Abstract
Both projects center on the same core function: a physical device collecting real-time data from a user and transmitting it elsewhere for processing. In my Flying Birdies capstone, that pipeline is explicit by through product design. The player attaches the sensor, starts a session, and receives their own swing data back through the app. The data is stored locally on the device, its purpose is transparent at every stage, and the player is the direct beneficiary of everything the system collects. The STS paper documents how the same pipeline operates in Smart TVs, where sensors and network connections continuously harvest behavioral data, while the destination, scope, and commercial use of that data are kept hidden from users themselves. The technical infrastructure underlying both systems is comparable, but in the Smart TV context, data collection is not designed to serve the user who generates it. It is designed to serve the manufacturer and its advertising partners.
My technical report describes the design and development of Flying Birdies, a lightweight detachable sensor system for badminton rackets built for the casual, everyday player. The device attaches to the racket shaft and uses an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, and a PDM microphone to record swing force, racket-shuttle impact force, racket speed, and acceleration in real-time. Sensor data is transmitted wirelessly via Bluetooth Low Energy to an iOS application built in Flutter, where players can monitor live metrics, review past recorded sessions, and track performance trends over time. Development involved iterative PCB design, sensor fusion experimentation, FFT-based impact detection, and mobile application across frontend and backend layers. The final prototype successfully detected a shuttlecock impact on racket stringed area and displayed targeted player performance metrics, through challenges with microphone signal quality and PCB component compatibility required design pivots through the product design process.
My STS research draws on peer-reviewed technical literature, official privacy policy of smart tvs, and consumer-facing marketing and smart tv setup materials. Technical research confirms that Smart TVs are architecturally designed to continuously collect behavioral data and communicate with advertising servers, independent of user awareness or security failures. Consumer-facing materials extend this further by framing data collection entirely as personalization, presenting account registration, data backup, and consent to terms of service as routine setup steps rather than meaningful privacy decisions, leaving users to formally agree to surveillance practices they do not fully understand.
