Design of SmartSail BLE, a sailing assisting system using mobile computing for novice sailor

Abstract

We designed a hardware and mobile application to help novice sailors to enhance their sailing skills. The hardware comprises a wind index that senses the shift of the wind direction, a gyroscope sensor that senses the sail angle and Bluetooth 4.0 to send the data to a smartphone. Sailing is an elegant and familiar sport. However, it is not easy to learn because controlling a sailboat is not intuitive [Fox]. The goal of SmartSail is to enhance the sailor's and audience's experience of sailing. Additionally, sailors have to recognize subtle changes on the surface of the sail or the wind to keep the sailboat in good trim, and such changes are hard for beginners to spot. These are the main reasons why learning sailing is not easy for beginners. To solve these problems, we designed the SmartSail system.