another smartwatch? yes. it is, but the Hoop Tracker Basketball Smartwatch plays it smart in another way. it is the world’s first basketball watch designed to track your basketball performance and it has nothing to with the norm of a smartwatch. so, there will be no text messages, no caller IDs and what not, and best of all, it won’t be needing your smartphone to do the job. which is a good a thing, cos’ coach ain’t going to like it anyway. though it still has two parts to it: the watch, to be worn on your non-shooting arm, and a shot detector that magnetically attached to the inside of any standard basketball loop. the latter is connected wirelessly to the wearable device and sends a signal to the watch whenever it registers a ball through the loop. missed shots will be registered too, thanks to the built-in accelerometer sensors that detects the presence of vibrations when the ball hits the back board or the loop’s rim. special care are taken to give enough time for situations where the ball hits the rim prior to passing through the loop.
the only thing it can’t detect is airball, but there’s a honor system in place where you can record your airball by pressing a button on the watch. speaking of which, we are assuming as an aspiring pro player (or a pro, even), you wouldn’t lie to yourself by “forgetting” to press the button, right? anyway, the Hoop Tracker is smart enough (hey, it is a smartwatch after all, isn’t it?) to record what and where the shots are made. the captured data can then be downloaded and reviewed either on Hoop Tracker website or a specially-written software, so you can decide whether your basketball career is resigned to the hood’s basketball courts, or those in your college. on the flip side, the watch would be an useful tool for reviewing what went wrong, so you can step up on your game. however, in between now and your basketball stardom dream, there is a $199 investment to be made for the Hoop Tracker Basketball Smartwatch, which won’t be available till sometime early 2014. click through for a few more look and a product intro video.
Hoop Tracker via CNET
