Projects: Theft-Deterrent System for Skis

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Protect your skis from being stolen through NFC technology.

How can this happen? Most of the time, skis are stolen while you’re eating lunch or drinking in the ski hut and left your skis outside. The thief just steps into your skis and goes downhill.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable way of protecting your skis. The only option you have is to tie them together with a lock, much like traditional simple bike locks. Cameras in front of restaurants don’t help much, as it’s not easy to differentiate the owner from the thief, and there’s not much time afterwards. Therefore, both solutions are insecure and don’t really offer much comfort.

Protect your Skis

Theft-Deterrent System for Skis (TDS-S) is a new, high-tech way of protecting your skis. It uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to “pair” the ski with the boot. That way, the ski first checks if the boot is allowed to use this ski. If it isn’t, the binding doesn’t close and additionally alerts the owner through a loud alarm sound.

What’s behind this technology? Modern bindings can electronically control the fit of the ski boot and report if there seems to be a problem – e.g., when it’s not adjusted correctly or if there’s too much snow between the binding and the boot.

TDS-S adds some more intelligence to the system. By inserting a small RFID-module into the ski, it is possible to register the ID of a MIFARE-tag, which in turn is integrated at the bottom of the ski boot. The pairing between the tag and the module in the ski can be done through a desktop PC application or also right on the hill through a mobile application on the phone. High encryption standards ensure that a thief can’t get around the lock.

The project is currently still under development by the three Mobile Computing-students Markus Eder, Florian Lettner and Carina Madlmayr. Nevertheless, it already managed to win several global competitions – the 1st Austrian NFC Developer Competition as well as the NFC Forum Global Competition.

Quick Facts

The ski is equipped with an RFID-module to identify the MIFARE-tag of the ski boot.

Awards

Compatibility

• Java ME compatible phone with NFC technology
• Maturity level:
    In development

Developed by

• Markus Eder
• Florian Lettner
• Carina Madlmayr
• Semester project at:
  Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences
  Campus Hagenberg, Department of "Mobile Computing"
• Supervised by: Stephan Selinger, Gerald Madlmayr
  

Published

• February 2008

More Information

• Official project website
• TDS-S Article: "Protect your Skis with your Phone!" (originally published at the Forum Nokia Blogs)
• Please contact the developers for more information.

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