AlpineReplay

[Nick]

Got a chance to use it yesterday, like it way more than just basic Google Mytracks, which I was using before. I know Planb uses it, anyone else?

Add me up if you want, we can track stats. Just wish I had started at the beginning of the year

Search for me --- "Nick Reuter" in the search box. Seems that's the only way to add anyone right now.

 

[EOS]

I just started using it as well. Also wish i found it at the beginning of the ski season.

Pretty accurate, although it thinks that I jump way more often than I actually do, but that's not a stat i'm interested in anyway.

 

[Nick]

Interesting, they have top speed leaderboards

http://www.alpinereplay.com/leader/?id=5547#

Not sure if you guys can see it. One guys is at 99 which I'm guessing is the max the app will track? Wonder if that was real or some sort of technical glitch.

Lots of people in the 80's.

 

[ALLSKIING]

Sweet.... Just downloaded this. Will check it out next time im out.

 

[zakyr]

Any thoughts on accuracy?

 

[Nick]

It seems pretty good.I think elevation will always be an issue as GPS doesn't do a great job with position vertically. That said, it's possible it has elevation maps already included on the slopes and knows the vertical distance between two points (top of lift and bottom).

 

[Nick]

Here are my Wachusett stats from yesterday:

http://www.alpinereplay.com/stats/u?uId=5547&vId=36707

 

[SkiFanE]

FYI - someone from AlpineRelay answered some Qs on the SR board about the app. Here's some text, rest you can dig through the thread:

" Hi All,

My name is David and I'm one of the co-founders of AlpineReplay (we worked with SR to make Sunday River Replay). Just thought I'd pop in here to help answer some questions, and let you all know that if you experience problems in the future, we'd love to hear from you at support@alpinereplay.com. You can all contact me personally if you wish at david@alpinereplay.com

* For lift time, it's the time on the lift and the time you spent within 100 FT of the lift going less than 5mph.

* The Penguin Medal wasn't working, which is why you didn't see it. Fixed now.

* We measure jumps through the accelerometer on your phone

* Accuracy, saved this one for last because it's a bit more involved. Accuracy depends on two things 1.) Quality of the GPS chip in your phone and 2.) where you place your phone. Ideally, you want to place it in an outer most layer of clothing with a good view of the sky (breast pocket). There really is no better place to get good GPS reception than at the top of a mountain, so we're in luck there!

The technology has been available for the past 10 years for accuracy up to 0.5mph in speed and about 20ft in altitude. But the chips inside phone manufactures all differ, and as a rule, the cheapo chips from China--which are the cheapest--have technology in them worse than it was 15 years ago. Why are these chips worse? They use something called a Kalman Filter to smooth your data. Kalman filters work very well 90% of the time, but 10% of the time you have to catch the faulty data it spits out and massage it. These chips don't massage anything.

We have post processing on our servers to try and find blatant errors in data and smooth results. We catch most issues and if we can't fix them, we throw out the portion of data that's giving us trouble (why you may see a missing run or two from time to time). Accuracy and reliability are very important to us (we have to maintain a leaderboard) so we spend an enormous amount of effort on this. Bad data does get through once in a while, though, but we're getting better with each update of the server (if not daily then weekly). I think that by the end of the season we'll be pretty damn accurate.

How do I know this much about GPS? Our CEO and co-founder worked as CTO of Magellan Navigation since 1992. So he developed most of this technology that's being used in chips today. If you want to know more about GPS, he'd be happy to share.

Hope this clarify some things. Please send feedback our way. We're always looking for ways to make the AR experience better!

David"

http://community.sundayriver.com/forum/topics/mountain-app

 

[zakyr]

So I downlaoded the app.....do you need to let the app know what mountain you are at?

Or do you just hit the play button when you start skiing?

 

[Nick]

Just hit play, it automatically knows the mountain

 

[zakyr]

Cool stuff -

Will try this out this weekend

 

[BenedictGomez]

Seems cool.

1) Does this drain your battery to dead if it's on all day?
2) How is reception? I've noticed at some mountains I have zero phone signal (middle of nowhere etc..)

 

[Nick]

As far as I know: yeah, it will speed up your battery draining, but I don't think more or less than any other GPS app. I turn off wifi, etc. and just leave it in my pocket.

I don't think reception matters really. As long as it gets a GPS lock it will record your data. The only downside to lack of reception is you might not be able to upload the data to AlpineReplay from your phone until you get to an area where there is reception.

 

[WJenness]

I use it, I like it...

Battery usage isn't bad at all... It doesn't send the data in real time, just at the end when you hit 'submit', so that controls the battery usage. It just logs your position by getting a GPS fix... This saves your battery BIG TIME. I used the "Phresheez" (which is a dumb name) app last year, and that does send your data real time, so the battery would drain much quicker, but it allows you to see where your friends are on the mountain if they're using at the same time... Which is nice.

I've had an issue recently, but it could very well just be that my phone is starting to suck...

I was skiing at Sunday River and used the app to log my day. At the end of the day, I hit pause and then submit. I then got an error that it didn't have enough data and I should ski more and try again later. It appears that data has been lost.

Other than that, I've been enjoying it.

-w

 

[EOS]

Reception matters!

I was at Wildcat this past weekend and didn't have much of a cell signal, so I couldn't log in to the app and start it. Bummed me out!

 

[legalskier]

Seems a bit too Big Brotherish for my tastes....

 

[jimmywilson69]

I use Phresheez. I used both Phreesheez and alpine replay concurrently at ski roundtop and their elevation results were quite different. Phreesheez was acurate and Alpine replay was off by several hundred feet.

I may try them again sometime just to see if it was some sort of anamoly.

I like phreesheez but the $10 a year unlimited use fee seems unneccssary especially if something does it for free.

 

[BenedictGomez]

Battery usage isn't bad at all... It doesn't send the data in real time, just at the end when you hit 'submit', so that controls the battery usage. It just logs your position by getting a GPS fix... This saves your battery BIG TIME.

Well that's cool, I guess I'll give it a go then. Battery life was my biggest concern.

Phreesheez was acurate and Alpine replay was off by several hundred feet.

Geez, that seems pretty dramatic.

 

[WJenness]

<snip>Alpine replay was off by several hundred feet.</snip>

Are we talking over the course of the day? Per run?

-w

 

[planb420]

LOVING this app so far, if your worried at all about battery drain while using this app then download the App "Juice Defender". Its a battery control app that works GREAT, it has a free, 1.99 and 4.99 version. All I use is the free version and have seen a 2x increase in my battery life!!!