Category: Wearables

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Aquatics Wearables

Swimmerix wearable swim coach pools your aquatic performance metrics

The myriad of health benefits from swimming are well-documented, with pools all around the world packed with both young and old stroking their way to fitter bodies. The wearable revolution so commonly found above water has lagged when it comes to swimming, though, due to data accuracy and connectivity issues. The team behind Swimmerix believe it has created the answer to these issues.

Swimmerix is a system that tracks swimming performance and helps facilitate improvement. Made up of a smartband, base station, a companion app and cloud technology connecting it all together, it tracks everything from heart rate and calories burned to number of strokes, speed and distance. Training doesn’t achieve much without previously set goals, though, so the Swimmerix app lets users set their own so they can improve in real-time.

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Health and Wellness Kids/Babies Wearables

AllerGuarder wristband lets you guard against kids’ allergies

editors-choiceKids’ food allergies are a significant cause of concern for many parents –- especially when their children are away from home, be it at school, at a party, or elsewhere. AllerGuarder offers parents a solution to that dilemma.

patent-claimedAllerGuarder is a smart wristband that broadcasts kids’ allergies via a low-frequency Bluetooth transmitter that is built into the wearable device. The wristband constantly broadcasts a 50-foot radius alert and anybody within that zone who has downloaded the free Android or iOS app is automatically cautioned about a child’s allergies on their smartphones or tablets.

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Health and Wellness Wearables

QuietOn earplugs uses noise cancellation to tune out the world

Earplugs are handy devices to have when trying to catch some shut-eye while traveling — especially on a noisy airplane — or even while at home if somebody is making a racket in another room or snoring in the same bed. But not all earplugs are created equal. For starters, some are more comfortable than others and some block more noise than others.

patent-claimedQuietOn earplugs use the same kind of active noise cancellation technology found in many higher-end headphones, but does away with the wires. There’s also no buttons. The earplugs switch on automatically when removed from its small charging and carrying case. They work for up to 50 hours on one charge, so QuietOn can work for an entire flight regardless of the destination or most delays.

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Health and Wellness Wearables

ALEX gives you the straight talk about your posture

Forward Head Posture, Text Neck — most people don’t know about these very real conditions. The advent of the smartphone revolution brought these harbingers of chronic neck and back pain along for the ride, which is why maintaining proper posture even with all these devices floating around is more important than ever.

NAMU’s ALEX is a Bluetooth-connected personal posture coach designed to hang from the ears and sit behind the neck for optimal analysis.
A three-axis accelerometer and pivot sensor ensure accurate measurements are sent back to the companion smartphone app with which users can manage the frequency and intensity of alerts and track progress. Avatar Mode also allows for real-time posture management with an on-screen representation to make sure everything works smoothly.

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Pets Wearables

Chord Collar cuts cords and leashes to keep furry ones healthy and safe

Pets may be cute and cuddly, but make no mistake: they require tons of attention and work to keep happy and healthy. At the end of the day, doing so cultivates a relationship unlike any other — even if owners start the day with a kitchen floor full of garabage or an unexpected, ahem, suprise in a spare corner of the home.

The team behind the Chord Collar wants to keep pets happy, healthy, and engaged while reducing the aspects of pet ownership that are annoying or inconvenient by leveraging a bit of connected technology.
The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-connected collar allows owners to consistently provide rewards-based training in combination with its companion iOS and Android app, alerting owners to what needs to be worked and exactly how to do so based on the pet’s movements during the day. Health is also a big focus. The Chord Collar tracks heart rate levels and movement, letting owners know when the pet might be under the weather.

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Health and Wellness Wearables

The FitPal keeps tabs on your ticker, hearts you a lot

In no other time in history has the heart been so well documented. This is due to the glut of wearables on the market, most of which do a decent job of monitoring heart rate. The biggest problem is usually their size and effectiveness: most are ungainly with questionable methods of data generation, leading consumers to search for smaller, more dependable alternatives.

The FitPal is a thin, flexible Bluetooth LE-enabled patch worn 24/7 on the torso or chest that keeps constant tabs on the heart. It looks at everything from heart rate variability to heart rate zones and resting heart rate, interpreting all this information to monitor a person’s calories burned, steps taken, and skin temperature along with larger attributes like exercise readiness stress levels, and sleep quality, making it a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to wearables.

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Fitness Wearables

Biometrix wearable aims to help runners avoid injuiries

In any sporting endeavor, it’s widely acknowledged that bad form is the root cause to a majority of injuries sustained during competition. While rehabilitation helps athletes recover and attempts to address this bad form, old habits die hard, especially when constant vigilance is generally needed to ensure athletes are properly learning and implementing better techniques.

The team behind the BioMetrix is hoping to better inform coaches and athletic medical staff about injured athletes under their watch using the thin, flexible device. It can be placed on the heel, hips, or knee to measure stability, rotation, and drift in position in real time with high-resolution captures, with the athlete able to interact with their form as they perform exercise. With this information, everyone involved can consult a web app from any browser to monitor progress and generate reports on that data, all to avoid common injuries.

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Apparel Fitness Wearables

The Hexoskin Smart is a Bluetooth-enabled second skin for your second wind

More and more, wearables are trending towards clothing with embedded technology versus additional and mostly cumbersome devices that ultimately get in the way of an efficient exercise, for instance. 2013’s Hexoskin, a sensor-embedded shirt able to generate data on heart rate, calories burned, movement, etc., was a sneak peek at the idea. Now, the company is back with their second generation Hexosin Smart.

In addition to the shirt’s ability to analyze exercise intensity, fatigue, recovery, breathing, and sleep quality, it is now outfitted with Bluetooth Smart technology, allowing it to work on a wide array of the most popular exercising apps like Strava, MapMyRun and Argus.

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Augmented Reality Wearables

You’d go mad thinking MAD Glass was Google’s

When Google Glass was first announced, it was an extremely cool idea. As time passed, though, the ethical concerns with the platforms use and the general societal discomfort associated with someone having a digital device plastered to their face during all aspects of the day soon became too much to overcome, leaving the idea to wither away to relative obscurity.

With its Mad Glass, Dragon Creative is reviving the idea of a glasses-styled interface to which a user can offload smartphone features. The company’s goal mirrors Google’s in that they’d like the use of augmented reality to keep important notifications and application in front of users so they can stay present in the world rather than keeping their eyes down to a screen. And in theory, offering features like video recording, GPS navigation, web browsing and even real-time translation should do the trick.

If history is any indication, though, it will most likely meet a similar fate as Google’s version of Glass. It’s certainly useful and will continue to be so with a proprietary app store so that users , but the general image of this interface has been set in the public consciousness — and it’s not a positive one. Still, those who truly believe in the idea of Glass can grab these for $652 with an expected ship date of September 2015. Mad Glass is looking for $72,500 by January 26th, 2015.

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Imaging Wearables

U-HWK Show camera’s designed to show off athletic skills

The action camera market keeps growing thanks largely to the success of GoPro and other established competitors. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more.

patent-claimedU-HWK Show is a low-profile, lightweight wearable video camera that’s been developed by athletes and designed for all types of athletes. It’s rugged, flexible and under 50 percent the weight of the leading competitors’ newest and smallest models, according to the device’s Kickstarter campaign. U-HWK has also been designed to get easily attached to helmets used in a wide variety of sports, including hockey and baseball. It’s compatible with most existing media players and video editing software, and can store up to 10 hours of video.

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