The app used to control this intense ice-rider is a custom app written using MIT App Inventor, which has the ability to work with Bluetooth classic as well as BLE.

After struggling for almost six months to become somewhat proficient at Python, I was extremely impressed with how much I could do using the MIT App Inventor platform.

The success of MIT’s App Inventor meant it had outgrown the resources afforded it within academia, say Thunkable’s co-founders Arun Saigal (CEO) and WeiHua Li (CTO).

App Inventor — a Google cast-out that is now maintained by MIT — is a graphical tool that unlocks the power of an Android handset to those with the most basic of programming understanding.