We wrote a couple of weeks ago about Epson's Moverio smartglass platform. Epson formally showed it at CES, and it's pretty much what had leaked. The choice of demo partners listed in the press release is revealing, though. On the consumer side, they showed a few fighting games and first-person shooters, but also Scope AR, an augmented reality application that promises to … [Read more...]
CES: Pivothead SMART Goggle Livestreams HD Video
One of the complaints about Google Glass is that other people are worried that they're being monitored without their knowing it. For Glass, it probably isn't true. But Pivothead's new SMART eyewear is designed to livestream HD video, which may be a little creepy. Pivothead, whose Indiegogo campaign ends January 11, has released an SDK that will allow the SMART to interact … [Read more...]
CES: Garmin Announces Vivofit Fitness Band
You probably think of Garmin as a GPS company with some high-end wristware. They're making a move down-market with the Vivofit fitness band. It looks a lot like a Fitbit Force, but the Vivifit has a larger display (not unlike a Fuelband). Unique in the category, the Vivofit claims to learn your activity patterns and set goals based on that, upping them as your fitness … [Read more...]
CES: Freescale Releases Wearables Reference Platform
Products are cool, but the real work in technology happens levels deeper than that. That's why Freescale's announcement of a wearables hardware reference platform is important stuff. The platform is built around Freescale’s i.MX 6SoloLite ARM® Cortex®-A9 apps processor and supports Android. Included as part of the platform is a turn-key pedometer, a compass and Freescale's … [Read more...]
CES: WeMo and Wearables
The accessory vendor Belkin is pushing what it hopes will be a standard called WeMo, which connects household devices over WiFi. The idea is that you'll be able to control lighting or manage a crock pot from an app. WeMo apparently will also connect with the popular app ifTTT (If This Then That), so you'll get a text message if, for instance, your front door opens. There's … [Read more...]
CES Preview for Wearables
It's no exaggeration to say that we at WTI have been preparing for months for next week's International CES. CES, for those few who don't know, is an immense, 2-million-square-foot trade show and expo for the consumer electronics industry that wakes people out of their New Year's stupor every January. (The Consumer Electronics Association, which puts the show on, gets cranky … [Read more...]
Upcoming Wearables Events
There are a few events of interest heading our way in the Wearables world. (FYI, we're working on setting up a more formal way of presenting these, because there's starting to be sort of a lot of them.) BZ Media is launching the Wearables DevCon. March 6-7 in San Francisco. (Wearable Tech Insider will be a media sponsor of this and there'll be a discount code shortly. Hang … [Read more...]
Novasentis Haptic Actuator wins CES Innovations Award
One of the lower-key exhibits at the Engadget Expand conference last week was a table that showed a centimeter-square leaf of plastic with a wire running to it from a small panel of electronics. All the leaf did was flex and unflex, but it was doing it in response to electronic signals -- and that's a pretty good technical trick. A few days later, the Novasentis … [Read more...]
Reebok Skullcap wins CES Innovations Award
Just the other day, we wrote about the Reebok Checklight head impact monitor, powered by technology from MC10. Yesterday. the Checklight was awarded a 2014 CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award. Those awards are kind of a big deal. Some of them are sometimes headscratchers from a commercial point of view, but they always reflect innovative product thinking and good … [Read more...]