Homing Pigeon Disc Finder - Opinions

[ru4por]

Ya know you could just watch where the disc lands and make mental note of that. Too many people look away in disgust after a bad throw or simply don't watch the disc for the entirety of its flight. The concept of brightly colored discs is also a scam. My buddy has a grass green firebird that he's had for like 20+ years because he always watches where he throws it.

I think experience helps. After years of playing, you have a better grasp on fight tendencies. You instinctively know to look a bit further down the fairway on a downhill....you have a better understanding of the type of throw and the fade tendencies.... and you develop a habit of landmarking.....you have the inclination to listen for a disc headed into shule, hopefully to get an idea of how deep it might have went.....and so on.

Dismissing brighter color disc is simple nonsense. Bright colored disc are not a magic bullet to finding your Frisbee, but it simply is another layer of help. I am NOT looking for your buddies green or clear disc.

 

[glassila]

Ya know you could just watch where the disc lands and make mental note of that. Too many people look away in disgust after a bad throw or simply don't watch the disc for the entirety of its flight. The concept of brightly colored discs is also a scam. My buddy has a grass green firebird that he's had for like 20+ years because he always watches where he throws it.

Totally disagree.
Brightly colored discs are always easier to find.

 

[HyooMac]

Bright blues pop for me.

 

[pmay5]

I'm originally from Seattle so yeah I have. I've played over 500 courses in 22 states in all types of terrain. It's a matter of watching your disc and looking in the correct area not how brightly colored your disc is or some stupid beeping machine that scammed a bunch of people.

I don't know. 2 months ago, I was playing a course in WI and got to a hole lined on both sides with 4 foot high grass/weed mixes, the drive was short and controlled, but I threw the second shot deep into the weeds. After about 15 minutes of getting my legs cut up by thorns, I found that one.

Going to the next hole, which had the same grass/weeds lining the fairway. Shanked the "safe" drive short and left into the thick stuff, and watched it closely. After looking for it for 20-30 minutes, no sighting at all.
Went back 2 weeks later, with a garden rake, and spent an hour looking for it (even got a little help from a foursome playing through), right in the area where I last saw it. (I even walked back to the tee at least 5 times to visualize that horrible sub 200' throw.) I started pulling the dried, dead grass with the rake to clear the thickness, expanding the search in all directions from where I last saw it, still no sighting.
Finally, 2 weeks later, with another garden rake, I went back in and starting looking in other areas (closer to fairway) and after about 15 minutes, finally spotted it, on edge "standing up" in that thick, dried grass. FINALLY, I found my Red, White and Blue, flag design Leo3 that I bought at the USDGC. I was pretty pumped!!

There are times when no matter how much you watch your shot, there is vegetation/terrain that just hide your disc. I wish these homing devices could be "perfected".

 

[Tom Gill]

Despite me saying I don't do Monday Morning Engineering jobs, like an idiot I bought one anyway cause I hate looking for discs. I guess I had to learn the lesson once again. So you're not alone, I can't get mine to detect much past 3 feet. If I have a disc in one hand and reader in another, it will stop shortly before my hands are fully spread out - maybe max 4-5' - and my ape index is nothing to brag about. Keep in mind, when looking for discs, this may not actually start chirping until 2 feet or less, 4-5' is just max distance I got so far.

In fact, the entire comment section on their kickstarter is full of disappointed users:



WARNING: Totally layman understanding ahead.

I got SLIGHTLY better results if I put a second sticker on that thin inside rim (trim the sticker down to the exact antenna seen on the bottom side) and that's because at 90 degrees these stickers are nearly invisible to the reader - so a second stick at perpendicular angles makes sense. HOWEVER, testing with more stickers (on the rim or elsewhere) made results worse -- possibly because each sticker is catching part of the power of the signal but now each one having now less energy to send a pulse back.

They also are giving now tips after the fact, like pointing the pigeon logo of the finder towards the disc, which they do in the video but don't articulate. However, my own testing indicates it makes little difference what side of the puck is pointed at the disc, the bottom is as good as the top, just not the sides.

