Installing and Setting Up the Dual Motion Plate – Swing Catalyst - Help Center

For more in-depth installation material please see the attached pdf files.

Installation

For physical installation information, please refer to the install guide PDF attachment.

See the Install Guide PDF for preparing your room for the installation.
See the Start Guide PDF for setting up the Motion Plate for use.

Requirements:

The software automatically installs the drivers for the force plate and pressure plate's (except the calibration file). Installing it manually shouldn't be necessary.

Bertec CDM driver installed.
MeasureX driver installed. Click for install details
Dual Motion Plate hardware.

Applicable to:

Motion Catalyst & Swing Catalyst.

In addition to the start guide, you familiarize yourself with the calibration test below.

Connecting the plate

With a dual plate setup there are a total of 4 cables. In many cases it may be good to have a powered USB hub to connect the devices to, in order to not use all of the available USB ports on the computer.

Connection procedure

Connect the two USB Mini B cables to the two Balance Plates.
Connect the two USB-B (larger connector than USB Mini B) to the force plates.
Connect 4 cables from the plates to the computer.

If the plate configuration is not automatically detected try to disconnect and reconnect some of the cables and restart the software.

Click "Yes" to proceed.

Now that the software has successfully identified all of the plates that make up a Dual Motion Plate it's time to calibrate the plate.

Make sure no one is standing on the plate and that the plates are clear from any surrounding turf or equipment.
Click "Calibrate"

This will zero the force plate. If calibration fails please see our troubleshooting section.

Component detection

In order to know which plate is in front / or on the right you will need to run this procedure.

Click "Detect" and follow the on-screen instructions.

Calibration Test

There are two types of calibration:

The zero level for the force plate.
The calibration file for the pressure / balance plate.

This test is specifically for the force plate part of the Motion Plate to verify that it's installed correctly.

It is important to ensure a good calibration for accurate data. We recommend calibrating and testing the calibration before every session of a series of recordings.

Click "Calibrate" button in settings menu - Hardware - Sensor Plate
Click "Configure" button next to it, then click "Play" button to preview live force and pressure data
Use the club shaft or your heel to apply pressure to one of the corners of the plate, then verify the pressure data (colored heat map) aligns with the force data (total CoP circle).
If it doesn't align, it could be that one or more plates need to be rotated, see "How to change rotation".
Start a session, then capture a recording with no person on the plate. Open the recording and verify the force readings are within 10 Newtons to zero.

Example of pressure dot aligning with the Center of Pressure dot:

We want pressure data / stance data to read from toe to heel, to do that the pressure data needs to be rotated 180 degrees, so the left foot to be appears on the left plate (where the "swing" part of the Swing Catalyst logo is), and the right foot to appear on the right plate.

Troubleshooting

Pressure and Force data is not aligned, or calibration fails

If the CoP dot does not match the pressure dot, plate is likely not level or something is pressing against it and obstructing free movement.

Once more, click "Calibrate" button then repeat the calibration test
If it is still off, readjust the leveling foot of the force plate while pressing down on the opposite corner, first shorten it then extend it to the point where it touches the floor and you feel a little bit of resistance
Confirm all four feet are in solid contact with the floor by pressing down on the corners
Ensure there is no turf or similar pressing against the plate
Repeat the calibration test

Below are examples of configurations that are incorrect, hopefully these will help to understand and troubleshoot these sorts of problems.

Pressure data / footprint is missing on one plate

Check the connections to each pressure plate, try to disconnect the plates and reconnect.
Restart the software.
Verify Swing Catalyst is recognizing both plates, In "Hardware Settings" -> "Configure" -> Sensor Info", there should be two serial numbers, e.g: 1230_1231, if it only lists one number, it's likely the second plate is not being recognized by Swing Catalyst.
Check the Windows Device Manager, there should be two entries under "Ports & COM" called "MeasureX Pressure Controller". If you do not see these listed it could indicate a physical connection problem.

Examples of improper configuration

Pressure Data is upside down

Such a configuration can be determined by standing on the plates and leaning forward or backward.

If the CoP movement is opposite of the pressure this means either force or pressure needs to be rotated 180 degrees.

Pressure is upside down and force has wrong rotation

Following the logic described in the calibration test above, in this example there are several things wrong:

The foot print (pressure data, also called stance data in Swing Catalyst Settings) is "upside down".
The CoP dot (the white dot next to the "S" in the "Swing Catalyst" logo in the background is not aligned with the foot print.
The CoP dot is not showing on the same plate as the foot print.

To fix this we need to first rotate the pressure / stance data so that the left foot appears on the left side, then we need to rotate the force data until it matches the foot print.

For dual plates it's important to apply the calibration test logic to each individual plate.

The wrong plate is stepped on during the dual plate detection phase

In this example the wrong plate has been stepped on during the "detect components" phase. When this is the case you can see the pressure and force data not aligning properly, and in this case the CoP dot(s) are outside of the foot prints, which they normally shouldn't be.

To fix this try to click "detect components" again but step on right plate / back plate. Having done this it should change the data so it looks more similar to the screenshot below.

Here is the same data as above, but with the correct plate detected:

Pressure Data looks correct but CoP is wrong

This is an example from a single Motion Plate where the force data rotation is 180 degrees wrong.

You can note this by how the pressure data has the correct orientation (heels are down towards the bottom of the screen).

To fix problems like these, refer to the calibration test, above and follow the procedure, for dual plates it needs to be done for each plate.

How to change rotation

Instead of physically rotating plates, it's possible to do this in software.

To rotate a sensor plate go to Settings -> Hardware and click Configure.

In the Sensor Plate Settings, make sure the "Flip & Rotate Devices" tab is selected.

To rotate pressure data click "Rotate Stance Data".
To rotate force data click "Rotate Force Data".

Please see some of the troubleshooting pictures below as they illustrate a wrong configuration.

For dual plate setups you should see two Force Data entries in the list, so please make sure to rotate both of of the force plates in software.

Good data vs bad data

This is an example of good data, there is very little noise present in the data or any indication that something is obstructing the movement of the plate.

If you have noisy data, or very low readings on the graphs, this

Example of bad zero set here:

Noise from power supplies or bad grounding can also result in noise similar to seen above, for more details please see: https://support.swingcatalyst.com/hc/en-us/articles/360008368519-Force-Plate-technical-troubleshooting-guide

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