Category: Wearables

Categories
Connected Objects Wearables

Magnet provides a touch of reassurance to remote lovers

While we can’t be with our loved ones all the time, we can still say hi to them through e-mail, text or phone calls. We can see them with the help of Skype, Google Hangout or FaceTime. However, we can’t touch them when separated. Magnet offers the next best thing. Worn as either a wristband or necklace, Magnet lets you communicate with your partner through touch. Each person wears their Magnet and connects to the accompanying app. Using Bluetooth LE technology, you can touch your Magnet in a certain pattern, say three short taps. That same pattern is then transmitted to its partner, lighting up and vibrating in the same sequence.

With Magnet, you can send little coded messages to whomever you’d like and it’s just like you’re touching them. This product comes in four different colors with the choice of different kinds of necklaces or wristbands to go with it. While Magnet seems like one of those sentimental items that some of us may scoff at, it’s actually a very sweet idea, capturing the beauty of an intimate relationship from far away. For $138, any couple can get a pair of Magnets for estimated delivery in July 2015, provided the creators reach their $60,000 goal on Kickstarter.

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Cell Phone Accessories Wearables

Tiny Ditto phone accessory alerts with good vibrations

Sadly, a roundtable of friends at a restaurant staring at their screens instead of at one other is a common sight to see. Critics point to scenarios like this as an example social deterioration, but Simple Matters likes to think they have a solution that’s both simple and elegant. Called Ditto, the device is billed as the anti-gadget that will get eyes away from screens so that people can focus more on real life and all the interactions that enrich it. By pairing the device using Bluetooth LE to a smartphone or tablet, users can customize who or what is important enough to reach them and doing so eliminates those pesky ghost vibrations that are felt every so often. It can be discretely placed anywhere from undergarments to the small pocket of a pair of jeans as its small, pebble-like shape comes complete with a built-in clip, so users will always be sure to feel the Ditto and the important events associated with it.

Ditto’s minimalist aesthetic fits a wide variety of lifestyles and can come in handy for those who truly want to separate themselves from the many screens in our lives. The similar Amiloom aims to get people away from their phones by connecting friends with an app, but Ditto really goes for the root of the problem by blocking intrusive notifications. Simple Matters is looking for $100,000 for this noble effort. If they succeed, backers can expect the $29 device to be at their door in March of 2015.

Categories
Wearables

Stone Tether will help you find your stuff, even at your neighbor’s house

Technology has reached a point where networked items can find each other when lost. Locator tags are the bridge between older analog items and the digital age of today.

StoneTether is the next entry into the crowdfunded locator tag market. With a minimal, stylish design, waterproofing up to 30 feet, and the ability to be attached or clipped to any kind of item, StoneTether is meant to keep prized possessions from going missing, including kids or pets. When the registered phone goes out of range of a StoneTether tag, it pushes a notification to the phone and reports the location up to 500 feet. Additionally, if anyone else has a StoneTether tag and app combination and passes by a lost item beyond that radius, the item will daisy chain itself to the other tag and push a notification reporting the location, meaning more tags make items easier to find. StoneTether is raising $15,000 as they complete the software and start production. A StoneTether tag is just $20 and will be available in April 2015.

While this is not the first device like this, StoneTether offers a sense of simple style and strong functionality to create a worthy competitor in the field of locators.

Categories
Music Wearables

Soundglass builds bone-conducting sound into a pair of shades

The next big thing in headphones is to offer extra functions, certain styles, or increased audio fidelity. These features are welcome to those who love to have sound and music with them wherever they go, but it doesn’t really change the fundamental technology.

The Buhel SOUNDglass SG05 is a step in a direction so far out of left field that it’s a complete shot in the arm to headphone technology. It’s a pair of sunglasses that only touches the ears to hold the glasses. Buhel SOUNDglass uses Bone Conduction Technology, a means of audio amplification that sends vibrations through parts of the skull to give users the same kind of sound quality they expect while keeping their ears free and available to hear the world around them. Atellani, the creators of the Buhel SOUNDglass SG05, are trying to raise $110,000 to fund tooling and production. Supporters can get a pair for $165, shipped out in February of next year.

This is a product so revolutionary that it’s easy to get excited over. However, few people have had the opportunity to hear audio through Bone Conduction Technology, and it may be hard to take the risk. This is a truly innovative product however, and could open a whole new product space for future headphone/glasses combinations.