The PR team on this whole venture is a disaster unto itself with bad or no communication. They are using corporate speak to address this issue:


And offer kickstarter early supporters a chance to buy an upgrade at steep discount, whenever those came out. Question is, who wants to throw more money at something they should have gotten in the first place?

ALL SPECULATION AHEAD:

Anyway, given their initial videos showed it working at 20 feet, I can only conclude it was EITHER a scam, but I have doubts there... there is another possibility as I have personal experience with products out of china. It may have been the prototype they either made themselves or were given by the factory was much more powerful and the factory did a bait and switch on the production run with a less powerful radar or whatever it is called. Afterall, handheld RFID reader are expensive, we're talking often $1500 range.

So there is a chance this was an earnest project that has gone wrong, maybe not hiring an expert or having sufficient Quality Control, or whatever, and rather than being stuck with a bunch of worthless pucks, the financial damage get distributed to us.

This pro-locate demo right here shows the exact basic thing working YEARS AGO, but that's a $1250ish Zebra RFID reader with a smartphone on top:



It could also be something else, I'm no expert on this and don't want to be. I just know I wish I bought extra discs instead.

Get yourself a decent retriever, buy discs in bright colors, anything else will have better bang for the buck right now. I wish this worked, I really did. But it doesn't.



I wish you luck, but Kickstarter was pretty clear that the money is going towards supporting the project and even getting the reward is not guaranteed.

I would say save all the emails, download the videos from youtube (google it) as evidence, and make screenshots of anything relevant including FB posts and kickstarter comments since all that can disappear without notice.

Btw, "David Greenberg" on Kickstarter seems to be "David Benjamin" on Facebook. Which name is real, is either? Idk. He was posting the Homing Pigeon for months in the Tranquility Trails (Swedesboro New Jersey) Facebook group, going back to at least May, before it came out. I found it via a FB link either on their website or Kickstarter but has since been scrubbed. I also found some FB posts scrubbed.

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You saved yourself a good chunk of change. This thing is a POS. Good luck finding your disc.

Great post to address this fiasco. I like the way you think, and process and accept what is, and even what may be. Had I bought this on TEMU, I'd have thought, oh, well, another bust (though it would have been $12). That I invested $150 based on a product, business and personal claims that looked legit stings more than a little. The Disc Beeper from years ago actually worked though weighed too much (7 grams?). Problem with it was it failed (I had two that did) with no backing by seller. Corners cut somewhere (likely manufacturer in the case of DB) played out to early (inevitable) demise. Those (he?) that tell people to "watch where disc goes" maybe have never played a course notorious for eating discs and with several people watching STILL discs get lost. So many good courses have sections where you cannot watch disc after it crests a hill, or goes around a bend. Solo players could benefit from something like this. It will come someday. I had a thought to "hack" an LED stick-on light (with a flat round 2032 battery) and replace LED with a watch beeper. Seems like it would be easy if someone (not me) knew which wires or circuits to mess with. Then there's my friend Dave who rubs sausage on his discs and brings his dog. Never lost one! I had to introduce him to Star (or better) plastic because his DX discs became dedicated doggie tossers in short order!

 

[Pizza God]

Most of my drivers are red and I still loose them. If I really get a grip on it, I can't see where it lands.

Even playing those overgrown desert courses last time around, I watched my disc and spent WAY too much time looking for them. Sometimes I would throw to an area I could see just so I don't waste time looking for my discs.

And it's fall, the leaves, does not not matter what color your disc is.....

 

[TheOtherBill]

My normal playing partner is blue color blind (tritanopia?) and throws multiple shots sometimes. Luckily I'm amazing at finding discs, but it does get pretty irksome with all the extra walking around. I only have so many steps in me; clomping thru brush can quickly wear out an already bad hip.

 

[itsRudy]

Ya know you could just watch where the disc lands and make mental note of that. Too many people look away in disgust after a bad throw or simply don't watch the disc for the entirety of its flight. The concept of brightly colored discs is also a scam. My buddy has a grass green firebird that he's had for like 20+ years because he always watches where he throws it.

Um wut mate?

start rant/

Yes, you can look where a disc lands... but some people don't have the best depth perception (me), trees as landmarks tend to fuzz together memory-wise (me, too), or it just plain old hides under leaves, in tall grass, or I even had one slide under the turf (loose weed roots) under the ground where it was hidden for half a year.

