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March 18, 2011
Lumia

Push Snowboarding – not just for snowboarders!



Before we start, you should know that you don’t have to be snowboarder to enjoy the technology that Push are, well..pushing. There’s still a lot of love for those of you have never set foot on a snowboard

Whether you surf, skate or ski, the technology used here can be adopted to give you a whole new level of cool.

So, the scene is set, the panel are in and some of the best Snowboarders in the world have helped to develop what is a new way of recording and sharing information for Snowboarders.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Push Snowboarding, it’s a project that in essence takes the Nokia N8 device and creates a customised dashboard that allows snowboarders to see everything from their foot pressure to speed, and all on an app.

You don’t have to be snowboarder to enjoy the technology that Nokia has been developing in its Push Snowboarding project. It’s much more than just a snowboarding experiment, it’s about making data that used to be invisible, visible for the first time.

We’ve covered the project’s development over the last few months  from when it was a rucksack full of wires to the polished sensor prototypes which the team recently demonstrated at the Burton Snowboards 2011 US Open Championship in Vermont, USA.

 

The kit consists of the Nokia N8 device which captures how fast you’re travelling and the altitude you’re at, as well as  external sensors which capture how you’re feeling, which way you’re facing, how hard your heart’s pumping and also the pressure you’re applying in your feet –  displaying it all in a customised dashboard on a Symbian^3 application.

Whilst at the US Open, the Push Snowboarding team invited the public to test out the kit for first time and suggest ways it could be used. The response was great. Suggestions ranged from speed competitions with friends and measuring wipeouts to measuring the rush they as they feel as they’re mountain biking or even just sitting in a job interview! People are thinking of all types of uses for the kit, after all, it’s not technology, it’s what you do with it. 😉

More suggestions for how to use the kit came following the team’s trip to Austin, Texas for SxSW, where they held an informal Q&A on Monday followed by a panel discussion on Tuesday. Suggestions from the SxSW crowd ranged from using the kit to measure how you’re feeling on a first date to creating real-life video games!

Here on the NSeries blog we were thinking about how else we could use the kit. When would you want to measure your rush? Maybe on the recent zero gravity flight the N8Producers winners went on, or maybe on the Push N8 base jumping project? Let us know in the comments below!