- Someone used an AirPod to record flying disc throw statistics
- Tested with throws up to 45 mph and no damage
- Strava-friendly export for dedicated disc throwers
One of Apple’s most famous ads opened with “Here’s to the crazy. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.” The text didn’t explicitly say “here’s to those who put AirPods on frisbees”, but I think Steve Jobs would have approved of the Redditor who has done exactly that.
Paul Tracer, aka Disastrous-Body-297, has invented a use for AirPods that I’m pretty sure no one at Apple ever considered. He used them to upgrade a standard Frisbee and to stream real-time data. It can even export sessions to the Strava app.
Airpods can track Frisbee throws
from r/airpods
Why it’s not completely crazy to upgrade a frisbee with AirPods
As the intrepid inventor explains: “The AirPod streams motion data to the phone and records/analyzes throws in real time. With optional voice feedback into the other AirPod. It measures speed, revolutions, airborne time, number of throws. It also measures heart rate (either with latest AirPods or external HR).”
You can try it yourself: the app is sports metrics app Kinapod, which the creator says is currently going through Apple’s approval process. The AirPod is literally just inserted through a hole created at the disc’s dead center. Tracer says “Just punch a hole in the center of the disc and that’s it! You’ll be surprised how reliable it is. The AirPod stem isn’t completely cylindrical, it doesn’t slide out.”
The result is a lot of data: average speed, maximum spin, total airborne time and more.
There is a market for this kind of information: as a Redditor, lenfantsuave, joke posts, “Tech disk: I will never financially recover from this.” Tech Disc is a company that makes a $299.99 line of disc golf launch monitors that track multiple metrics and flight paths to help players improve their game, and a person from the company joined the online conversation to praise Tracer’s ingenuity.
Tracer’s tracker is very much a “fun thing” rather than a serious setup, not least because expensive earphones aren’t the most cost-effective gyro sensors to put on a Frisbee; the risk of damage or destruction is clearly quite high, although the AirPods have survived so far according to Tracer.
Tracer is currently chatting with Redditors on forums like r/discgolf about alternative and more affordable ways to collect data. And meanwhile, the AirPod/Frisbee combo made me and other Redditors happy: “This is very nice,” says claybythebay9, while GrandMasterFlex reckons, and I also agree that “this is sick as hell.”
As Apple’s ad put it, “while some may see them as crazy, we see genius.” Or as SilverMelodyPrincess says in the Reddit thread: “Apple accidentally made the most over-engineered frisbee stat tracker and I’m here for it.”
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