CrowdSense

Inspiration

Current wearables are created for individuals. We want to enable participation for ad hoc groups of people without any effort. The trouble of trying to pair and connect wireless devices bugs our daily lives, makes starting participation cumbersome, and limits the number of devices that can be simultaneously connected.

Group activities such as games, or guided exercise classes (spinning, dance, aerobics) offer a motivational way to activate kids at schools and kindergartens or activity parks like HopLop; activate the elderly at their exercise sessions or at care homes; or even provide break activities at workplaces to promote well-being. However, staff at these sites rarely possess the technical skills or the motivation to fight through connectivity issues with technical devices, while the interface to technology should not limit or slow-down participation.

CrowdSense builds on MoveSense to create a solution for joining group games and activities just by walking in to the room!

What it does

In the true spirit of hacking, we exploited the Bluetooth interface in a way it's not supposed to be used. Instead of explicitly connecting a limited set of devices to an endpoint, we transmit data from all MoveSense sensors in the room through Bluetooth advertisement packets. This has two main benefits:

Using the advertisement packets for data delivery allows ad-hoc participation to events, just by walking in the range of the receiver
The ad-hoc nature of connecting, and the broadcast nature of the advertisement packets allows an (_ almost _) unlimited number of participants.

Instead of transmitting raw data, MoveSense enables sophisticated analysis of sensored activity inside the sensor, making it possible to transmit processed/refined event-based data through the very limited bandwidth of the advertisement payload.

The beauty of the CrowdSense solution is in it's simplicity: Hand out MoveSense sensors to the participants, and start gaming! These could be passed as tokens in exercise gyms, activity parks, or any crowd event, and applied for a range of applications.

How we built it

We hacked the MoveSense device to modify the Bluetooth advertisement packet to include device ID _ and _ event-based data. We created a simple demo game "Pop the Balloon" on Python, receiving the data from participants through a Bluetooth interface, and parses the input for game control. We jumped a lot, for debug, and for recreational benefit :)

The advertisement packet code runs automatically on the MoveSense sensors after startup. They don't even require a mobile device for connecting.

Challenges we ran into

The MoveSense API could (_ should _) be better documented. Although, we have to admit that the Suunto guys more than made up for this at the event - Cheers!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting the concept ready and running with a team of two distinguished gentlemen, even with family obligations during the event. Hacking the interface.

What we learned

Coding for the MoveSense device, operating a programming jig, running and debugging code for Bluetooth LE on various platforms and programming environments.