Smart Barbell

Inspiration

As both team members have always been involved with athletics and fitness since childhood, we wanted to build something that can help more people stay safe in the gym and achieve their goals faster.

What it does

The hardware attaches to a barbell and sends real-time data of movement during exercise, which is analysed and visualized for the user in an app. By tracking the travel path of the bar, suggestions can be made to improve safety and form. The aggregated data can be used to help the users set and achieve their fitness goals.

How I built it

The hardware system is built around a Dragonboard 410c, and a 10DOF IMU sensor measures the data. This data is pushed to a database and the analysis is done on GCP. This is then visualized in an app built with React Native.

Challenges I ran into

The most difficult aspect was configuring the dragonboard to push the data to the database. The team members were not familiar with C or the MySQL API, and we could not get the device to push data in real time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Ultimately, we were able to build a prototype of something that we could personally use to help us achieve our goals. Even though we were not familiar with a majority of the tools needed to create our project, we were able to think on the spot and create a working version of the Smart Barbell.

What's next for Smart Barbell

We are putting together a pitch to present at our University's pitch competition. We will continue to iterate on our idea and develop newer, better MVPs