Lit Activity Tracker Has a Secret Ingredient That Makes it Perfect for Action Sports

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nznlabs-lit-1

I know what you’re asking: Yet another activity tracker? But LIT tracker from NZN Labs has a big secret ingredient that most others don’t — and that special ingredient makes it perfect for action sports like snowboarding, surfing and mountain biking.

I suppose it’s not actually a secret — or if it is, it’s not a very good one. In any case, here’s the deal:

Most activity trackers — for instance, the Fitbit, Nike+ Fuel Band, Jawbone Up and most others — use an accelerometer to track a user’s movement. That works perfectly well for activities like walking or running, but doesn’t work for activities where steps can’t be measured.

Just like the others, the LIT tracker is equipped with an accelerometer; but NZN Labs paired the accelerometer with a gyroscope, giving the little device the ability to record forces associated with that huge wave you just carved on your surfboard, or the big jump you just landed on your mountain bike.

All that recorded data doesn’t mean much without a useful way to make sense of it, so the outfit has spent much of its time creating and testing data sets for a variety of action sports. They’ve gotten so good at differentiating the different activities from each other that LIT will automatically recognize what sport you’re participating in.

Another really impressive aspect to LIT is that a user can choose to superimpose activity data over video being shot on an iPhone during the activity through a free companion app; data is sent to the iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0.

So far, data sets have been crafted for surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and motocross, and LIT’s creators are currently working on a mountain biking model next.

The LIT will sell for $149 when it ships, according to NZN Labs, in August. If you want to grab one for considerably less at $99, better hurry — the LIT’s Indiegogo campaign ends in less than twelve hours.

Here’s a video clip of one of what the data looks like when superimposed onto a video clip of the activity.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrTqrzNVG9o

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