The story behind STELLABEACON: a palm-sized sidekick, and a quiet obsession with space

I'll just come out and say it: I've always been obsessed with space. A ski guy? Yeah, I know. But in my head, it's all one continuous line.

The fastest vehicle with no engine is probably a ski. No motor — just gravity and your own body, riding it down. If I push that "fastest without power" all the way to best-in-the-world, then the next step is obvious: power. As in, a rocket. (I'm only half joking.)

That's why messing with RTK and IMU for ski measurement is weirdly fun. Catching satellite signals, reading attitude — that's literally rocket tech, isn't it? Standing on a ski hill, I feel like I'm inching a little closer to space.

That obsession is what gave birth to Gate Mapper Satellite — and the palm-sized device I built for it, named STELLABEACON (a beacon of the stars). It records gate positions as real coordinates, down to the centimeter — data you can replay and verify as many times as you like. Data that can't lie.

Honestly, the build wasn't that hard. The phone-AR version had already given me the foundation; I just had to make the hardware. Still, there were a few little puzzles — and those were quietly fun.

The GNSS chip was talking at a different speed than the official manual claimed. The iPhone wouldn't speak to my homemade device, so I bulldozed through it by loading the app onto the device itself. The power button wouldn't turn it off, and when I cried to my AI sidekick for help, the answer was… a double-press. I haven't even broken the sound barrier, yet the first thing I mastered was the supersonic double-tap. First things first, I guess.

The only thing I genuinely worried about was the enclosure. I got so into the shape while designing it that it ended up looking like a bomb. Peak panic: am I going to get stopped at the airport and barred from taking it abroad…?

With cardboard prototype No. 1, the moment I caught a Q4 FIX under a whole sky full of satellites — I threw a fist pump and a quiet little "Eureka!" — completely alone.

Honestly, the gear FIS uses is built by big companies with proper budgets. Next to that, my DIY is a joke in terms of scale, maybe. But — on the quality and the value I create, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Something that doesn't exist yet, but that someone wants: building that is an engineer's job.

I want to answer the ski world's "I wish this existed" with everything I've got. And someday, I'll reach for the powered kind of world's-fastest, too. The beacon of the stars is meant to be my first step there.

Do you think there's demand for STELLABEACON? And if anyone wants the rights to sell it — get in touch on Instagram. Half-serious, fully curious.