Adventure Race Builds a Lightweight System to Display Live Athlete Data to the Audience
Porin Raasto is a Finnish adventure sports event that puts teams of two against each other in a test of skill and endurance. In the race, teams completed a course of running, mountain biking, paddling, navigating through check points around the city of Pori. As a special attraction, organizers used Movesense sensors to display live athlete data to the audience.
This year marked a significant milestone as the event celebrated its tenth edition. To commemorate this achievement, the competition ended with the Movesense control point. Little did the competitors know what awaited them at the final control point in the middle of shopping centre.
Upon reaching at the Movesense control point, one team member received a heart rate belt and sensor. The challenge was to first lower their heart rate to under 100 beats per minute, only to then raise it up to 160 beats per minute as quickly as possible. (Featured photo: Jouni Perä)
Participant heart rates were displayed on a large screen, captivating not only their teammates but also the entire audience of weekend visitors in the shopping centre. The average completion time, around five minutes, indicated the difficulty of achieving relaxation after hours of intense adventure sports performance.
The organizer came up with the idea and prepared the whole control point setup themselves.
— Using the Movesense sensor provided a great opportunity to learn about sports data. I was excited to work on a project using heart rate sensors and it turned out to be a success, says organizing team’s Liisa Nokelainen who programmed the solution.
— In the solution, Movesense heart rate data was sent via Bluetooth to a program running on a Raspberry Pi computer. The program then formatted the data correctly for the open dashboard platform Grafana. There was already a ready-made base for the Raspberry Pi that could be utilized to make it responsive to the sensors around it. With some modifications, it was easy to display heartbeats on the screen, explains Liisa who also deals with data in her job.
The unexpected exercise was met with enthusiasm. This innovative approach could undoubtedly have applications in other events as well. Imagine catching glimpses of football players’ heart rates projected on a massive screen, tracking the pulse of marathon runners as they strive for the finish line, or any other interesting live athlete data from your own event or competition.
Complemented with the endless opportunities of movement measurement, Movesense-powered sports data solutions add a fresh dimension to any sports event as it did in the adventure race. With the programmable sensor, open API’s, free sample apps and systematic documentation, even small events and amateur teams can implement professional live athlete data solutions in a lightweight, cost-efficient way.
If you’re intrigued by the possibility of incorporating Movesense sensors into sports — whether for training purposes or for enhancing the participant or audience experience — we’re more than happy to provide our assistance.
More about competition in Finnish: Porin Raasto – Tule ja raasta itsesi.
