By Dave Bursky, Contributing Editor
At CES, smart watches, networked glasses and fitness products highlighted the need for low power, connectivity and data algorithms and control.
At this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it felt like someone was showing off some form of wearable wireless electronic product – smart watches, networked glasses, fitness products, etc.
Smart phones are also playing into the wearable market by acting as a nexus point for many of the products. Pairing a product or multiple products to an Apple iPhone or iPad, or an Android-based phone or tablet using Bluetooth® or WiFi links enables the phone or tablet collect and analyze the data. Smart watches are also being paired with sensors and with the smart phone or tablet, allowing the watch to provide on-the-fly updates from sports activities or serve as a remote link that notifies the user about an incoming email, SMS message or telephone call.
There are now probably close to two dozen vendors offering or have announced plans to offer smartwatch devices. One of the latest introductions is the STB-1000 from Casio, which uses a Bluetooth low-energy 4.0 wireless link to connect with an Apple iPhone (Figure 1). The watch can check and display fitness data such as running pace and distance, elapsed time, pulse, cycling speed and pedal rotations from popular mobile applications as well as provide typical watch functions, control the phone’s music player, deliver notifications of incoming email, and more. External sensors to monitor heart rate and running cadence are needed to capture the necessary data. In addition to its fitness display capabilities, the STB-1000 offers all of the essential functions of a timepiece, including time display, daily alarms and a countdown timer.
Figure 1: The Casio STB-1000 smart watch links to an Apple iPhone using a Bluetooth low-energy wireless link and can display various personal fitness data activities such as running pace and distance, elapsed time, pulse, cycling speed and pedal rotations (separate sensors for heart rate and running cadence are needed).
Epson has also introduced several wearable bio sensing products – the PS-500 smart watches and the PS-100 fitness bands,which are part of the new Pulsenseproduct line (Figure 2). Additionally, the company also demonstrated its Swing sensing technology with a “golf swing analyzer”. The Pulsense fitness band and smartwatch detect continuous heart rate directly from the wrist (without a chest strap) and leverages an Epson-designed heart-rate sensing module that is both accurate and compact. The sensor measures the amount of light reflected from red blood cells and records a single heart beat when the amount of light reflected changes due to a drop in red blood cell count as the blood vessel contracts. A microns-thick blocking filter and multi-layer reflective coating help minimize the effect of ambient light interference while improving heart-rate detection accuracy.
Figure 2: The PS-500 smartwatch (left) and PS-100 fitness band (right) from Epson employ a novel sensing scheme that can measure heart rate without the use of a chest strap or other attachment.
The combination of the company’s proprietary sensor and patented algorithms with an accelerometer enables Pulsense to, for instance, use real-time heart-rate data to determine calories burned based on personal biometrics in addition to activity levels, gender, age and weight.
Additionally, with built-in memory, Pulsense can store up to 480 hours of heart-rate data before having to transfer data to a smart phone app or computer. Last but not least, Epson’s proprietary processor chip offers fast data processing, space-saving footprint, and efficient power usage for improved battery life performance. The PS-500 watch will be shipping this summer and has a suggested retail price of $199.00, while the PS-100 will sell for $129.
There are plenty of other players in the smart watch arena – companies such as Polar, Magellan, and EFUN are just a few of the players. Both Polar and Magellan have sports-oriented solutions. The Polar V800, a waterproof watch, can monitor and analyze many different sports activities and incorporates a GPS receiver and 24/7 activity tracking, and even packs a barometric pressure sensor to monitor altitude. It can track heart rate underwater while swimming, provide analysis and insights through a web service and the company’s Polar Flow application. The company has also released a simplified bracelet it calls the Polar Loop (Figure 3, left). Also waterproof, the bracelet has an LED display, lasts for up to five days on a rechargeable battery, provides time of day, links to systems using a Bluetooth interface and has a non-board memory capable of storing up to 12 days of activities.
Figure 3: The Polar Loop bracelet offers users an LED display, needs recharging every five days, and can link via a Bluetooth LE wireless interface to a smartphone (left). The Echo Smart sports watch from Magellan comes in various colors and provides Bluetooth connectivity to link the watch to your Smartphone. The watches are available with or without a Bluetooth Smart Heart Rate Monitor (right).
In contrast, the Magellan Echo Smart Sports Watch was designed as an open platform and can work with any application that can leverage a ruggedized smartwatch in several colors (Figure 3, right). The watch leverages the power of both a smartphone and sports-related apps. It uses Bluetooth Smart to connect a smartphone and watch, putting the power of a smartphone right on the user’s wrist. An ARM® Cortex®-M3 runs the watch while a Bluetooth chip from Nordic Semiconductor provides the communications, and ST Micro supplies the accelerometer. Echo is compatible today with the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C and 5S. Android support is coming in early 2014.
