Garmin's New Fitness Tracker

     In an increasingly health-conscious world we are seeing more technology come out on a daily basis to help track our fitness goals, maintain our fitness levels and even track ourselves during daily exercise. These fitness trackers include products like Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband and Garmin VivoFit which are small wearable gadgets that rack your fitness but have been limited to doing much more besides that. Until now where Garmin has combined the smart watch world with the fitness tracking world in their new product Garmin VivoSmart.

     Garmin has introduced a new general purpose wear smart band combined with the VivoFit to introduce the VivoSmart. This product will of course track your steps, heartrate (with a separate heartrate monitor), calories burned and share the time and date but now does even more. The new features include an activity reminder to remind you to get off your butt and move around from time to time and now pairs with your smartphone giving you vibration alerts for texts, calls, e-mails and even calendar events. Each of these even is paired with a preview of the notifications on the LED screen.

     Unlike their past design for VivoFit which had an always on display LED screen the VivoSmart has a hidden OLED that you wake up with a double finger tap and you can navigate your different customizable display pages by swiping the screen.

     The VivoSmart is water-proof up to 50-meters and is supposed to get up to 7 days of battery life per charge. It also includes a sleep tracker to give you daily reports on you're sleep quality such as tossing and turning vs. lying still. Garmin even has a Garmin Connect app that translates all this data into easy to read graphs and charts to more accurately track yourself overtime.

     After seeing all of the new additions Garmin has made to their fitness tracker it is clearly not just for fitness anymore but more of a smart-watch with fitness additions. With their new sleek design it is easy to see how wearing one of these would not be any real issue at all like clunkier alternatives. It is the perfect accessory for someone who is active in both fitness and work and wants to simplify life on a daily basis.

     VivoSmart is set to release in mid-September with 5 different colors (black, slate, berry, purple and blue) with a price point of $170 for just the band or $200 for the band paired with heartrate monitor.

Recording Athletes in a Whole New Way

     When we think of technology we think of computers, social networks, websites and essentially complications. However, when you combine technology with things like the environment, sports and everyday life you can do so much more than just create a new program or build a computer.
     Catapult Sports is one of the companies combining technology with the everyday of sports. With their newest product OPTIMEYE G5, S5 and X4 models a device used to track the movements, activity and overall workload of soccer players. These products are working to revolutionize the way professional soccer players train and the algorithms in these products are designed to track dives, leaps, sprints and quick recoveries tracking essentially every move of the individual wearing the device.

     To the left is an image of the G5 model and it is meant to work strictly with goal keepers as it is a bit larger than the other models because it has a lot more required of it. This tracks every motion of the goalie and allows for coaches, doctors and even players to review the statistics to see not only how they are performing but also let them see what they may need to practice more.
     As these products are still only in testing in Europe with various soccer teams they are still working out any problems that may arise however, they have already started to make various improvements and discoveries. For example they added a function that not only tracks when you jump or dive but also how high you jumped, what your air time was and even run speeds. This will help individuals compare themselves to one another but also allow teams to compare themselves to one another.
     Products like this are just small steps into what is to come and with this technology we are only going to see the world of sports improve as the training of individuals will improve as well. In my opinion we may even see future FIFA, Madden and NFL games utilize this device to get exact readings on players individual stats such as acceleration and speed. Just another form of wearable technology which we will see utilized in the years to come.

Sources: Wired