Category: Smartwatches/Bands

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Safety Smartwatches/Bands

Bluetooth iChild tracker monitors skin temperature to detect a snatching

With the ubiquity of smartphone use, child tracking solutions continue to surface. Some are hit or miss, but all are better than walking around with your child on a leash. The iChild is another product that promises to make keeping track of your little one easier. It comes in the form of a red or blue watch that pairs with a companion smartphone app and does exactly one thing only: every 10 seconds, the watch sends a ping to the smartphone with your child’s temperature.

How does that help? This ping of information does two things: receiving the information at all lets you know your child is within 50 feet of you, and also alerts you to abnormal temperatures as well so that you can head off that cold or fever. While the iChild is a novel idea, its premise is a little flimsy and does more to fuel worry than actually help you solve the problem of a lost child. With no GPS, it can hardly compete with the scores of other child safety wearables. In addition, even if you were to receive abnormal temperature readings, wouldn’t it be too late to do much of anything? The iChild’s one saving grace is its $40 price point, but even that is too much for a product that isn’t really useful in the long run. The campaign is aiming for a ridiculously high $1,000,000 funding goal.

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Smartwatches/Bands

What the hex? Comb720 neatly organizes your smartwatch notifications

All these new fancy smartwatches have forgotten one little thing: their ease of use! Sure, us techies will be able to grasp all the different taps and gestures to get the most out of our new devices but watches are not just technology. Watches are much more widespread than that, and if companies want to capture the average watch user, they’ll need to do more to simplify the interactions with our wearable technology. The Comb720 is trying to do that by being a smartwatch that utilizes seven tessellated, hexagonal tiles that include e-mail, fitness, and messages.

This 7th grade inventor, Davis Barrow, hopes that since these tiles never move, users will quickly become accustomed to where they are, therefore more quickly able to obtain information compared to most other competing smartwatches. The Comb720 comes in a leather-banded, bronze-bodies version, while the active version sports a carbon fiber construction and a durable paracord band, both compatible with iOS and Android. The Comb720 currently costs $250 with a delivery date of February 2015. Its campaign goal is $5,000.

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Smartwatches/Bands

STAR blends fitness, safety tracking

At this point, a wearable activity tracker is hardly the way to make a splash in the tech marketplace. It takes more than just calorie counting to make wearable tech worth purchasing.

The STAR by SenseGiz handles activity tracking just fine, but serves a more utilitarian purpose by enhancing the functionality of a phone as well. Offering gesture control, call notifications, sleep monitoring, workout reminders, and more, wearing a STAR either by strap or clip keeps information easier to access than by fishing a phone out of a pocket. Additionally, STAR offers a number of safety features including crash monitoring, panic buttons, and emergency notifications to local response services or friends and family. SenseGiz needs $30,000 to release the STAR, while buyers can clip one on for as little as $89, shipping out at the end of this year.

STAR is essentially trying to take the best features of several wearable devices and combine them into one easy to use package. The screen is well designed, but doesn’t have the technical punch of a smartwatch or high-end dedicated activity tracker. For those looking for just one device to handle as much as possible, STAR is worth a look.

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Fitness Smartwatches/Bands

Avid is a cheap fitness watch with a Pebble-like button layout

We’re definitely in the era of the smartwatch, but the sad part is that they pretty much all do the same things. The Avid Multi-Sport Smart Watch adds to that massive list by being a watch you’ve seen before with a different name. It has a bevy of features for sports, including auto-course recognition, distance to the green, and scorecards for golfers, or calories burned, distance ran, and route tracking for runners. When you’re not out on the green or trying to best the time for your favorite path, the watch can control music on your smartphone and activate the shutter on your smartphone. In addition, its native push support can keep you up-to-date — it just won’t look too stylish doing it. The campaign is seeking $150,000 CAD (~$134,000 USD), with the opportunity to get your own Avid watch for just $99 CAD (~$88 USD).

The little things usually do count, but not when products like the inWatch Z are capable doing just the same with the addition of an HD camera, but even that watch didn’t hit its funding goal. The Avid would have been better served being a more focused product like the Zoi running system. Because it isn’t, the Avid suffers because it’s doing too many, already explored things at once.

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Kids/Babies Safety Smartwatches/Bands

Linkoo shrinks down the size, price of the child locator watch

No matter how many precautions are taken, a parent’s worry for their child’s whereabouts isn’t something that is easily quelled — if at all. It’s ingrained deep in our wiring to be worried for our offspring. From getting lost to more serious concerns like predators, the only defense a parent really has are cell phones. For younger children, though, a smartphone comes with excessive maintenance costs even if it may contain everything a parent needs to feel better.

Inventor Lionnel Legros has created Linkoo to ease the worry of parents across the globe. Linkoo is a combination GPS tracker and cell phone for specifically for kids. The myriad of bright, fun color options appeals to kids while the integrated GSM appeals to parents, programmable with each parent’s number and one SOS number for emergencies. The child can make calls to these numbers or receive calls from anywhere around the world, and if the child doesn’t pick up a call, the watch will automatically call back ensuring the parent gets in contact no matter what. A Web portal and companion iOS/Android apps offer parents an additional layer of protection in the form of  maps with real-time tracking and geo-fencing capabilities. The Linkoo is going for $129 with an estimated delivery date of March 2015. Inventor Lionel Legros is looking for $50,000 in funding.

