Having the right gear at the snow can mean the difference between having a great day on the slopes or a frustrating, cold time of it. You have to organise your action camera, walkie-talkie for keeping up with mates, phone for maps and all your safety gear before you get going, and that’s a goddamn nightmare. One Australian start-up found that the struggle is real on the slopes, and decided to make a helmet that integrates everything you’d need into one wearable. It’s called the Alpine by a company called Forcite, and it promises to do it all.
Alpine is the brain-child of co-founders Alfred Boyadgis and Julian Chow, along with their team. It started out as a project to give police forces better helmets, but while Julian was at the snow he realised that it became quite a solitary experience, despite the fact that he was with a group of friends.
“I’ve realised that snow sports begins as a very social thing, and as you start to ski or snowboard down the mountain you begin to lose your friends. There’s no form of communication! My friends had giant cameras mounted to their helmets, we had walkie-talkies to contact each other, but it was very hard to operate at the same time. And as you begin to venture out of bounds, it becomes hard for rescue teams to locate you,” Julian said. They needed to create something that did it all in one, easy-to-use device. So that’s what they did.
The Alpine integrates a 1080p camera, fog lights and recording controls, as well as a GPS tracking module, and in-helmet radio that pairs with your phone for private communication with other users within a range of 50 metres.
It integrates with an app for your smartphone that allows you to grab the footage on the go, and control voice chat channels. The helmet also comes with replaceable foam lining, meaning you can use it again should you have a crash.
The Alpine is still in development at this point, but the team is already experimenting with version 2.0, which will give slope-riders a HUD with vital trail information as well as everything from the Alpine 1.0.
Co-founder Alfred Boyadgis told us that he expects the Alpine to go on sale in 2015 and cost less than $1000.
Check it out below.
Click to enlarge…