Skamper

Live tracking for runs and races

A UK running company wanted to turn scattered trails, parks and road runs into one place runners could trust. CodeLeap became their product team, building and maintaining Skamper — a cross-platform app with thousands of verified routes, on-demand races and performance tracking.

What we did CodeLeap built real-time tracking, route planning with checkpoints, GPS navigation, in-app messaging and a safety alert system, including a live event map that renders every participant's position and race lines in real time, outdoors on unreliable connections and without draining a phone before the finish.

Skamper is a mobile app for runners and trail enthusiasts that tracks activity, plans routes and brings a social dimension to group running and organised events. CodeLeap built it for iOS and Android in three months and launched on both stores, where it reached thousands of downloads within months and found an audience in running and cycling communities who single out its interface and its social features. The most demanding part of the work was the live event experience, in which every participant's position is rendered on a shared map in real time.

Product features

Real-time map tracking

A dynamic live map shows the positions of every participant during an event, rendering live race lines as the field moves. This was the hardest element of the build, since continuous position updates from many devices at once have to arrive, reconcile and draw smoothly without exhausting a phone battery mid-race.
Trail and route tracking

The app tracks distance, elevation and pace in real time, assesses terrain difficulty and saves completed routes so users can return to a favourite or seek out something harder next time.
Route planner with checkpoints

Users build custom running and hiking routes with checkpoints, tailored by difficulty, distance and elevation, which serves both solo training and organised group events where an organiser needs precise control over where the route goes.
GPS hiking navigation

Precise GPS tracking with detailed trail maps and live location updates lets users navigate unfamiliar paths with confidence and share their position with friends for safety.
In-app messaging

A built-in chat allows participants to communicate before, during and after an event, which is how the coordination around a group run actually happens and keeps it inside the app rather than scattered across group texts.
Safety alert system

Participants can send an instant alert to others if they need assistance, an essential provision for events that take place on remote trails where a runner may be some distance from anyone else.
Fitness app integration

The app synchronises with popular fitness tracking applications so users can bring event statistics into the health data they already keep, rather than maintaining a separate record.

Challenge

Skamper's feature set is considerably more technically demanding than its category suggests. Real-time location tracking across a field of participants, dynamic map rendering with live race lines, voice notifications during activity and specialised handling for junior participants each present their own difficulties, and several of them work against one another. Continuous high-accuracy location tracking is expensive in battery terms, live map rendering is expensive in both data and processing, and an event app that drains a phone before the finish line is useless. Each of these capabilities also had to remain reliable outdoors, on variable connections, in exactly the terrain where signal is least dependable, and all of it had to be delivered inside three months to reach market.

Solution

Within three months CodeLeap developed and launched Skamper for iOS and Android on both app stores. The app combines an intuitive interface for creating, managing and joining running and trail events with the live map that shows every participant's position in real time, in-app messaging for coordination before and during an event, custom routes with checkpoints for organisers, a safety alert system for participants who need help, and integration with the fitness apps users already rely on. Since launch it has reached thousands of downloads across both platforms and gained traction in running and cycling communities, with users consistently praising the intuitive design and the social features that make group activity easier to organise.

Tech stack

The tech chosen was our speciality, enabling fast development of performant user interfaces and a reliable infrastructure. Skamper is available for both iOS and Android.

Frontend: React Native (iOS & Android)
Backend: Python, Django, PostgreSQL
Hosting: AWS
Integrations: Third-party fitness tracking platforms