On this day one year ago we went rowing with our first ever rowing performance system prototype:
It was a warm 23rd of December in 2015, and I remember how lucky we felt that we could do field testing on water in Helsinki!
The first sensor we used was embedded in a hole drilled into the blade of the oar and the system required an expert with a laptop to run it. Our rowing performance system has evolved for sure since that first day and there's no need to drill any holes anymore, you simply strap our sensor on the oar close to the oarlock, it takes about 10 seconds to do it :-) The laptop has been swapped to a phone which measures, analyzes and shows real time metrics while rowing:
Looking back at the past year
It's been an adventure for our startup and we have enjoyed the ride. Highlights of the year include our 5200km return drive to Italy in February to find rowable water for testing our 2nd prototype.
We tested our system with competitive rowers in their single and double sculls but also brought our own traditional wooden boat to the Gavirate lake, surrounded by the Alps, it was awesome to get to row in this scenery in the middle of the Finnish winter:
Finnish summer is short and sweet and we made the most of rowing on the lakes and sea while they were not frozen, field testing and competing as much as we could. Our field testing team had a very successful summer, winning two Finnish Championship Gold medals and one Silver.
Another highlight was the launch of our beta product to pilot users at the World Rowing Masters Regatta in Copenhagen in September. Recently we also expanded into indoor rowing, our system can now also measure and provide real time feedback on indoor rowing technique. We unveiled the indoor rowing system at the sports event Smash in December in Helsinki. Also we visited the British Rowing Indoor Championship to demo our indoor rowing system and managed to grab some medals while we were at it :-)
This year the sea in Helsinki froze earlier than last year and our field testing team hit ice already in early November. Therefore the field testing team has been travelling. Early December we rowed in England.
We were really happy to try out our newly developed seat sensor algorithms on the river of Thames.
For Kristina it was quite emotional being back rowing in England for the first time in 13 years.
This week the waters surrounding Helsinki remained frozen and we drove to Kymi river, the home of the Kouvola rowers and tested the newest SW with the best rowers in Finland, the Finnish Pair consisting of Joel Naukkarinen and Antti Kilpeläinen:
Snow on the ground is no reason to not row if there is water:
Our sensors passed the cold test:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2017!