Wearable Today   /     Watch Out for those Affordable Fake Wearables

Episode 96 of Wearable Today

This week Luke shows off more of his C-3P0 build and his first post on Thingaverse with the eye piece he configured for the mask. I was geeking out over my new QSC Touchmix-16 that I got this morning and it’s wearable component. I was configuring this board sitting in my living room.

Wearable Today Episode 96 Show Notes

• Android Wear has new updates coming soon! New gestures are being added that allow more hands-free navigation, devices return to ambient mode even quicker when you drop your wrist, and you can even make calls from your watch, if it has a speaker built in. On top of this, the second generation Moto 360 is already receiving this update, which includes better indoor run tracking that can interface with apps like MapMyRun and Fitbit.
• Oral Roberts University is taking an interesting approach to keeping their students in shape. All students are being required to wear Fitbit activity trackers, and to sync the data with school systems so that they can be monitored by staff members. The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based school hasn’t yet heard any outcry from students or parents, but some privacy advocates are saying the data should be opt-in instead of required.
• If you’re watching Wearable Today, you’re probably already ahead of the curve on knowing about wearable technology. Let’s look even further into the future with this article from the Washington Post. Here they discuss some weartech that augments your body’s strengths and gives it a place to sit, stealth technology built in to your clothes to hide you from eyes above, and technology that uses your body as the conduit for information.
• If you have a caffeine addiction, you should take a look at this next wearable. Joule is a wrist strap that provides 65mg of caffeine over 4 hours. The creator claims that this is a faster way to get your fix, and better than the ups and downs of drinking coffee. Right now the product is launching on indiegogo with a delivery date of later this year.
• Can weartech make you an artist? Mihkel Joala thinks so, and has created a device to do it. The SprayPainter uses a smartphone and a spraygun with a light on it to automatically create works of art just by waving your hand over the surface. You setup the smartphone to point at the area you want to paint, and then as you run the spray gun over the surface, the smartphone triggers SprayPainter to start and stop spraying, at up to 200 times per second. By using multiple colors of spray paint, you can make full color graffitti in designs much more complex than your own skills may allow. The indiegogo campaign has already full funded, and early backers should receive their $149 device in July of this year.
• Here is a new way to keep notes. The Rocketbook Wave is a conventional pen and paper 80 page notebook that sends your notes to a mobile device. When you want to clean out your Rocketbook, simply put it in the microwave and it will clear all the notes. The pens are a special thermochromic ink that disappears at 140 degrees F
• Students at TU Delft in the Netherlands showed the power of printed stainless steel with the introduction of the arc bike. A three month project, the bike was created as part of a research project on how metal 3D printing could be done.

Watch Out for Fake Wearables

Jeff:

When I was at CES I saw many versions of smartwatches. There were a couple that looked a little like the Apple Watch. Of course, when you have a popular product, there will be companies that try to buck the system. In the infographic on Wearable Today, they go over some devices that can be mistaken for the Apple watch. Devices that cost 1/10th of what the actual product does.
And the same goes for other devices as well. In 2014, many reports of fake Fitbit wearables were showing up. In January of 2016, US Customs and border protection seized over $35,000 worth of knock-off Fitbit bands that came from Hong Kong. Wearable technology is growing by leaps and bounds. There are going to be some people who will try to get in on that action however they can.

Luke:

Even the Moto 360 isn’t above being knocked off. The first round smartwatch to gain popularity, the knockoffs came fast and furious. But most of them are not very high quality. Most of the knock offs have very low resolution screens, don’t run a real smartwatch OS, and are little more than bluetooth headsets with tiny screens. We found a review of one of these moto 360 knock offs, and it shows just how disappointing we’ve been making these knock offs sound.