Smartphone pace counter

[PonoBill]

Playing around with my Garmin Vivoactive made me realize that there isn't anything inside the device that isn't already inside every smartphone. There's no reason that an app can't be developed that would replicate stroke counting, heartrate monitoring (with a bluetooth band), speed, distance, activity monitoring,  etc.. One of the many benefits of having a sensor-stuffed suercomputer in your pocket. Years ago when Nike came out with a device to put in a shoe to count steps I thought it was kind of silly. Seemed to me that the accerometer already in your smartphone could easily do that. So I played around with the iPhone dev tools and recorded the accelerometer output during walking. The data that walking yielded looked pretty easy to interpret. Then I looked at the gyro output (tilt sensor) and it was even better.

Writing an app takes a lot more than just looking at data, and I have neither the skills no the interest to do that. My most sophisticated app to date is my very own flashlight app, which has the option of blinking the alphabet in morse code. Whoopee. I just looked at my phone to see when I created that, and realized I deleted it. I deleted my own app!! The market has spoken, and it said "shut up, shut up!!"

The app world is pretty crowded, and the market for such an app would be small, but it's big enough for companies to develop descrete devices. Might be a little biz there. If anyone is interested in the idea, have at it. I just want a copy of the beta.