Moving into 2016, this year has the potential for being a very exciting year for rowing technology, with several companies having announced products with an aim to release in 2016.

In no particular order :

Yepp – the forcegate

Talked about in my last blog post, Yepp have announced their new forcegate that was announced to be available on the 26th January. Working alongside their currently available sibi camera system the forcegate is intended to allow you to view both the video and power curves simultaneously, making identifying and correcting technical flaws easier. Not much is known currently of the gate other than a video and render, but hopefully in January more information will be released so we can see what they are offering.

Nielsen-Kellerman wireless power gate

Shown off at the Head of the Charles in October, NK are working towards releasing a wireless power gate to accompany their Speedcoach GPS 2.0, with the aim of releasing the power meter at some point in Q1 2016 – again other than a display model there is little currently to go on but hopefully more information will be forthcoming in the next few months

Oarinspired

Being under development for a number of years, towards the end of 2015 oarinspired announced several partnerships with universities and the Australian rowing team, and also published a few pictures of fabricated parts and a wired version of the gate being used on the water which suggest that 2016 may very well be the year that they release their kit onto the market

Rowing in motion – sensors

RIM have been looking into sensors for rowing to accompany their rowing app, although their long range plan is to add force gates to the line up, they recently announced that their sensor box (which has a much more sensitive GPS sensor and impeller sensor for rivers with stream) is now available for sale to German teams with a world wide release due this year

It will be intereting to see which product reaches the market first, and also how rowers react to each one. Personally I am very keen to get my hands on my Kickstarter supported oarinspired kit, but the other companies products each have their own spins which make their own products interesting, be it NK’s long background in rowing, Yepp’s advanced camera setup or rowing in motions background in boat acceleration analysis and excellent user interface, so I’m keen to hear updates from all of the companies on how their development is going.

This post first appeared on Tom’s Blog