A Digital Track Rabbit
Alexandra Kline approached us with an idea
What if we could help runners train better by allowing them to race against a visual marker? The idea of a trackrabbit is nothing new, but could it be brought into the modern age?
Bring this concept to life so that the idea could be tested with coaches and runners.
Develop an iOS-controlled LED track using our hardware and software development services.
TrackPacer is being tested and refined with university running teams.
Coaches use an iOS app to configure pacer color, speed, workout distances, workout intervals, and rest between intervals. Configuration is quick and allows multiple groups to use the track at the same time. Track visualization shows the real-time movement of pacers around a track.
The inner perimeter of the track contains 12,000 LEDs controlled by an array of slave microcontrollers. A master controller continuously broadcasts the location of the pacer to the slaves, enabling them to illuminate the appropriate LEDs. This creates the illusion of an orbiting beam of light.
This project began with the kernel of an idea and 400 meters of LEDs. Early prototypes demonstrated the viability of a master-slave architecture.
As we considered fully laying out our 400-meter prototype, we saw that it was much too large to be installed in our office. To test TrackPacer at scale, we mounted every LED to a conference room wall in 5m spools.
We ventured to an indoor track to calibrate TrackPacer and to ensure pace was accurate. We backlogged enhancements like saving workouts and running multiple pacers concurrently until we proved the core tech.
Feedback from both coaches and athletes was critical for TrackPacer's development. This couldn't happen inside a lab so, in collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder, we installed TrackPacer at Potts Field for runners to test.
We created a functional prototype that the TrackPacer team is using to gather product feedback. In initial tests with runners ranging from amateurs to Olympians, TrackPacer has received overwhelmingly positive feedback.
