Laps and pace from an AirPod under your cap

Introduction

Swim tracking usually means buying something: a watch on your wrist, sensor goggles, a head-mounted pod. Kinapod uses the hardware you already own. An AirPod in a small waterproof pouch under your cap counts every length from the turn motion itself, with nothing on your hands, nothing on your goggles, and nothing new to buy.

What it measures

• Lengths and distance, counted automatically from the turn motion, with your pool length (including custom lengths) from settings.
• Average moving pace and last-length pace, live during the swim.
• Pace per length, a bar chart in the session summary.
• Strava upload as a swim with the pace graph.

Kinapod is a practice and training aid. Metrics are estimates derived from motion sensors and are not a certified measurement instrument.

How to use

• Put one AirPod in a small waterproof pouch and tuck it under your swim cap, on top of your head.
• Leave the phone on the lane edge or poolside where you can glance at it.
• Keep the second AirPod out of its case, near the phone, for a seamless connection.
• Set your pool length in Settings (25 m, 25 yd, 50 m, or custom), pick Swim, and go.

What about the signal?

Not a concern, and it works in a pool of any length. Bluetooth carries fine over the water's surface, and when your head goes fully under, during a flip turn for example, the link drops for a moment and recovers on its own as you surface. The tracking is built for exactly that rhythm: brief interruptions are expected and lengths still count correctly.

Best with freestyle (backstroke works too). Butterfly and breaststroke are not advised: the head submerges on every stroke cycle, and that many interruptions degrade the quality of the data.