OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I should add Larry that I have the Professional control box. I can't say what the Basic and Advance control boxes are like. I will also have a good go on it the robot over the next few days to see if I can replicate everything exactly like you say above and will try and take some video to upload here as well.

_________________
Blade: Ross Leidy custom blade
Forehand: Butterfly Tenergy 05-FX 1.7mm
Backhand: Dr Neubauer Gangster and Desperado 2 (testing both) OX

Butterfly Amicus Professional robot
-----
Ever tried, Ever failed? No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better!

I like to see a person who has his priorities right.

Just remember, "Table tennis is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."

tOD

@Chris

Any progress with the video review?

Mike

_________________
Previous Setups: -
Setup1: Blade: TSP Balsa All+FH: SpinLord Waran 2.0 BH: Lion Claw ox
Setup2: Blade: TSP Balsa All+ FH: Tenergy 05 max BH: Tenergy 05 max
Setup3: Blade: DMS Destroyer FH: Tenergy 05 max BH: DMS Transformer 1.5

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately not yet. Firstly I had a problem with the robot not firing to the far right hand side of the table and the problem was identified as a malfunctioning part. Butterfly have been superb and are sending me a replacement robot which should arrive soon.

Also I'm currently having some work done in my house and my garage (where I use my table) is currently full of units and appliances! So I couldn't play even if I had the replacement robot.

Anyway a review should hopefully follow in a few weeks when I'm all sorted. Sorry for the delay

_________________
Blade: Ross Leidy custom blade
Forehand: Butterfly Tenergy 05-FX 1.7mm
Backhand: Dr Neubauer Gangster and Desperado 2 (testing both) OX

Butterfly Amicus Professional robot
-----
Ever tried, Ever failed? No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better!

Hi Chris

Thanks for the update, I was going to go up to Tees Sport where they have an ex demo Advance model.
Michael Marsden was going to set-up and demo it for me.
But I thought I'd wait for your review. I really wanted to compare the 3 models, but that's not going to happen.
Anyway if I get up there with work I will post my findings.

Thanks Mike

_________________
Previous Setups: -
Setup1: Blade: TSP Balsa All+FH: SpinLord Waran 2.0 BH: Lion Claw ox
Setup2: Blade: TSP Balsa All+ FH: Tenergy 05 max BH: Tenergy 05 max
Setup3: Blade: DMS Destroyer FH: Tenergy 05 max BH: DMS Transformer 1.5

Mike,

I think the Advance and Professional models will play very similar in that they will both produce the same type of balls. The only differences with the Professional are:

- It higher spin and speed settings. However I don't think many people would used the highest speed setting as it's extremely fast.

- You can programme 8 balls instead of 6. No biggy really but it's nice to have an extra couple of balls in a routine, especially if you set the first ball as a serve ball in he routine. This still leaves me with 7 balls to drill against rather than 5 on the Advance.

- It has a remote control to stop / start the robot. This is superb as if means you can stand at the table and start the robot when you're in position rather than fiddling with the control panel and running back into position.

- You can programme and save 99 routines compared or the 10 on the Advance. 10 isn't really a lot and I think that I'd get bored constantly reprogramming routines. I have a spreadsheet which has a list of drills on and a corresponding memory number next to it. Once programmed I can just look up the routine on my spreadsheet, call the saved number and off I go. To give you an idea, just with basic drills and a few serve and rally type exercises, I'm already up to 25 saved.

- I think there is slightly more adjustability on the Professional as the placement and trajectory bars on the control panels are longer which suggest more options to fine tune.

Overall I think you'll be pleased with either as they will produce a realistic ball for you to practice against. It just depends on whether you want to save more than 10 drills and whether you'd like the ability to fine tune the balls and have a remote to start / stop the play.

All I know is that it took my a little time to programme a routine that I was happy with but seconds or recall it the next day. Therefore having 99 saved memory slots means that I will never have to rewrite over previously routines that have taken some time to configure. Basically you want to be playing with the robot and not programming it and if you're spending over £1k on a robot, for an extra few hundred, I'd go for the Professional.

