Launch of a new era in the Smart Ring market

The first Smart Ring products entered the commercial consumer markets about five years ago. Since then, the Smart Ring space has been dominated by startup companies. The startup driven market has enabled rapid innovation, technology evolution, and product development. As a result, you can find several Smart Ring products in at least 11 product segments – these include health monitoring, fitness tracking, contactless payments, the panic button, and more.

Amazon’s launch of the Echo Loop Smart Ring in September, has however, marked the beginning of a new era for Smart Rings. The offering from one of the largest global consumer brands will help the Smart Ring enter into the mainstream market, and accelerate market growth. Apple’s Smart Ring patent suggests that other tech giants will follow suit.

Is Smart Ring ready for Widescale Innovation?

The Smart Ring form-factor has passed the initial acid test of commercial consumer markets with flying colors. Despite several market flops, a handful of companies have managed to create successful Smart Ring products – among these are the Oura health ring, the Motiv fitness tracking ring, and the Wave MIDI controller ring created by Genki Instruments.

The Smart Ring is light, unnoticeable, and a very personal wearable device. It sits tightly on a finger and doesn’t fall off easily, and it won’t disturb the user. The Smart Ring is a natural device for gesture control – as we use our hands and fingers all the time for communicating, steering, and for pointing at things. Our fingers provide a comfortable way to sense the heart rate for applications, such as health monitoring.  

So, yes – the Smart Ring form-factor is ready for wide-scale innovation for brands, manufacturers, and service providers to create new Blue Ocean markets.

Smart Ring is the Ultimate Product Development Challenge!

Let’s face it; the Smart Ring is an ultimate product development challenge for any company. On a strategic level, you can choose between several go-to-market strategies; and then you will have to define the right product/market strategy and value model.

Technically, the Smart Ring is an ultra-demanding form-factor. It is tiny, yet packed with sensors, circuitry, a battery, and more with an ultra-high degree of integration – antenna design alone requires deep RF (radio frequency) know-how. Developers have to solve countless challenges before they can launch a Smart Ring product, which can deliver an extraordinary user experience.

Consequently, choosing the right product development strategy will be crucial – there are several alternatives, and each of them has its pros and cons.

Building a successful Smart Ring strategy depends on three primary areas: it is the product/market strategy, the value model, and the right product development strategy. I will now go into depth by delving into them in more detail.

How You Can Choose the Right Smart Ring Product/Market Strategy?

The Smart Ring form-factor is a flexible product innovation platform, which can be designed, developed, and applied for a multitude of use-cases and markets. As with every company, you have to define your own strategy. These are four alternative paths you can take:

1.     Create a New Smart Ring Category

Smart Rings have been successfully used for establishing several new product segments, which were not in existence before. These include, for instance, convenient sleep improvement, and health and fitness monitoring. However, there will be many more segments to be invented, for example, in the areas of remote medical care, personal authentication, ambient sensing, and even more —the only limit is your imagination!

2.     Redefine an Existing Product

You can use the Smart Ring to redefine the utility and user-experience of your existing products or services delivered today. The Smart Ring can introduce deeper intelligence, higher security, and a further ease-of-use; into your products, and this can translate into higher customer value, or differentiation. The first-come-first-serve advantage is critical for success in this strategy – and typically, competitors will follow your lead quickly!

3.     Develop a Physical Dimension for a Service

If you are a provider of an immaterial service, such as an online service, gaming, gambling, security and surveillance service, or an ecosystem provider, you can develop the Smart Ring to be the physical dimension for your service. This differentiation strategy could set you apart from your competitors by providing the buyers better security, easier authentication, or enable easy payment.

4.     Develop a Vertical or Enterprise Application

According to a recent report by Gartner, by 2020, more than 60% of organizations will be using wearables for business purposes. You can already find several Smart Ring opportunities in verticals and enterprise segments. Some ideas include the monitoring of performance levels of employees through parameters such as keeping tabs on their heart rate, blood pressure, and skin temperature. Just imagine how useful it would be to assure that people on duty have the required physical and mental preparedness to carry out their tasks – this would include air carrier crew, taxi and bus drivers, field service technicians, emergency responders, public safety officers among others. Smart Rings could also improve worker safety by monitoring their health under challenging environments and sending out alerts, in case of emergencies.

How to Create a Value Model for your Smart Ring?

