An Argentinian company have developed an app which they reckon will revolutionise the way you film and record your skate sessions.
The device, which they’re calling Syrmo, consists of a motion tracking sensor which sits under your trucks like a riser, and a phone app. The sensor records a plethora of stats from your shred session and sends them to your phone.
Being just 1mm thick and weighing just 50g, the riser is very small and Syrmo have promised that it has no effect on your riding or how your deck behaves.
The idea is that the app will help you learn new tricks by showing you not only the stats, but also a 3D animation of what your board did in the air. The variety of stats it creates are pretty clever – pop force, ollie height, air time and distance.
“The variety of stats it creates are pretty clever – pop force, ollie height, air time and distance.”
They’re also touting it as a tool to help you with your edits – if you get a mate to film you using the Syrmo app on your phone then it’ll know which tricks you landed, and cut the footage around them.
It’ll even add slo-mo at certain points automatically to make everything look moooooore eeeeeppppiiiic.
It’s a clever idea, but will it catch on? Us skaters are a notoriously technophobic bunch and not generally given to accessorising our decks with anything more complex than a few stickers.
“Us skaters are not generally given to accessorising our decks with anything more complex than a few stickers.”
Also I’m not sure to what extent a series of numbers (or even a jazzy 3D model) would help you improve your skating. How would knowing the exact amount of force I used to pop an ollie help me learn to kickflip?
I’ve never bailed and had a sudden urge to know how high I ollie’d because I already know that, clearly, it wasn’t high enough. It’s always handy to have stats, but sometimes it’s nice to step away from technology and just feel our way around.
Having said that this is a smart piece of kit and assuming it does everything they claim it can, I can see a certain kind of person being into it. These guys are doing pretty well on their Kickstarter campaign already, which I guess is a good sign.
As to whether it’ll revolutionise skating the way say, Strava has changed cycling? Personally I doubt it, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
What do you think, would you use Syrmo? Let us know in the comments section below!
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