How to build YOUR OWN Launch Monitor - Coleman Rollins - Linked By Golf

From Linked By Golf by Ross McGuire

February 17, 2026 · 41 min · Season 1 · Episode 77

About this episode

Ross McGuire interviews Coleman Rollins about his journey building a DIY open-source golf launch monitor.

Guest: Coleman Rollins Instagram: @colemangolfs In this episode of Linked By Golf, Ross chats with Coleman Rollins, a software engineer and golfer documenting his journey building a DIY open-source golf launch monitor from scratch. Coleman shares how curiosity about expensive commercial launch monitors turned into a hands-on engineering project combining radar technology, Raspberry Pi computing, and open-source software — all documented publicly on Instagram so others can learn alongside him. The conversation covers everything from caddying in Minnesota to testing radar data in a garage in Seattle, plus what it takes to turn raw motion data into meaningful golf metrics like clubhead speed, ball speed, launch angle, and spin . At its core, the project is about making golf technology more accessible and showing that innovation in golf doesn’t always have to come from big companies. Coleman’s tagline says it best: “I built a launch monitor at home so you can too.” Growing up in Minnesota golf culture Moving from curiosity to building a launch monitor Radar vs camera launch monitor technology Using a Raspberry Pi as the “brain” of the system Trial-and-error testing at the driving…

People in this episode

Host: Ross McGuire

Guest: Coleman Rollins

Topics covered

DIY golf technology
launch monitor
open-source projects
radar technology
community learning
golf metrics

Keywords

launch monitor
golf technology
Raspberry Pi
radar data
clubhead speed
ball speed
open-source

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Puetz Golf, OpenFlight

Places: Minnesota, Seattle