Even though several similar products are already available on the market, their price range is often ridiculously high for a sports club trying to run a simple physical fitness test. As high school students practicing sports after school, we decided to do something about it.
After a little bit of researching on the net, we realized that most of the sensors and data usually featured by such systems aren't even taken into consideration by your everyday athlete. Our new goal: to start cutting down on every unneeded asset.
How does it work?A laser barrier detects whether the athlete's feet are currently touching the ground or not. For every jump, the delay between two "touching-the-ground" instants is memorized as the ToF (time of flight) for that particular jump. Finally, this information is sent via Bluetooth to a connected Android device, which deducts the JH (jump height) using a simple formula (g being the gravitational acceleration):
JH = (ToF ^ 2 * g) / 8Assembling your circuit
For those of you who just don't feel like downloading any .fzz files, here's how to connect the various components used by the project:
Follow these simple steps to upload your sketch:
- create a folder named "test_di_bosco" in your sketchbook folder
- download the six files embed below inside your new "test_di_bosco" folder
- open "test_di_bosco.ino" using Arduino IDE: a single window with all of the ".ino" files in it should open
- that's it: you are now ready to upload the entire sketch clicking on "upload" once
We chose to use MIT App Inventor 2 (see Apps and online services) to develop our sample application (available for free).
- ground contact time
- power developed during the jump
- jump frequency
- RSI (Reactive Strength Index)
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