These engineers love skateboarding so much they created a trick tracker

Photo credit: lzflzf / 123RF.

Most of us mere mortals keep our jobs and hobbies in two separate worlds. For engineer-skateboarders Jibin Jose and Abimanyu Nair, that wasn’t good enough.

“From where our journey started, skateboarding wasn’t easy. We come from India, and learning to skate over there is a challenge,” Jibin says in a video. Challenge, he points out, is at the heart of skateboarding.

The duo, co-founders of startup Flipmotion, Inc., are crowdfunding their startup’s first product, RideBlock, a piece of hardware you could easily hold in the palm of your hand that attaches to the bottom of a skateboard. It records the types of tricks you perform and how successful you were at them. For example, it’ll track if you complete a kickflip. But it’ll also track how high your kickflip was and let you share it on social media.

Using the companion app, you can then connect via Bluetooth with other skateboarders and compare tricks. RideBlock can also sense unnamed tricks, so trailblazer skaters can show – and teach – their stunts to others.

The device, US$49 plus shipping, is slated for delivery around September. It’s targeted at US and European markets, where there are the most skateboarders.

RideBlock has a seven-hour battery life, is water and impact resistant, and has a universal mount – it’ll work for both skateboards and longboards, a type of longer and faster skateboard.

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Work and passion

(From left) Jibin and Abimanyu, co-founders of Flipmotion. Photo credit: Flipmotion, Inc.

Jibin received his first skateboard around seventh grade, a small one that took his dad two weeks to get. He grew up in a small town in India’s southern state of Kerala, watching Tony Hawk and the extreme sports competitions like X Games.

Challenge is at the heart of skateboarding.

Jibin and Abimanyu have been developing RideBlock over the past two years as co-founders of Flipmotion. They became friends in engineering college – both attended Toc H Institute of Science and Technology – when they discovered their shared hobby.

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