The Smart Ring, like any other consumer electronics market, is highly price sensitive. How can you maximize the economic benefits in the Smart Ring market? This depends on the product and pricing strategy you will choose. Here are three alternatives to consider:  

1.     The one-off hardware pricing strategy is the simplest and straight-forward way to convert customer value into revenue. However, this is what everyone is doing today.

2.     Instead of a one-off price, you can develop the Smart Ring to be an ecosystem like smartphones – and ensure that customers buy new applications and features for your ring.

3.     If you are a service provider with a recurring pricing model, you could also capture the value of the Smart Ring through monthly service fees, instead of a one-off sale fee.

Choosing the Optimal Product Development Strategy is Crucial!

The Smart Ring is a highly demanding form-factor. It is the ultimate technical challenge for the developers. Choosing the right product development strategy is crucial for your success in the markets. Now I will share the three most common product development strategies and their pros and cons.

1.     With in-house development – you can build up an internal organization and competence and invest in the resources required for developing your Smart Ring product. With this strategy, you have full control over the development process, and future product roadmap, and, if successful, you will sustain competitive advantage in the market. On the flip side, the Smart Ring industry is still new; so there is very little competence out there, and you might end up wasting a lot of time.

2.     You can buy and rebrand a third-party white-label Smart Ring product, and enhance it with your own custom features. The white-label strategy is fast, and you save time in the beginning.  However, the downside is that you will not have full control of the
product features, quality, data security, and roadmap.

3.     You can also outsource the product design, development, and manufacturing to a high-end product development company who have prior experience in the Smart Ring market. This strategy provides you with a fast time-to-market with a well-designed, high-quality product, thanks to working with an experienced development team who can foresee and avoid problems. With a long-term partnership, you can develop a product customized for your needs, and plan your roadmap ahead. With this strategy, however, you will not accumulate all the technical competence assets in-house.

RELATED: How Infineon SECORA™ Connect system solution helps product developers build NFC-enabled contactless payment rings

In Conclusion

The Smart Ring is more than just a product. It is a versatile innovation platform that can help you to create new, unforeseen products, services, and user-experiences. It gives you the opportunity to redefine your existing products and services in a new way. The Smart Ring allows you to differentiate your offering and to deliver your customers an unprecedented utility and value – and create a profitable Blue Ocean market!

Download Haltian’s Smart Ring whitepaper to get the big-picture of the market and technologies, and the detailed description of the Smart Ring go-to-market paths.

About the Author

Ville Ylläsjärvi is a co-founder at Haltian – one of the most successful spin-offs from Nokia Globally. On top of innovating new products at Haltian, he works with design and product management activities. Prior to starting a life as an entrepreneur, he used to work at Nokia in various senior product and portfolio management positions. He holds a degree in Industrial design and went through a Product Management Graduate program at Nokia. During his career he has lived and worked in 5 countries – mixing business, design and technology and constantly coming up with new products and business designs.

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About Haltian

Haltian has been providing device manufacturers with world-class product design and engineering services since 2012. Thingsee, the proven IoT technology platform developed by Haltian, enables faster IoT launches for mass-scale deployments. In 2018, Haltian was heralded by research leader Gartner to be a Cool Vendor for its IoT services and in 2019, Haltian became an AWS Advanced Technology Partner. Haltian is behind many of the global signature products, such as the Oura health ring. Its design for the Specim IQ hyperspectral imaging device won the coveted Red Dot Design Award in 2018. For more information, visit: https://www.haltian.com

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The post Are you Developing a Smart Ring? Here’s How to Plan your Product Strategy! first appeared on Smart Ring News.

What is the Aeklys One smart ring?

Whereas its predecessor, the Aeklys by Starck smart ring, which provides you with several functionalities, including a smart public transit pass, digital business card, and smart key, Aeklys One, as the name suggests, only gives you one thing — and that’s contactless payments. With it, you will no longer take out your wallet, phone, or card. All you need to do is hold out your hand at the point of sale to use it. The smart ring works free of charge anywhere in the world on all contactless payment terminals.

Innovative sizing app

Aeklys One could be the world’s most innovative contactless payment ring. Its innovation starts already before you get to stick it on your finger – from how the product is ordered and measured via their online shop.

One of the biggest frictions in buying smart rings online is sizing. Typically most smart ring vendors offer you to order a sizing kit with plastic replicas. After waiting for the kit to arrive and testing the correct size, you can order the ring. And, after waiting some more, you will get what you ordered.

