Sensors on Everything
There’s an explosion of different wearable devices, IoT services with new models coming out constantly. There are even companies like Suunto that provide their own plug and play sensor you can put on anything out of the box. What will the ‘sensorization’ of the world mean and how, exactly, can we leverage it?
Several months ago we at Prifina started exploring an interesting use case, placing a sensor on a ski boot and opening up the data for anyone to be able to build apps on top of it. Since then, we’ve embarked on several other collaborations, placing sensors on shoes, clothing, skates etc.
Commoditization of Sensors
Sensors are becoming not only cheap, but also sophisticated enough that we can utilize them efficiently in a number of contexts. If we can place a sensor the size of a quarter into a shoe, where else can we place it? The reality is that sensors are already utilized broadly, but this is only going to increase going forward and there will be an explosion of sensors in all things.
Give Me The Data
So what do these types of sensors measure? Well, there are obviously a wide range of different types of sensors. However, but in the example with the sensor in the skiboot, the ones we’ve worked with so far measure things like:
- total ascent/descent
- average speed
- max speed
- acceleration
- distance
- g-force
- tilt
- turns
- pressure
- foot position
- balance between legs
- … and many more data points.
The reality is that sensors measuring physical phenomena are broad and this is just a shorthand list, where in reality there’s truly a sensor for everything. The sensors we’ve used also measure direction, force and relative changes in the magnetic field or magnetic dipole moment.
Real World Applications
Imagine being able to utilize data sets as illustrated above to measure an individual skier or snowboarder’s activity on the mountain. Was there something in their turns on either side that was surprising? Did they apply the same amount of pressure on both skis? Did the time of day impact their relative speed, acceleration or tilt?
For someone looking to get better at their performance, that type of insight could be crucial. Knowing which exercises to practice, what muscle groups to work out, discerning when you get over-exerted and it’s time to take a breather.
And the same applies to almost every sport. Replace skier with skater or skateboarder. Or why not a biker or another athlete. Analyzing performance is a great way to understand more of what’s going on with your body.
Combining with Other Data Sets
The interesting use cases start emerge when you bring in other data sources and contextual data. For example, the skier probably has a wearable on. How does their heart rate correlate with their turns? Do they recover well enough between strong acceleration and turning? How does their breathing change at different points in the slope? What about their sleep? Does a certain type of exercise increase their deep sleep more?
Understanding not only the sensor, but also the actual person, is key to a bigger picture. But it goes beyond that, knowing what the weather was like, how the humidity, sunlight, temperature at different points in the day affected the skier are critical in forming a realistic picture.
How About Broader Uses?
How about the skier that only wants to chill, how does this data work for them? Everyone loves that fresh mountain sleep and waking up to the chill, crisp air. Being able to discern the types of routes and days on the mountain that contribute to deep sleep, REM sleep and lower your stress levels (raise your HRV), can be great ways to find that mountain bliss. Maybe someone builds the app that helps your data chart the best day on the mountain for your sleep.
This sensor data is going to proliferate and unlock countless use cases in everyday life, from understanding your own habits and health better, to also being able to get value, such as knowing when you left your window open at home. Imagine if your clothing also starts taking care of itself, alerting you when you leave them out in the direct sunlight.
Opening up Data and its Value
At Prifina, our mission is to deliver more value from data to individuals, therefore our role in these projects is to help generate new types of uses, applications, that can be built with combined, user-held data.
In practice that means we are involved to find new data sets, new use cases and we help our partners with our data engine, to organize this data and allow its use in the application layer. We’re excited to work on the mountains with data, and we see that sensors can be pushed almost anywhere.
With Prifina, you get the data and software layer out of the box and your sensors can spark countless new apps from the community and combine data from multiple sources.
If you’re working on something new with sensors, helping individuals win with data, we’d love to hear from you and see if we can boost your work further.
Connect With Us and Stay in Touch
Prifina is building resources for developers to help create new apps that run on top of user-held data. No back-end is needed. Individual users can connect their data sources to their personal data cloud and get everyday value from their data.
- Follow us on Twitter, Medium, or LinkedIn.
- Listen to our podcast.
- Join our Facebook group Liberty. Equality. Data. where we share notes about Prifina’s progress.
- You can also explore our Github channel and join us at Slack.
