Using the Team Satteltester’s Sensor Pad

WHAT IT TOOK TO GET HERE

After months of arranging, weeks of planning, days of attending to details, and hours (!!!!) of driving, we have arrived in Oregon eager to see what technology can add to the complex process of saddle fitting. While we’re here we will be using one of the most affordable systems: the Team Satteltester pad, from Germany. Two weeks from now we will be working with the most expensive system, the Novel Pliance pad (also from Germany). It will be fascinating to compare these two systems from one of the strongest manufacturing and engineering bases in the world, and we are keenly looking forward to this process.

OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM

Veterinarian Jennifer Stoffer of Gaston Oregon is the owner of the Team Satteltest sensor pad that we’ll be using in these testing sessions. She has been interested in the health and function of the horse’s back for some time, and learned about sensor pads while taking a saddle fitting and flocking course on the east coast. She’s had this sensor system for about six months and generously agreed to meet and work with us.

We began the day by watching Jennifer set up the sensor pad, driving the system from a standard notebook computer. The pad has telemetry in the form of a small transmitter that goes into a pocket of the pad. Once the transmitter is turned on, the pad can transmit quite a distance; the manufacturers say up to ¼ mile. The pad is put onto the horse’s back, and then the saddle is carefully placed on top and girthed. The system does not seem to be highly sensitive as it doesn’t register useful information until the rider is up, when it averages pressures among the 256 sensors in the pad. The system includes a video camera so that the results of the pressure test can be correlated to the visual footage.

TODAY’S MISSION

Local trainer, friend and RP advocate Janet Aungier arranged four horses for us to use in our study; these horses ranged from green to competitive second level dressage. We saw one intermediate rider, one advanced rider and two trainers. All horses were regularly ridden in conventional saddles. In each case we evaluated the horse and saddle using standard methods (observation and palpation). We then pressure tested the saddle and noted the results. Finally we put a ReactorPanel saddle on the horse and repeated the pressure test. We hoped to learn more about pressure testing in general, and also (pause for complete honesty) hoped to see ReactorPanel outperform the competition. Without making you wait for it, RP did better than each saddle it was up against. However – and this is a BIG however – none of the conventional saddles were custom made or even professionally fit for the horses wearing them. Although this is the norm in the real world, we need to evaluate RP next to the best fitting saddles we can find, which will be one of our next goals.


(next post: the nitty gritty of the pressure testing...with photos and screen shots!)