Announcing Swervetracker, the new waterski app

OSSKI

Hi ballers - I’ve been using the quiet winter months to develop an app - largely in a geeky quest for data on my own skiing – but I hope it’s something the rest of the waterski community can enjoy too.

Key features:
- Log a set easily in less than 60 seconds, including each pass, water temp, wind speed, driver, lake, zero off setting, ski, fin settings, and of course a log book of your personal notes.

- We have made extensive use of pre-populated fields to make this process FAST

- Review your progress across a range of charting and data analysis

- Set your own preference for kph/mph, ‘metres on’ or ‘feet off’, and Celsius or Fahrenheit

Following up soon, subject to interest:
- Set up handicapped leagues with your ski buddies to spur each other on!

It's great to share this with you all – I will upload a few teasers below - and wholeheartedly welcome your feedback / questions.

Swervetracker is now available at https://www.swervetracker.com/ - follow the instructions under 'download and install' to get an icon app on your home screen'

Owen Shirley

OSSKI

OSSKI

OSSKI

OSSKI

jetpilotg4

AWESOME !!!

vtmecheng

Cool. Have you thought about adding ski settings and Zero Off/Perfect Pass selections?

Edit: I see that all of these are included. Nice work!

Roger

Looks good! @vtmecheng - OP mentions inclusion of ZO settings.

OSSKI

Hi @vtmecheng - yes absolutely!

You can choose Zero Off and your setting on the system. You can select a default so you don't have to put it in every time (I haven't changed for years), but have the option to change every set if you're playing around with settings

Wish

how are you hosting/storing all the data if lets say 500 skiers use it over a period of 5 yrs??

Chris Rossi

Intrigued. I did not see it on ios. Is it only android right now?

OSSKI

@Wish that would be a cool problem to have!

Data is being stored in a 3rd party data center. "The cloud"! I expect volumes of data will be quite modest, and so I plan to fund cloud storage out of my own pocket for as long as that remains the case. The sport has given me so much and it would be cool to create something we all value to give back.

If it proves as popular as you suggest, frankly I would cross that bridge when we come to it - perhaps modest contributions towards running costs could help. Though with that many users it would be little more than a couple sets worth of gas per year I would think.

OSSKI

@Chris Rossi - it is not live yet, we are launching very soon on both devices.

Great to have all your feedback in the meantime - particularly on whether handicapped leagues with your buddies on Swervetracker would be of value?

KRoundy

This looks awesome. Is this for bouy-chasing only? What if I ski an open-water set? And - is there space for my comments? “Felt really good coming out of my offside today”, or “worked on where I was looking and it helped me pull through the wakes” or something along those lines.

OSSKI

@KRoundy - great question. The design has been centered around course skiing, but there's no reason you couldn't simply input the line length and speed of an off course set as perhaps just a single pass.

On notes, yes! There's a big section designed for typing in notes just like that. I think that's one of the most useful things - I've lost count of the number of times my own form has faded - and at such times you wonder has the water temp dropped? Is it my settings? Have conditions really been worse recently?

Swervetracker has been designed to make it easy to rule in (or out) those variables, as well as make it easy to find and revisit your notes from when you were skiing great - often the fix is inside those!

KRoundy

@OSSKI Cool! Sign me up! Wish I had it now. Already two sets into the 2020 ski season.

503Kento

Love the idea of handicapped competition with my ski crew!

OSSKI

@KRoundy thanks for your support! Will be available very soon!

In the meantime, if you want to note down when you ski and your scores etc, you'll be able to upload backdated info when Swervetracker launches

OSSKI

@503Kento great to hear, thanks for your support too!

Welcome any thoughts on the scoring system for the handicapped leagues - an annual league that just ranks by most improved vs prior year best score?

A system that gives points weekly (so also rewards consistency)?

Any reward for number of sets taken / buoys skied?!

I've been doing plenty of headscratching on what might be most fun!

503Kento

@osski I guess I’m envisioning a tour type format. Each day of skiing is a “tournament”. We do a cold off the dock set or sets for a score. Final score adjusted by handicap and a winner is declared. Each “tournament” adds to the tour score. At the end of the summer the tour winner is declared. The handicap needs to get adjusted as the tour continues so that things get more and more competitive.

MBlohm

@OSSKI I have a similar way of tracking my skiing in an excel sheet.
To see trends and my current shape I have some data points that I like a bit extra.
The overall (season) percentage of cleared passes for all line lengths.
The percentage of cleared passes the last 10 passes of all line lengths to see the trend compared to the overall.
I’m focusing a lot on stability instead of a high score without stability. That’s way this is more important to me.
It would be very nice if those figures are available in the app or if you could consider to add it.
Another feature that would be nice is the possibility to separate the statistics for practice and competitions.
Really good initiative it will help me and others a lot, will use it and are willing to pay for it as well. Even if my wanted figures aren’t there I will still use it to track everything at the lake to fill my excel sheet later on.

BCM

I can't wait to install. I'm liking the data visualization, I like how you combined score, wind, and water temp on one chart.

santangelo

@OSSKI look forward to seeing what you've developed.

If you need stock settings for skis, I have an API you can access to pull data (JSON format). Currently it has 856 stock settings for various manufacturers. Here is the API documentation: https://api.paulsantangelo.com/skis/

Currently, it's an open API, but I may add an API key in the future. It will also allow users to browse the data as HTML with a query parameter added to the URL string as indicated in the API docs.

This API accesses the same data used for the finDB mobile app:
finDB for IOS
finDB for Android

Let me know if you have any questions.
Paul Santangelo

OSSKI

@MBlohm thanks for the feedback! There is a section where you can see data just like you describe: number of passes completed per line/speed, percentage completion rate, and even average number of buoys scored on each line/speed.

I really like your idea about a moving average on those data sets too. I won't be able to get that into V1 but definitely on my radar now for future development.

I'll be posting links when we're live. Making some final tweaks/testing now so will be one day next week. Hopefully as we get feedback then, I can prioritise developments to follow up with.

@santangelo wow that could be great, thank you. May well look to follow up with you on this for future development too.

@BCM thanks for the kind words! In case you were wondering about the triangles too - those are tournament sets

OSSKI

Swervetracker is now live: https://swervetracker.squarespace.com/

We've gone for a web app, so it will work across all android and iOS devices, as well as your PC.

I recommended hitting the 'download and install button' which will take you to instructions on how to get an app icon on your mobile home screen - that way whenever you hit that button, Swervetracker will open up just like any other app, as opposed to in a browser window.

Look forward to hearing all your feedback!

Owen

jpattigr

Downloaded and looks great!

One suggestion, add ski model / length as some people do ski more then one ski.

Thanks!

503Kento

Took a quick look, and it looks great. Only issue is see is that a web app requires an internet connection is required which might be an issue for some. Looking forward to getting better weather and no COVID-19

mfjaegersr

Niiiice @OSSKI !

Consider adding PP/Z-Box option for speed control; add z-Box settings too?

Can’t wait to ‘leave home’ and log a real set!

teammalibu

Did not see the+ setting for zero off

Bill22

Looks really nice. For from boot you have .25” adjustments. A lot of skiers move their boot 1/16” at a time (or small movement).

skialex

I’ve tried to log a set, a hypothetical one! Works great, can’t wait to use it in real life!
My ski is sensitive and I would love to have 1/16” option for boot placement but not a big issue though.
Got an icon front screen next to Fin DB!