Italian Tech Company Develops Telemetry Sensor That Captures Action Sports Data

The Brain One brings “quantified awesomeness” to action sports.

Intel’s Curie Module is a button-sized device that will debut at the upcoming X Games and allow action sports viewers to observe the distance and height skiers and snowboarders jump, as well as other information that cannot be determined by the naked eye. And while the Curie will have implications much greater than its debut in the X Games, it is worth noting that the Curie is not a device readily usable by everyday people — which could upset fans who want to know more about their Go-Karting endeavors or ATV expeditions.

That’s why BRAIN, an Italian tech company, is going to turn a lot of heads. BRAIN has developed a smart telemetry sensor called “One” that has the ability to bring extreme action sports participants everything they could possibly hope for. Quite similar to the Curie chip, BRAIN One records and portrays advanced information regarding motion and activity, and can reveal such data as temperature, elevation, cornering (on a motorcycle, for example), overall speed, and more.

BRAIN One does this using GPS + Glonass, which is a more comprehensive positing system than just GPS or Glonass alone; a temperature sensor; a microphone; a 9-axis internal sensor; and a barometer. All of this is packed into BRAIN One, which is palm-sized and has a special adhesive on its underside that allows for it to be easily attached and reattached to various objects.  

There is more to BRAIN One, though, that makes it a product set to appease surfers, BMX riders, and BASE jumpers everywhere. BRAIN One is waterproof and shockproof with a long battery life (up to one day), so it can go anywhere, and for plenty of time. This makes the applications of BRAIN One seemingly endless: a SCUBA diver can stick the device onto their fin and learn how fast he or she kicks and how deep he or she swims. A jockey can attach a BRAIN One to his hat and discover the speed his horse reaches at all points during a race. And all of this can be seen from the smartphone app that couples with BRAIN One to deliver data real-time to a smartphone paired with the sensor.

BRAIN has even given One compatibility with GoPro — using the special BRAIN View desktop app, information gathered by One can be overlaid onto a video taken by a GoPro in which the same activity is captured. Pretty soon, skydiving videos posted on Facebook will say when the diver reaches terminal velocity, how many flips her or she does, and much more.

All of this “quantified awesomeness,” as BRAIN would say, must be expensive, right? Wrong. The BRAIN One costs just 199 Euros, which [currently] translates to just over $218. That’s a steal for anyone who wants to feel like the star of an action movie and hasn’t been able to until now.