Capitalizing on a child’s excitement for their first watch is a smart move on the inventor’s part, even if it’s a little sneaky. But for parents, nothing is ever too sneaky to ensure their child’s safety. The excessive costs associated with maintaining a smartphone for a child are mitigated with a solution that keeps just the essentials, making it very child-friendly. There are tons of other GPS, childcare smart watches on the market like the 1Decision Bracelet that interacts with an accompanying bracelet worn by the parent, taking responsibility off of the child’s shoulders to signal for help. So the question remain: will a child actually wear it if they were to know what it actually does? The video paints an ideal picture, but is it a truthful one? We all know how finicky children can be, after all.

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Smartwatches/Bands

Epic cell phone watch is another spin on the wrist communicator

Google, Apple, Samsung, and other tech giants may not always agree on much, but if their product lines are any indication, they all seem to agree that the smartwatch is the next big thing that people won’t be able to live without.

Add Epic to that list of companies. This new startup has developed working prototypes of “watchphones” that can be worn on the wrist or on a necklace or lanyard. Unlike some smartwatches, the Epic Mini Pendant Phone and the Epic Signature Edition watchphone function completely independently of any other devices, with touch-screen displays, activity tracking, and a 74-hour battery with 6 hours of talk time. Team Epic has set a curious goal of $300 to begin production. Backers can pick up an Epic Signature Edition watchphone for $249 or the Mini Pendant Phone for $200 in February 2015.

The rise of smartphones was predicated on giving people PC functionality on a portable, powerful device. While wearable tech is a great step in the next direction, consumers may not be willing to scale back those functions in the name of being able to wear their devices. While it’s great that Epic watchphones are independent of other devices, people would still likely keep phones in their pockets for the heavier tasks.

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Smartwatches/Bands

Tempest tempts with wraparound smartband color display

The smartband and smartwatch boom has seemingly died down a little bit now that the major players each have their products either on the market or ready for launch later next year. However, it’s arrogant to expect that nobody else can come up with a better idea to push this market forward.

The Tempest Smartband is a smooth, sleek wristband that also happens to have a crisp display over the entire top half of the band. Running its own operating system and syncing up with all major smartphones, the Tempest performs on all the levels that everyone expects from a smartwatch. Where it sets itself apart is in its customizable desktop, the stacking notifications that wrap around the band, and the computing power inside. In addition to controlling camera shutters and music players, the Tempest’s display and processor are strong enough to even handle wrist-based gaming, as strange as that sounds. The Tempest team want to crowdsource $100,000 worth of donations to handle the testing and production of this device. Getting one over a supporter’s hand and onto their wrist takes a pledge of $140 and should be out in May 2015.

The display on the Tempest looks gorgeous, and would almost certainly blow competitors out of the water if it hit the market on looks alone. Like the Moment’s wraparound display, the idea of using more than just a calculator watch’s worth of a display is appealing from a design aesthetic. The issue that arises is that with just a 20-second pitch and very few photos of the device itself actually in the wild, tempering anticipation with expectation makes this project seem like it’s just a little too far down the road to support at this point. If more information and demonstration could be shared, then this would absolutely be a great choice for wearable tech enthusiasts.

 

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Connected Objects Fitness Smartwatches/Bands

$29 Jaha fitness band counts steps, saved dollars

jaha2With the likes of the Fitbit Flex, Jawbone Up, and Nike Fuelband hogging up the spotlight alongside other, lesser known fitness bands, Jaha is hoping their version will stand out. With the options to locate and challenge others nearby or take up the virtual challenges Jaha will throw at you with the accompanying iOS app, the product isn’t content with only keeping you informed, but motivated as well. Of course, the challenge is that we’re starting to see a lot of this step-counting functionality built into the smartphones themselves. Jaha’s campaign is trying to shore up $25,000 to have their band around your wrist by November 2014.

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Smartwatches/Bands

StopMee removes wires from the smartwatch market

stopmeeWe’ve seen many smart watches lately, but most people don’t appreciate the inconvenience of having another device to look after. If such a smartwatch charged wirelessly, that might be another story. StopMee is a wrist wearable that offers helpful reminders relating to hygiene, incoming phone calls, and even health, all powered by Wi-Fi signals in the area. The campaign video is flashy, colorful, and promises a great deal about the device, regrettably without showing the device working in the real world. Backers beware, this little band may be too good to be true, but those who can keep the faith may want to pick this up. StopMee will launch for $250 to ship in August 2015.

Categories
Smartwatches/Bands

Bat an eye at remembering long passwords with FiDELYS

fidelysDigital security is too big and too serious a problem to ignore. There have been several attempts at finding new ways to keep files and accounts safe, but nothing’s as readily available and effective as biometrics at this point. FiDELYS gives security-minded tech adopters more than just a way to keep things safe. Operating as a fully functional smartwatch with features like activity tracking and notifications, FiDELYS also includes an iris camera that can scan a user’s eyeball to grant access to any number of websites or applications. The details of the watch are a little glossed over in favor of the iris scan technology, but with something that incredible and flexible, it’s easy to understand why. FiDELYS is out January 2015 to backers who pledge $199.