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Kids/Babies Television Wearables

box&rox measures kid activity, lets them trade it for TV time

One of the foremost concerns for parents is the amount of time screens take up in their children’s lives. With smartphones, tablets, computers, consoles, and television all vying loudly for their time, it’s easy to see how most kids can forget about the outside world.

box&rox is a multi-layered system to ensure that children get the required amount of physical activity each day, with a goal of supporting healthy habits young to develop a solid foundation as they grow into adulthood. The system is comprised of three parts. The rox is a wristwatch that comes in a variety of colors that tracks a child’s physical activity throughout the day, earning sparkies as a reward. The box portion of the system connects to a television or a console’s power supply and meters the electricity available for use depending on how many sparkies were earned on a connected rox. The final of this system is an online world that serves as a place to use sparkies to gain more access to it, although the campaign didn’t do a great job at explaining why a child would interact with the world. The box&rox system serves as a warden of sorts that encourages physical activity and rewards it accordingly, taking the worry off the parent’s shoulder. The core system is going for £125 (~$198), while the campaign itself is looking for £10,000 (~$15,900) in funding.

The box&rox system is similar to what the Kudoso is doing for Internet access, and continues an overall trend of gamifying access to entertainment for younger children. Combining both in one household would lock down overuse for sure, but who’s to say kids won’t figure out a way to game the system itself? They usually always do, but I suppose an all night binge in Mario Kart could be viewed as an exercise in problem solving.

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Kids/Babies Wearables

Keep tabs on your tyke with Monbaby

Having a child is a life-altering event, full of contradictions. The intense joy and excitement one feels at the child’s birth quickly becomes inundated with the worry that comes along with taking care of that new life. Is the baby sleeping ok? Throwing up? Crying? Breathing alright? And on and on — all parents would attest that it can quickly become exhausting to worry so much.

The creators behind the Monbaby know exactly what this mess of emotions feels like as they’ve had the experience themselves, which led them to create their their version of the baby monitor. Shaped like a small button, the Monbaby clips on to any article of clothing and sends a variety of information every five seconds to your smartphone, including a baby’s breathing, sleeping patterns, and the position the baby is in while it sleeps. This vigilance is a extraordinary relief to parents especially because customizable alerts are available through the iOS or Android app, lifting all sorts of worry from their shoulders so they can more easily relax.

Monbaby’s applications are not only limited to babies: the company sees their device working for toddlers and even the elderly as well. That said, while it uses Bluetooth Low Energy to facilitate these features, it stands to reason many parents wouldn’t want a wireless device so intimately close to their newborn child. Ultimately, though, this may be a case where peace of mind ultimately trumps fear. The Monbaby baby monitor is going for $109 with an estimated delivery date of December 2014. The company has already achieved their funding goal of $15,000.

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Chargers/Batteries Wearables

Ampy charges from your movement, brings us one step closer to The Matrix

The ultimate first world problem is a dead smartphone. Since it usually occurs at the worst possible time, finding an outlet nearby usually isn’t easy. That feeling of having to be tethered is one of the biggest drawbacks of current battery technology, especially because more and more are experiencing very active lifestyles that involve lots of movement.

Ampy is aiming to take all of that movement and put it to good use. The product is a small box that houses a 1000mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery charged from kinetic energy. So, every hop, skip and jump you take not only takes you where you need to be but also generates power for your smartphone or any other USB-powered device. An accessory kit ensures that no matter how you move, Ampy will be able to come along for the ride, and a companion app tell you how much energy you’ve generated doing so. The portable battery market is drowning in options and Ampy makes great strides in separating itself from the pack with its eco-friendly aims, even if the solar-powered Granola Stroller costs $30 less and doesn’t exactly require you to break a sweat. Ampy is currently slated for a June 2015 delivery with an $85 contribution as the campaign has achieved success, currently sitting at $258,000.

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Health and Wellness Wearables

Aqua 100 swim trainer provides strategies for your strokes

Activity trackers are great ways to not only stay in shape, but improve a workout from the ground up. Plenty of devices handle this task easily, but for those that prefer to push themselves through swimming, there are a number of hurdles an activity tracker needs to jump beyond just being waterproof.