Hope this helps

_________________
Blade: Ross Leidy custom blade
Forehand: Butterfly Tenergy 05-FX 1.7mm
Backhand: Dr Neubauer Gangster and Desperado 2 (testing both) OX

Butterfly Amicus Professional robot
-----
Ever tried, Ever failed? No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better!

http://www.butterflyonline.com/inventor ... BB9C860%7D


it's coming to the states. prices are a little lower than I expected.

Right well I have my new robot which is fantastic and had a good practice with it last night.

The first robot (which had a faulty part) obviously wasn't operating correctly from the start, but I didn't realise this. All I can say now is that the balls produced by my new robot feel very realistic. You'd think you were playing against a player!

I tried a variety of shots out last night, but I did enjoy putting the random placement mode onto the forehand so that the ball would land within 20cm of a designated spot on the table. This made it feel very realistic as the ball was landing in slightly different places each time, meaning that I had to adjust my feet and body before hitting the ball back.

If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them and I'll try to take some video over the next few days with me playing on it.

Overall, it's fantastic and I'm really pleased with it. I can't wait to get back home tonight and play on it again

_________________
Blade: Ross Leidy custom blade
Forehand: Butterfly Tenergy 05-FX 1.7mm
Backhand: Dr Neubauer Gangster and Desperado 2 (testing both) OX

Butterfly Amicus Professional robot
-----
Ever tried, Ever failed? No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better!

ChrisBuer
thanks for your help in reviewing the amicus
was the price you paid pretty close to the ones in my last post? and do you see any weak areas on the machine that may break in the future.
do you think it will take the new table tennis balls?

btw I'm jealous to the max.

Hi

Actually my robot was about $260 more (and that was a discounted price in the UK), so the US prices look very good indeed!!

In answer to your questions. No, I can't really see any weak areas on the robot. It's very solid all over and well made. There are no cheap plastics and everything is either metal or cloth. The net system is very good and the bit at the base that holds the balls to be fed back into the robot is a nice tough nylon type material rather than the flimsy plastic normally found on robots. The control panel is also very well made and solid and the whole robot has a quality feel about it.

I am told that it will take the new balls but if for any reason it doesn't, Butterfly told me that it is under warranty and they would send me out a new part (the tube that feeds the wheels) for free. So either way, it'll be OK.

Other things to mention is that it is really light and very easy to set up. The bag that comes with it is also high quality (black on the outside and padded red on the inside), with all of the little compartments for the various bits.

I had a good play on it last night and remain very impressed. The only thing that I wish Butterfly would do is upload some pre-saved drills onto their website, so that Amicus users could download them and install them onto the robot. It's no real problem programming the various exercises as once they're saved, you can recall them back very quickly. I'm now just trying to think through some more exercises to programme in and save

I also found out another useful feature last night. I was playing some forehand topspins to my forehand and then middle and had two buttons programmed. I then decided to send a couple to the backhand so that I could practice hitting a forehand to forehand, moving my feet to forehand drive / loop the ball to the middle, move again to block twice and then move back to my forehand to take the first ball again.

After a while I wanted to increase the challenge, so I pressed the "RND" button which makes each ball land within a 20cm diameter of where you originally programmed it. All of the balls are still played in the same sequence (i.e. ball 1 forehand, ball 2 mid, balls 3 and 4 backhand,etc), but where they land each time is slightly different. This meant that when the balls came across, I had to keep adjusting my positioning to hit it back. These were small to medium adjustments but like a real game, I had to keep on my toes rather than just drilling a robotic ball to the same place.

I then pressed the RND button again and this played the balls back to the same point on the table (without the 20cm diameter variety) but all of the balls were played out of order randomly.

Finally I pressed the RND a final time and the robot then played each ball in a random sequence AND also made them land within a 20cm diameter. Sufficed to say this was quite hard and I had to really keep my eye on the ball and feet moving.

