Swimming in open waters can be tricky. Even if you think you swam in a straight line towards a buoy, there’s a good chance you’ve been spending the last few minutes moving away from it. That won’t happen with these OnCourse Goggles, which use a pair of LEDs above the lenses to keep you notified whether you’re still swimming towards the intended destination.
Aimed at triathletes and other folks who like to swim the open waters, the goggles are designed to help you keep swimming in a straight line. No more wasting time and energy zig-zagging from one direction to another, since you’ll be immediately alerted the moment you’ve begun heading off course.
The OnCourse Goggles use an onboard compass, accelerometer, and microprocessor to determine your direction while in the water, keeping the LEDs above either eye glowing green when you’re on the right path, then switching to a different color as soon as you lose your way. If you’re veering left, the left LED will glow in yellow to let you know you’ve started to go too far in that direction (right LED if you’re moving right), then change to red if you continue, only switching back to green once you’ve properly course-corrected.
Since having to use an app to tell it what direction you’re going will be cumbersome for athletes in the water, it’s not necessary. Instead, you simply have to look in the direction you want to get to and press the button on the side of the goggle to register it as the next checkpoint, making it easy to set and change target destinations on a whim.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the OnCourse Goggles. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $149.