Wakeboard Camera: WakeTracker

Your gimbal becomes the camera operator: it finds the rider, pans, zooms and records, while you keep both hands on the wheel. No account, no signal, no cloud.

The camera follows the rider. You drive.

WakeTracker turns your iPhone and a DJI Osmo Mobile 5 into a camera operator that stays on the rider behind the boat — so whoever is driving can keep both hands on the wheel and still come home with the footage.

WHAT IT DOES ON ITS OWN

• Follows the rider. The app drives the gimbal over Bluetooth and keeps the rider framed through cuts, spray and wake crossings. • Starts and stops recording by itself, from the boat's speed over GPS. Nothing to press when the pull begins. • Brings the camera back after a fall — waiting first, because the crash is usually the best take of the pass — and finds the rider again for the restart. • Zooms to keep the rider the right size in frame, and opens up when they go big.

WHEN YOU WANT IT BACK

Touch the joystick on the gimbal handle and control returns to your hand immediately. Recording keeps going, because whatever ruined the framing may have been the best part of the pass. The app also brakes itself if the gimbal starts to oscillate — there is no panic button on screen on purpose: with the phone shaking on the tower, a button you have to aim at is not a panic button.

FROM YOUR WRIST

An Apple Watch app puts the same buttons on your wrist: find the rider, level the camera, mark a moment, record, release the gimbal. The watch taps you when the rider disappears with the boat still at speed. A Garmin Fenix works too, through the Garmin Connect app.

THE SESSION, WRITTEN DOWN

Riders, rope length, stance and boat ballast, per session. Passes and tricks counted as they happen, with a per-pass line — time, distance, wake crossings. A run log you can export from inside the app or straight from Files, if you want the numbers behind a session.

QUALITY

1080p at 60, 120 or 240 fps and 4K at 30 or 60, depending on what your iPhone offers — the app asks the device and shows you what it got, including whether the zoom is optical or a crop. Portrait and landscape, level either way, with the phone hanging upside down under the gimbal on the boat's tower.

PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION

No account, no login, no analytics and no tracking. The app makes no network requests at all. Videos go to your camera roll; run logs stay in the app's folder on your iPhone, and leave it only if you share them yourself.

The only third-party code in the app is Garmin's Connect IQ SDK, there so the app can reach a Fenix through the Garmin Connect app on the same phone. It does not open network connections either.

WHAT YOU NEED

• A DJI Osmo Mobile 5 gimbal • A solid place on the boat to mount it — a tower works best • Bluetooth and Location turned on

No gimbal? Tap "Record without tracking" on the first screen: automatic recording, format, zoom and session logs all still work.

WakeTracker is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by DJI. DJI and Osmo Mobile are trademarks of their respective owner, used here only to say which hardware the app talks to.