Make a real bicycle control a branded game in real time.

Challenge

Promote fitness devices with something people can feel.

WIND was launching new fitness devices and wanted an engagement that demonstrated them rather than described them — while collecting data for later CRM activity.

Solution

A real bike, wired into a game.

A Bluetooth sensor reads the wheel of an actual bicycle. The data goes over Wi-Fi to a tablet mounted on the bike, and from there to the computer running the game. The rider’s pedalling drives an avatar through a virtual park collecting balloons.

The sensor sits on the spokes and frame and measures how fast the wheel turns; it talks to the tablet over Bluetooth, and an Android bridge passes the readings into the Unity game. The same tablet doubled as the lead capture point and took photos of riders mid-game.

The final ranking records points, distance, speed and calories burned, and riders could share a selfie to social media.

Why it matters

The sensor chain is the project.

Bicycle to sensor to tablet to computer to game, in real time, in a shopping centre, five times in five different buildings. Every link in that chain is somewhere the experience can fail — and none of it is visible in the finished product.