Ball tracker big hit
A TERRIBLE golf handicap is usually a bad thing.
But Ben Tattersfield has turned that to his advantage, developing a microelectronic device to measure data from balls that has attracted the interest of Brisbane investors.
They have pumped in a substantial investment, in the form of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which may turn his invention into a Gold Coast start-up success story.
Mr Tattersfield journeyed from his native Invercargill, New Zealand, to the Gold Coast for a holiday with his parents when he was 19.
“I was working as a pushbike mechanic (in New Zealand) and was talking to a pushbike shop owner and he offered me a job, so I went back to New Zealand, packed up and came here,” he said.
Just over 2½ years ago, after a bad round of golf, Mr Tattersfield had a brain wave.
“I’m a really bad golfer and I kept losing balls,” he said.
“One day I came home and thought there had to be a way of tracking the balls so I could find them.”
That was in September, 2015, and the first thing he had to do was find a suitable way to protect the delicate electronics from the forces involved in hitting a golf ball down the fairway.
Mr Tattersfield said the electronics, which fit inside a device the size of a 5¢ coin, were not the difficult part.
“The electronics are not new or inventive. The main thing was how do you get it into the ball and make sure it survives the impact when it is hit,” he said.
“I tinkered in my garage with silicon until I came up with a mixture that would do the job while still meeting the requirements needed to make sure the ball would retain its performance,” he said.
His company, Jetson Industries, now has a patent pending in 13 countries, including Australia, for the silicon composite mix.
Mr Tattersfield said the device and silicon mix is not just useful for golf, but many other ball-playing sports, such as cricket.
Any ball with a solid core can carry his device, dubbed the Jetson Smartball, which will record information on location, distance, speed, trajectory, spin and other factors.
That information can be used for training or for fun and a key element is the ability to share the information across the internet.
One of the major uses will be in helping golfers perfect their swings.
“All you need is an iPad at each bay and our balls and the golfers can see how far they are hitting as well as the speed, spin and trajectory of each drive,” he said.
The start-up, however, did not go according to plan in its early days.
“We had the wrong people around initially …. It was twominute noodles all week long.
“Luckily, in the past few weeks we secured a sizeable investment that has picked things up.”
Mr Tattersfield credited the HYPE lab at the University of Queensland with helping to open doors, including the introduction to the Brisbane investors.
He said the company already had one commercial agreement in place with a sports’ equipment manufacturer and is working on several others, one potentially worth north of $5 million.