The Aqua-100 is a personal swimming coach that gives real-time information without interrupt the rhythm and motions of swimming. Worn by strapping it onto the back of the hand, the Aqua-100 monitors laps, distance, number of strokes, stroke rate, and even what direction the swimmer is moving in. Because it’s worn on the back of the hand, swimmers can see this data as they extend their arms forward in mid-stroke, keeping the swimmer afloat and active. The information displayed can be changed by twisting the wrist twice, keeping the device easy and intuitive to use.

With a standard digital LED display with backlighting, the Aqua-100 is as easy to read as it is to use. The data tracked using the device during swimming can be uploaded to a computer as well, allowing avid swimmers to track their performance over time. The Aqua-100 is nearly ready to go to market, but needs $40,000 to be prepared for production. Swimmers can get their hand in one for $129, shipping in February 2015.

Having a dedicated tracker for a specific kind of workout is a must-have for athletes at any level and those who are passionate about a particular form of fitness. The Aqua-100 is an extremely functional device great for those that prefer to swim laps or just enjoy the water, but aesthetically the device lacks the flair of what people expect from activity trackers. If function trumps form, and swimming is the preferred exercise of choice, then Aqua-100 will be a sure buy.

Categories
Fitness Wearables

SensoTRACK envelopes the ear, tracks many vital signs continuously

Although wearable technology is on the up and up, you still need to wear a a few different bands along with a watch of some sort to get a mostly full picture of the way your body works across disparate variables. Even if you were fully equipped with all this technology, they wouldn’t necessarily talk to each other — leaving you to figure out what it all means.

SensoTRACK was born out of the desire to give a user as much connected data as possible to not only benefit  their daily lives, but their exercise regimens as well. Sensogram Technologies, Inc. sets out to make a device that could withstand the rigors of physical activity, and so constructed it from a weather-resistant, sweat-proof shell that fits around the ear. The SensoTRACK houses a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and a proprietary “optical biosensor” that measures heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation with a high degree of accuracy. It also includes a speaker that gives users real-time feedback on what exactly to do in order to increase the efficiency of their workout, based on goals that can be entered into the web portal or the mobile app.  SensoTRACK can be had for $199, and the company hopes for enough backers to fulfill their $250,000 goal.

The crowdfunded world is full of the types of wearables that make the criticisms of the market seem justified. Some, like Arcus or Olive, are focused on one type of user benefit. On the other hand there are a few, like Zoi or LEO, are aiming to use the data in real-time to benefit the user. SensoTRACK falls into the later camp but shrinks the device down and places it on the ear where it’s out of the way. Add this to the claimed sensitivity of the proprietary sensor and it may be something to look out for, only if the seemingly unending number of features don’t end up hampering it as a result.

Categories
Sleep Wearables

BodyEcho head band tracks vital signs to improve sleep tracking

Some estimates peg the number of Americans who experience problems sleeping at 70 million, although most would agree the number is even higher than that. Unfortunately, having trouble sleeping isn’t considered much of a problem at all and if someone decides to do something about it, the most effective technology to help is stuck in impractical and expensive sleep laboratories.

OxiRate Inc. is looking to take that technology out of the laboratory and onto your head with their BodyEcho sleep system. The system is comprised of a headband that houses a removable, quarter-sized chip almost impossibly packed with heart rate, temperature, and respiratory sensors, along with an accelerometer and an oximeter.

With the oximeter at its core, the combination of technologies allows the BodyEcho to track things like your sleep stages, sleeping positions, and breathing interruptions with increased accuracy. The data gathered can then be reviewed on a Web portal or a smartphone application so that a user can take a more active role in their sleep. An SDK in development will expand on the device’s capabilities too, so look out for those lucid dreaming applications. OxiRate Inc. is looking for $100,000 to finalize BodyEcho, and interested backers can pick one up for $100.

BodyEcho is interested in being the best possible at one thing: sleep tracking. By offering so much technology in a small package, the company is letting everyone else make it something more with the SDK. It seem like everything created with it will be a touch inventive and versatile than other headbands strictly for lucid dreaming, like the DreamNet or the Aurora. Its included oximeter is the star of the show with its ability to provide the refined data only a sleep lab can offer, but its effectiveness ultimately remains to be seen.