Watching where it lands, bright colors, and all that is just layers to help find a disc. There is no foolproof system but hopefully enuf layers prevent most losses. And it doesn't surprise me that your mate found his green discs, it's the color we are most receptive to, literally. Out of the three primary colors (red green blue), we have the most green photoreceptors.

I had a fluorescing green disc, and it was super easy to find even in summer, especially in forest, other than a few instances in full noon sun shining full blast downward piercing grass and leaves to a super light green. Had because the color didn't mean it could swim.

There is no perfect color, but I find pink to be the best all season. Red,orange,yellow is good most of year other than fall. Green as mentioned above. I don't find blue all that well, but YMMV. And black and counterintuitively white are the worst (probably because white discs I seen so far never fluoresce).

And my photos of others' found discs back that up. Black, dark versions of colors, white, and transparent discs lost the most. Once found a black harp 4 feet from the basket, never really knew what that was about, LOL. Since it was dark dirt ground, suppose the person just forgot it.

Fluorescence is a really misunderstood phenomenon. You can have the exact same shade pink, yellow, green, red, blue, etc disc in the store but one will fluoresce and one might not. All down to the the chemicals used in the disc. Fluorescing discs literally convert invisible UV light that hits into visible light, making it brighter than its surroundings and discs of the otherwise same shade. Multiple times so in dusk/shade conditions. Definitely saves me a lotta time when searching.

Below example. Two yellow discs I threw off the tee. Both pretty similar yellow. One fluoresces and one not. Try and find them. Both are about the same distance from camera and exposed to it about the same. (Hint: Fluorescent one is on left side.)

 

[IR8300]

Um wut mate?

start rant/

Yes, you can look where a disc lands... but some people don't have the best depth perception (me), trees as landmarks tend to fuzz together memory-wise (me, too), or it just plain old hides under leaves, in tall grass, or I even had one slide under the turf (loose weed roots) under the ground where it was hidden for half a year.

Watching where it lands, bright colors, and all that is just layers to help find a disc. There is no foolproof system but hopefully enuf layers prevent most losses. And it doesn't surprise me that your mate found his green discs, it's the color we are most receptive to, literally. Out of the three primary colors (red green blue), we have the most green photoreceptors.

I had a fluorescing green disc, and it was super easy to find even in summer, especially in forest, other than a few instances in full noon sun shining full blast downward piercing grass and leaves to a super light green. Had because the color didn't mean it could swim.

There is no perfect color, but I find pink to be the best all season. Red,orange,yellow is good most of year other than fall. Green as mentioned above. I don't find blue all that well, but YMMV. And black and counterintuitively white are the worst (probably because white discs I seen so far never fluoresce).

And my photos of others' found discs back that up. Black, dark versions of colors, white, and transparent discs lost the most. Once found a black harp 4 feet from the basket, never really knew what that was about, LOL. Since it was dark dirt ground, suppose the person just forgot it.

Fluorescence is a really misunderstood phenomenon. You can have the exact same shade pink, yellow, green, red, blue, etc disc in the store but one will fluoresce and one might not. All down to the the chemicals used in the disc. Fluorescing discs literally convert invisible UV light that hits into visible light, making it brighter than its surroundings and discs of the otherwise same shade. Multiple times so in dusk/shade conditions. Definitely saves me a lotta time when searching.

Below example. Two yellow discs I threw off the tee. Both pretty similar yellow. One fluoresces and one not. Try and find them. Both are about the same distance from camera and exposed to it about the same. (Hint: Fluorescent one is on left side.)

Thanks the for great explanation about fluorescence.

Watching where the disc land is the solution to finding the disc: NO WAY! It definitely helps, but as others have said,

• Must brush & overgrown grass looks alike.
• Some of us don't have good depth perception, to judge distance.
• Landing area is out of sight, such up or down a hill ... or behind some trees.
• Bad rolls, after landing.
• Disc color helps, but it's not foolproof.

Hope that someday comes up with a technological solution for finding wayward discs. Reading this thread, there's a huge market for it.