Hey people, is anyone keen for an app that measures kitesurf jump heights using a smartwatch - not requireing anything else apart from the watch?

I know a few of the manufacturers have various " altitude " readouts, but these are pretty much useless for the purpose of jump heights.

Nick

Hey

Garmin watches are great to see the hight of your jumps on,
but you still need a device that measure your jumps like the woo on your board or your phone with the surfr app in your wetsuit or on your board.

I use the woo and the garmin vivioactive 4 and it works great for me!

Yes, there are apps that you can get that will only run on your watch that can show your jump height. Speaking from the Garmin ecosphere, and there are several (paid) apps you can get that show you how high you are jumping.

If you want to interrogate these apps more, you can see the results here (or google garmin kite app): apps.garmin.com/en-US/search?q=kite&device=&deviceLimit=&appType=&sort=&start=0&count=30

It's been over 12 months since I explored native watch apps, this one looks new, might give it a go and see how it performs: www.007software.eu/apps/kite-trackers-page/


The best solutions so far that i have used are easily the Woo + Garmin or the surfr.app which requires you use a phone on your body or board which can connect to your watch to display how high you jump.

I thought that Xensr did an apple watch software app a few years back that used the sensors within the watch much like surfr uses the sensors in your phone.

Its probably this as the company died a few years back: apps.apple.com/us/app/sessions-surfsports/id1220676251?platform=appleWatch

At the time I remember them claiming it was a similar level of accuracy as the one on the board though they did say you could 'cheat' it by waving your arm around at the top of the jump.

The surfr guys reckon that running the phone inside the drybag in your wetsuit was pretty much as accurate as running it on the board (though you couldn't do the thing where you lift your legs up to get extra height in a jump). They had a setting to make it shout out the height after a jump or to make it vibrate once per metre of height I think so you didn't need to be able to look at it.

I like my garmin app that pairs to a woo best. But you need a woo on your board.

dachopper said..
How accurate have you found the watch versions, verses the mounted devices?

I see that in most testing the mounted devices don't agree with each other, and even different generations of the same devices, the jumps get higher with each generation, so I am dubious as to how accurate they actually are.

Last I tried, I found them lacking. May be worth trying again.

dachopper said..
How accurate have you found the watch versions, verses the mounted devices?

I see that in most testing the mounted devices don't agree with each other, and even different generations of the same devices, the jumps get higher with each generation, so I am dubious as to how accurate they actually are.

I tried the app i mentioned in an above post the other day.

It's not usable on the water. Even off the water it's not that great. Below is the Elevation changes tracked by the app. There were a few jumps, but its hard to figure out when they were and how high they were.



GPS, speed, direction etc all seemed to work fine. But that wasn't really what I was looking for.

On what kind of watch will it be available ? Android wear os ? garmin ? ios ?

www.xctracer.com/en/76/?oid=1905&lang=en

instant baro readings

vodka said..
Any thoughts on the garmin instinct 2 kitesurf setting apparently it logs jump height

Read a few posts back - cannot be done by watches alone.

Them f######g weird cats scare the shidt out of me
Why would you own something that f#####g scary
I'd jump 15 trrs without a kite if one of them F####s came near me

NorthernKitesAUS said..

vodka said..
Any thoughts on the garmin instinct 2 kitesurf setting apparently it logs jump height

Read a few posts back - cannot be done by watches alone.

Hold my beer...... The change is coming

It can and will be done on at least Garmin watches.... I'm mostly through proving it, another 20 jumps to record this weekend.

I Recommend for kitesurfing or sailing, get the biggest display, and touch screen will need to be disabled because water on the screen will cause random button pushes, so then I also recommend get something with 5 buttons because touch screen will be disabled.
Lastly, get something with over or around 1,000,000 Application memory as a must, otherwise you will only be able to run some applications
In general if the watch supports maps, or MP3's, then it probably has over 1,000,000 of application memory.
Link below, click on your watch,
Look at Watch App
Number should be close to or over 1 million and be ok.

131,000 or less and you will be limited to very basic stuff.... probably not jump height.

developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-guides/devices-reference/#devicereference

Barometric sensors are inaccurate, and have time lag because of how they work. They are not instant. You will get an instant inaccurate reading for the first 4 to 7 seconds after changing altitude. Ie - no good for kitesurf jump height.

The best watches in my opinion are the Fenix 51mm, with Solar charging. Fenix 6 or 7, although 7 has nice upgrades.

vodka said..
www.xctracer.com/en/76/?oid=1905&lang=en

instant baro readings

Instant altitude, it says in there that they are using a standard barometer ( with lag ) and applying maths to it..... You can probably guess what I have done with the Garmin watch sensors.

So far I'm pretty confident I can code at least flat water jumps....... monster ocean swells may be a problem through, rolls 'should' be ok, and board grabs 'should' also be ok with some fiddling

Dach

Damn well... im going to give it a go tomorrow maybe is there a garmin kitesurf group i can join theres alot of running groups with leaderboards gotto be a kite one somewhere

Also if you go to *cough itek orumf cough* the dude who coded the kiteapp i believe is posting a fair bit in there on the end of a thread. His avatars a little old man with grey hair i believe hes the same old man with grey hair that featured in the youtubers (our kite life ) video about the kite watches... so if your also writeing then maybe talk to him

Im ummm well... im gonna try connect my xctracer to the watch ?? should be a fun running log at 10k feet wonder what trophy i get for that one

Its funny btw when i buily my last variometer i had to put some wetsuit material over the sensor otherwise it was too sensitive now im confused... do i wear the watch over or under my wetsuit?

LePhasme said..

dachopper said..

Hold my beer...... The change is coming

It can and will be done on at least Garmin watches.... I'm mostly through proving it, another 20 jumps to record this weekend.

I have a garmin fenix 6 if you want someone else to help you beta test (if the coming storm delivers this Sunday).

This week was just for data gathering so I can run more actual jumps through the code I've created to see what heights come out and how they compare to other industry devices.
I also have a relationship with KANARA, and they do have a leaderboard system in their app. I will probably lobby them to include my jump calcs once they are proven:)

I dare say, when I first put the app in the app store it will be a time limited beta.

Just finished coding the jump recognition, jump start identification, landing identification, Hangtime is finished, and now I'm up to the Jump height - which I needed the extra data to verify a little more.

I'm going to be very happy if I have figured this out. Wear your watch on your wrist and the app does the rest.

:)

Dach

During some of the testing I did a set number of jumps with the WOO and the watch app, 6 jumps in total.

Watch recorded all 6 ( because at that stage I was hitting record prior to the jump ) Woo only recorded 5. These were 3- 4 meter jumps flat water with quite violent pops also.
And as you mentioned, I can see straight away looking at the data how someone can make a WOO read higher.

The fenix 7x solar supposedly uses twin GPS constellations to give a more accurate reading, and this does appear to be the case in 2D, but not 3D height from my observations. Hence I have had to use the other sensor information.

Launch G, Launch speed , Jump Height, Hang time, Landing G, Jump Distance - all doable.

LePhasme said..
I noticed that usually the woo miss a jump when I take off from a kicker, I'm assuming as the kicker make you go up then it can't differentiate between the kicker and the actual jump.

I think its worse based on the landings for me. Land too much heelside (crashing basically) and it seems to miss them. Get too gentle a landing and land flat and its the same. I think its another of the well known 'cheats' for extra height along with the deadman dangle - smash your feet down hard on the landing and you get bigger figures

if its not on woo it didn't happen. woo is gospel for any big air kiter.