TOBU Charge – The PDGA’s First Trackable Disc

TOBU Charge – The PDGA’s First Trackable Disc
TOBU Charge Care Package

In January 2015, TOBU announced a crowdfunding endeavor via their Kickstarter campaign in order to release the first PDGA approved disc with built in electronics. Their campaign was successful, and the TOBU Charge was born. Originally the disc was slated to be called PING, and I wrote a blog post about TOBU and the Kickstarter campaign, as well as some of the potential electronic uses that could be incorporated with these next generation of PDGA discs. The date finally arrived, and as a “Founding Member,” my TOBU Charge care package came in this week. 

TOBU Charge Care Package
TOBU Charge Care Package

This post is mostly about showing off the various videos of the disc, the flight patterns, and my first two attempts at using the TOBU app for tracking the disc.

Video Introduction:

Khalil (8 years old) testing the TOBU Charge:

Chase testing the TOBU Charge:

First attempt with using the TOBU tracking app: (Khalil was in charge.. prepare yourself for 7-8 minutes of video…)

Second attempt with the TOBU app: (This was a better attempt, but still slower than I expected…)

The TOBU Charge flew more or less like a straight fairway driver. For comparison purposes, I would say it is somewhere in the Teebird/Stalker/Ascent category of flight paths. The inside of the rim has the traditional smooth section, similar to tradition Champion plastic, but it also has two sections of roughed up areas for enhanced grip.

The app had a place for score keeping, measuring throws, tracking statistics, and seems similar to older versions of uDisc, or Easy Scorecard Pro. Since I use uDisc for tracking scores and statistics, I have not really looked to deep into the full function of the app, and only used the Disc Locator portion.

The disc locator is entertaining. It begins to get a bluetooth connection between 50-150 feet away from the disc, and the app is able to initiate a beeping sound to come from the disc. In my house, while playing with the disc, I was excited to check it out in a real life application. Unfortunately, when the disc was in the tall grass, I was still not able to use the sound to lead me right to the disc since it was not loud enough for me. (Disclaimer: my wife says I never hear her when she asks me to do things, so I may have poor hearing…)

I want to do more testing with the disc, and the app, but when I opened the package, my son and I were excited to go out and give it a test. I will potentially update this post, or add another after I get a chance to play with both the app and disc again.

3 Comments on “TOBU Charge – The PDGA’s First Trackable Disc

  1. I am curious to test it myself.
    I understand the locator without a beep would not be enough in the tall grass.
    How about the distance measuring – was it accurate?
    Do you see performance deterioration when the battery starts to run out of power?
    Mart

  2. To be honest with you, I have not used it enough to see a difference in battery life vs. performance. The distance seemed to give a pretty good approximate location. Since seeing your comment I went to a football field and tried to see how accurate the distance was in relation to the yardage markers. TOBU has done a great job in getting something out there, and they have been very approachable when I have talked with them through emails/social media.

  3. And sorry for the delayed response… for some reason I did not get an email alert about the comment and I have been distracted from the blog…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.