Smart Earrings to track Heart Rate

While the whole world is running around making one-size-fits-all fitness bands and smartwatches for females, the innovators on Kickstarter are leading the charge for smart jewelry for women, a piece of jewelry that is women friendly. Ear-o-Smart is the latest startup to make a splash on the crowdfunding site with a piece of intriguing smart jewellery.

The Ear-o-Smart is a pair of smart earrings that connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth to monitor your heart rate, calories, and activity levels. Ear-o-Smart’s studs are remarkably small and actually look like a normal pair of earrings, in spite of all the sensors inside. Using the same PPG (photoplethysmogram) technology seen in many fitness bands, the earrings take your heart rate by measuring blood flow. Essentially, light from an LED is reflected by blood flowing through your veins and absorbed by a photodiode to determine when the heart beats.

Ravinder Saini, the President of BioSensive Technologies Inc. and the inventor of the Ear-o-Smart, says the ear is the ideal place to monitor heart rate because there is less interference from the wearer’s movement, and quite a bit of blood flow. The Ear-o-Smart also has sensors to track activity and calorie burn.

Saini was inspired to create Ear-o-Smart after he encountered many people — especially women — who just weren’t comfortable wearing fitness bands and smartwatches, but really wanted to track their health and fitness.

As far as batteries go, Saini says he’s got a working prototype with a coin cell battery inside, but he’s working on a version with a rechargeable battery, which would charge using a USB charging cradle. The coin cell battery will certainly last longer, but you’ll also have to replace it. However, the rechargeable version will need to last at least eight hours on a charge.

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