The NextONE smartwatch from EFUN was designed to integrate with a user’s favorite smartphone applications and uses Android 4.1 to provide an open architecture. The watch uses Bluetooth 4.0 to link to the smartphone and can display incoming calls, text messages, email alerts, and lets users generate a health and fitness profile. Expected to be available in the first quarter, the suggested retail price is just under $100.
Additional smart watch suppliers include Ezio Lifestyle (www.eziolifestyle.com), which offers smartwatches and Bluetooth enabled jewellery that connects to smartphones; Connected Device, which has two families, the Cookoo connected watches for smartphones, and the Cogito smartwatches; and Wellograph. The Cookoo series combines digital communications technology and analog watch movement and will provide notifications regarding incoming calls, email, text messages, social media alerts, and remote controls for the smartphone’s camera, music player, and video player. Similar features are available on the Cogito family. Both series incorporate Bluetooth 4.0 LE and use a button-cell battery that powers the watches for up to 1 year.
Last but not least of the newcomers, the Wellograph Wellness watch provides a complete readout of your health – your pulse, fitness, workouts, steps, and host of other wellness information. The watch employs a tri-LED heart-rate sensor, Bluetooth LE for linking to a smartphone, a rechargeable battery the can power the watch for two weeks (3 months in watch-only mode) and enough storage to hold a 4-month record of activities. Prototypes of more smart watches based on MIPS cores were visible at Imagination Technology’s booth. Dubbed the GeakWatch, the smart watches can link to smartphones or tablets via a Bluetooth LE interface and provide notifications of incoming mail or phone calls or control the music player, as well as provide various physical activity indicators.
Putting together a reference design, Movea (www.movea.com), in collaboration with Texas Instruments and Xm-Squared has demonstrated its G-series multisport wearable solution. The energy-optimized design delivers accurate activity tracking and advanced sports and sleep monitoring. The reference design leverages Movea’s sensor-hub solution that delivers a better than 95% success rate on activity detection, accurate step counting, and excellent sleep analysis, closely mirroring results from a polysomnography. The reference design kit includes a complete application programming interface, integrating Movea’s motion-sensing expertise with its Motionsport embedded library, TI’s Bluetooth low-energy wireless solution, and Xm-Squared’s wristband design.
Smart glasses, made popular by the Google Glass prototype product, are also popping up from many suppliers. The Epson Moverio BT-200 offers a true binocular display using a miniaturized LCD-based projection lens system and optical light guide in each side of the glasses (Figure 4). The LCD projection system incorporates unique light-guide angles to prevent other people from viewing the projected content. The binocular optical system has a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels (quarter HD) and projects see-through overlays of digital content onto the real-world in the center of the smart glasses’ field of view.
Figure 4: The Moverio BT200 binocular smart glasses from Epson can deliver 3D images using an LCD-based projection system with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 23-degree field of view.
Sensors include a gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetic compass and they enable head-motion tracking for gaming and hands-free navigation. A front-facing camera enables image and video capture as well as marker detection for augmented reality applications that give users relevant information related to the real world. The glasses enable a seamless blend of the physical and the digital world and make a new world of augmented reality applications possible for consumers as well as commercial enterprises.
Unlike the Google Glass which has the battery and touch control built into the glasses, the Moverio BT-200 employs an external battery pack/controller that runs the Android 4.0 operating system, contains both WiFi and Bluetooth interfaces, a microSD memory card slot, and a touch controller. The battery pack provides up to six hours of continuous use. The company expects to ship the Moverio BT-200 smart glasses in March and the glasses will have an MSRP of $699.99.
Another newcomer, ORCAM, mounts a camera on a glasses frame to help compensate for lost visual abilities. The camera, in combination with real-time computer vision algorithms, responds to gestures, reads text (text to speech conversion), and recognizes objects and scenarios (Figure 5). It speaks what it sees through a bone-conduction microphone in the earpiece. A separate battery-pack and processing subsystem fits easily in a shirt pocket or purse.
Figure 5: Combining a camera with powerful vision processing algorithms, designers at ORCAM crafted smart glasses that can aid vision-impaired individuals. The glasses include a bone-conduction speaker in the earpiece that supports the text-to-speech conversion and other features.
Also new to the market, Glassup, has developed a wearable display for augmented reality, real-time information access, and email/text/facebook/tweet notifications. Offering a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, the display is projected through a set of miniature lenses and mirrors onto the inside of one main glasses lens (Figure 6). The system also packs an accelerometer, compass, ambient light sensor and Bluetooth 4.0 LE to link to the smartphone. A touchpad with multiple controls is also incorporated into the projection subsystem. The glasses, like most of the others, depend on the availability of a smartphone to respond to any incoming messages.
Figure 6: The active glasses from Glassup pack an accelerometer, compass, ambient light sensor and Bluetooth connectivity. The patented optical system provides a 320 x 240-pixel display that is controlled via a touchpad built into the display subsystem.
These early designs will be further optimized by increasing the level of integration, reducing power consumption, improving resolution, and the addition of more sensors to provide multiple inputs.