Volvo

Headline sponsor Volo approached Xncreations to help them bring an engaging user experience to their expo stand at The Eroica Britannia, a high profile 3 day cycling festival set in the heart of the peak district. 

Providing a fun festival-like atmosphere for the cycling enthusiast, attracting over 40,000 people, the event plays host to a Sportive (cycling event), which takes in some of the iconic climbs in the area.  One of these being the Mam Nick hill (at about 8-10% gradient for 2 miles).  Volvo had a vision to provide video footage of the climb which could be controlled by a cyclist on a static bike powered through interactive software.  

Xncreations loves a challenge, particularly those that take us, and others, to great heights!  As keen cyclists ourselves, this was an exciting opportunity.  It required us to combine our lower level ANT+ library (to gather the bike data), with a visually engaging video screen which adjusted playback speed based on power output.

The Solution:

Building the ANT+ desktop application we drew inspiration from our already proven and successful indoor cycling training software library turbotraining.co.uk.  This is an interactive site that we already host and support, helping to make it easier for people to train more effectively on their bikes indoors.

To capture the footage, Xncreations enlisted the help of “One Guy”, an aerial and ground filming specialist.  One Guy drove the hill time and time again with various cameras to capture and provide us with the highest quality footage, enabling us to reliably and smoothly adjust the speed with changes in power output.  After many takes, we decided on a video of 30fps @ 720p.  This looked great on the 4 x 50” Toshiba displays on site.

Volvo had their own support crew and we were not required to be onsite, so it was important step we made it user friendly and with a simple setup process.  It only took a quick call to static cycle provider TEAMcycles (Watt Bike) to ensure the 4 systems were up and running quickly.  The Volvo stand ran for 4 days and the software received more than 2000 uses.

All in all a great event with a steep learning curve for all involved in more ways than one!  It's something we look forward to repeating in the future.