Sports has come a long way with the help of technology with a wearable system that enables players to seamlessly capture and display golf game in an interface—with usable stats, trends and information. Learn more about this comprehensive, dynamic technology here.
Here is a case study for a recent project where we assisted a customer with motion detection for wearable devices. We were able to find and fixed one troubling, but intermittent problem and also gave them a testing rig to test the accuracy of future software upgrades to the device.
Active Mind Technology provides golfers with stats and trending information about their golf game. Their product, Game Golf, uses GPS to track location, accelerometers to track swing and related information, and uses Near Field Communication (NFC) tags to identify each club. They approached Voler Systems after early prototypes exhibited erratic behavior. Because of their commitment to quality they wanted every measurement to be accurate. We helped improve some of the software, but the most important thing we did was to provide a way to test it after every new software release.
Our first step was to understand the issues, we asked:
- What are the issues you have?
- What problems are most important?
- What are the most important functions to verify?
After a thorough review of their issues we looked at how to reproduce and test the problems. We developed several tools for testing, including a test wheel that exercises multiple devices for long periods of time. The test wheel rotates the Game Golf device very slowly, about 15 seconds per revolution, exercising the accelerometer. The device passes by several Near Field Communication tags as it rotates, similar to swiping the NFC tag on a golf club. By exercising the sensors and running for days gathering consistent data, the accuracy of the data collection and the reliability of the software was confirmed.
With working software and a new test methodology and tester, they are shipping products that are very reliable. VP of Engineering, Jeremy Shaw, said that they are amazed at the low number of problems reported by customers.
