp.py) — help validating it against launch-monitor truth data is especially welcome - Mobile app: Bluetooth connection to phone
uv run pytest tests/ -v- Parts List — What to buy
- Sound Trigger Wiring — How to wire the sound trigger
- Raspberry Pi Setup — Full setup guide
- IWR6843 Operator Guide — Wire, flash, mount, aim, and calibrate the angle radar
- OPS243 USB → GPIO UART Migration — Required before adding the IWR6843
- IWR6843 Firmware Developer Guide — Build the firmware from source (not needed to flash the prebuilt image)
- Simulator Connectors — Stream shots to GSPro, OpenGolfSim, and others
- Cloud Sync — Push filtered sessions to FlightWeb
- Rolling Buffer & Spin Detection — Spin measurement details
- Dechirped-Sideband Spin Replay — Next-gen spin estimator test bench
- K-LD7 Ball Detection Theory — How angle detection works (deprecated hardware)
- K-LD7 Session Review — Offline review workflow for session JSONL files (deprecated hardware)
- Observability & Log Shipping — Ship logs to Grafana Cloud
- Contributing Guide — How to contribute
- Changelog — Version history
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later) - see LICENSE file.
- OmniPreSense for the OPS243-A radar and documentation
- The golf hacker community for inspiration