Pop-Sci Core77 Design Challenge S p e e d - 1/20/03

Description of Design

Although speed can be measured in absolute terms, for there be meaning, speed has to be compared in a relative sense. 30 miles per hour is pretty slow when driving on a highway, but it is world record pace if you are talking about the 100m sprint. The Speedview Chronograph has GPS and timing circuitry on board to calculate/extrapolate instantaneous speed and elapsed time of an event. This information is then compared to an internal database to provide contextual information. For instance, a time of 10.75 seconds equals 26.88 blinks of an eye. Or the time it takes sound to travel 141.9 football fields. Or the time it takes a dragonfly to travel .018 miles. There are 2 modes of operation. One is using GPS and timing data to interpolate instantaneous speed. The second is just to use the timing hardware to measure the length of an event. These modes of operations, as well as choosing the categories of information displayed -- i.e. speeds of the animals, speeds of natural phenomena, world records, etc -- are accessed through the menu/context twist knob. The Speedview chronograph is bluetooth compliant so the contextual reference information can be updated by connection to a PC. This information can also include personal best/worst times and speeds as entered into the PC. Additionally, two or more Speedview chronographs can exchange information via bluetooth. Picture the local chapter of the road runners club. Everyone has a Speedview chronograph and there is a group date dump. Now when training, each person knows how their time/speed/percentage compares to their club records. It is through comparative events like this that the user of the Speedview Chronograph will be able to experience the relative meaning of speed.