With sports like surfing and snowboarding, it’s crucial to be as lightweight and maneuverable as possible. And while most extreme sports enjoy the use of popular recording devices like GoPros, no matter how much smaller they’ve gotten over the years, they’re still as small as athletes would like them to be.
Enter boarding lifestyle company Bornonaboard. Its goal is to create apparel and accessories that allow people to more easily incorporate wearable technology to their boarding pursuits. The company has already created a set of hoodies and jackets that feature its EyePocket, a small pocket that fits most smartphones snugly to better record the action.
Another one of the creations is the Bornonaboard mobile app that lets users record this video in landscape mode no matter what the orientation the phone is in — perfect with the EyePocket. Now, the company is trying to fast track another addition to its expanding line: the Wrist Up Display, or WUD. The company’s aim is to create a wrist-mounted, wireless display with camera controls and other features so that users can leave their smartphone safely in the EyePocket and instead use the WUD to adjust and control the camera. A package that includes a Bornonaboard hoodie with EyePocket and an as-yet-to-be-named WUD is going for $150 and is expected to ship October 2016 should the company’s Indiegogo campaign raise $250,000 by July 24th, 2016.
The main thing most boarders would want is a way to make the devices they use as unobtrusive as possible. Having a wrist mounted display to control what’s at least going to be a 5-inch smartphone in your hoody probably isn’t the best way to go about it. A much smaller camera with gesture controls, for instance, would probably be a better solution.