Digital Fitness Connector: Smart Wearable System

Abstract

Sports and fitness are increasingly getting attention of companies and researchers around the world. In particular, recent mobile devices with hardware GPS and accelerometers, has made possible variety of sports and fitness applications that were not possible earlier. This paper investigates trends in fitness devices, proposes new fitness device system architecture. Proposed Digital Fitness Connector (DFC) architecture leverages existing technologies of smartphone and sports & fitness devices. This allows compatibility with over 80 ANT+ health and fitness sensors to track heart rate, speed, cadence, distance, pace, power (watts), and more. DFC works with majority of smartphone platforms - iPhone, Android, Windows. It allows users to monitor physical activity either in real-time or post workout. Moreover, DFC gives user flexibility to carry smartphone only if they wish to monitor physical activity real-time, otherwise user can just carry DFC to capture and store data from health and fitness sensors. To the best of our knowledge, our project is the first to make a digital fitness connector that works with variety of smartphone platforms and at same time is compatible with major health and fitness sensors.