A few other things to mention while I think about it:

I like the fact that you can programme each ball separately within the same sequence. For example, I programmed 8 balls to my forehand, all slightly different. Some had more top-spin, some had more speed, some were fast and spinny, some were slow and spinny, some were float balls and then I changed the height of the balls as well with the trajectory setting. This was fun because some balls I had to block, some I could smash, some I could loop and some I had to reach right into the table and flick. Then I pressed the RND twice button and had to contend with the balls being played in a random sequence landing in slightly different positions to my forehand.

I also like the fact that if you hold down the button on the first or second sequence, the light changes from yellow to green which indicates a service ball and automatically puts a 1-1.5 second delay before the next ball is played.

The only feature I've not tried yet is the cluster option. This essentially allows you to save a routine and cluster it with another saved routine. I think you can cluster up to 23 saved routines. Therefore, this means that you could play a sequence where:

- The first eight balls all go to the forehand (random positions if required)
- The next eight balls are all lobs / high balls to the forehand.
- The next eight balls are backspin around the table.....and so on.

It's a very clever bit of kit

_________________
Blade: Ross Leidy custom blade
Forehand: Butterfly Tenergy 05-FX 1.7mm
Backhand: Dr Neubauer Gangster and Desperado 2 (testing both) OX

Butterfly Amicus Professional robot
-----
Ever tried, Ever failed? No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better!

They could take a sponsored PRO and have them do a few drills for the Amicus.

Hi Chris,

Great info. keep it coming.

_________________
Previous Setups: -
Setup1: Blade: TSP Balsa All+FH: SpinLord Waran 2.0 BH: Lion Claw ox
Setup2: Blade: TSP Balsa All+ FH: Tenergy 05 max BH: Tenergy 05 max
Setup3: Blade: DMS Destroyer FH: Tenergy 05 max BH: DMS Transformer 1.5

Sure always happy to.

If I can do a video, what would you like to see the robot doing?

I might see if I can show some shots tonight, although it's difficult to get a decent angle to show what the robot is doing, but I can try

_________________
Blade: Ross Leidy custom blade
Forehand: Butterfly Tenergy 05-FX 1.7mm
Backhand: Dr Neubauer Gangster and Desperado 2 (testing both) OX

Butterfly Amicus Professional robot
-----
Ever tried, Ever failed? No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better!

I'd love to see the robot doing the five shots I mentioned earlier in this thread:

1. A short, topspin serve that double bounces on the player's end of the table?
2. A slow loop where the topspin is much greater than the speed of the ball, and can you adjust the depth of that shot (where it lands on the table) while keeping the height of the ball about the same?
3. At maximum speed and topspin, does the ball "kick" your paddle?
4. A short, low underspin serve that stops by itself and then bounces/rolls back towards the net?
5. A slow, floating no-spin return that barely clears the endline?

I'd like to see you returning these shots too--that will give me a better idea of the amount of spin on the ball.

Larry

Isn't the spin on all robots determined by the speed of propulsion out of its head(s)? So aren't you essentially asking for three shots that you know a robot can't do, Larry?

_________________
My blog: "Learning to play: as a modern defender": http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=22254
My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtazeX ... oICGS9bqNg
Join the OOAK Discord!: https://discord.gg/Yw2hYUdz3g

[Other gear I've used]
Blades: Butterfly Defence 3, Butterfly Defence Pro, Butterfly Innerforce ZLC, Butterfly Innershield, DHS Power G7, Stiga Offensive Classic Carbon
SPs: Friendship 802 (1.5), TSP Spectol (1.3, 1.8, 2.1), TSP Spectol Speed (1.3), TSP Super Spinpips Chop Sponge 2 (0.5, 1.3)
LPs: Butterfly Feint Long II (1), Butterfly Feint Long III (0.5, 1.3), Tibhar Grass D.TecS (OX), TSP Curl P1-R (0.5, 1, 1.3), TSP Curl P4 (1.3)