Aeklys, in my opinion, takes a bold, calculated risk and fuels the online buying process with a ring sizing mobile app! At the beginning of the buying process on their webshop, after the initial registration, you will receive an SMS on your mobile asking you to download the Aeklys mobile app. After downloading and starting the app, it fires a digital ring sizing feature.

Honestly, by the very first sight, the sizing app screen looked slightly strange, a bit difficult to catch what to do. However, after a few moments of pondering and trial and error, I got the idea of how sizing should be done. Eventually, I managed to measure my ring size (68), and it was a perfect fit for my index finger!

So, I think Aeklys’ sizing app is a truly innovative way to remove friction from the buying process. It worked for me at the trial. I cannot say it will work for every customer for the first time, but compared to waiting for shipping sizing kits, Aeklys’ sizing app is smart and functioning.

Design

This ring is neither a perfect circle in geometrical terms nor the crosscut of your index finger circular. Philipp Starck, the designer of the ring, got this one right! Aeklys One is designed to be more like a heavily rounded, elliptical triangle, and it perfectly sits and fits on an index finger (at least mine). If a ring can be ergonomic, this one is. The ring’s shape works like a charm all the way when sliding the ring through your finger, and it managed the big bulky joint with ease before firmly sitting on my finger.

Aeklys One is super light, too. Ok, all smart rings are light, but this one is feather-light. Benefit? Maybe limited. But it feels nice to wear.

The material feels and looks more plastic than some competing contactless payment rings made of zirconia, which gives them a more elegant ceramic feeling. However, with Aeklys One, that “plastic-y” feel is not a problem. The surface is partly glossy and partly matte. That gives the ring a modern, friendly, functional, and smart look.

Button

Aeklys One features a tiny bump on its surface. That is a button to confirm payments, giving extra safety and control. Especially because the bump is placed at an optimal location, easily and quickly reachable with your thumb.

Smartphone App

All smart rings we have used, tested, and reviewed come with a mobile app. So does Aeklys. However, its app differs from the crowd in one way. Normally other apps are used for controlling the ring and viewing information, such as biometric data. Aeklys app starts to provide value before you even have the ring – from measuring and ordering the correct ring size.

Otherwise, the app user interface follows the same stylish, minimalistic look and feels like the whole world around Aeklys. It is easy to use, and you can do everything there.

Authentication before activation

Once you have received your Aeklys One ring and take it into use, the app asks you to authenticate. For this process, you will need an official ID such as a passport and some document that proves your permanent residence address (e.g., utility bill). You must photograph the documents, answer a few questions, and within 48 hours, you should get validation. All this happens pretty smoothly in the Aeklys app.

Security

Aeklys One boasts several security features. These include the proprietary anti-fraud system, accessible through the ring’s side button, and an anti-theft system, which can deactivate the ring right from the app. Aeklys One’s anti-fraud system called Wave Control is designed to prevent any undesired transactions and fraud risks. But you need to keep the button pressed while making a payment. Otherwise, it won’t work.

Meanwhile, the anti-theft system’s purpose is to prevent your ring from being and curb unauthorized payments. You can deactivate the ring from your app and reactivate it instantly from a distance. When someone uses your ring to make a payment, it will be denied, and you will get a push notification about it.

In terms of software security, Aeklys One has been EAL6+ certified by the ANSSI (French National Cybersecurity Agency). This means that the ring uses operating system security that has been approved to protect high-value assets, that is, your banking information.

RELATED: Smart Ring Security – Can it help us to stop password hacking and phishing?

Paying with Aeklys One

Paying with Aeklys One contactless payment ring

Paying with Aeklys One is straightforward. However, compared to other contactless payment rings, there are two main differences.

Firstly, Aeklys One has got one additional step in the paying process. You have to pay the button with your thumb to confirm. Other rings confirm the payment as soon as the ring is close enough to the payment terminal. Although it takes a little extra effort to push the button, you might appreciate the extra safety.

Secondly, Aeklys One allows you to pay with a flat palm finger straightened out, whereas with all other payment rings we have tested, you have to do a fist pump on the payment terminal. Which one is better? I would say it depends on how the payment terminal is placed. Sometimes flat palm is more convenient, sometimes fist pump could be easier.

It took a bit of trial and error to place Aeklys One correctly above the terminal, but there were no problems once I learned the trick.

You can pay amounts up to the local contactless payment limit – 50€ in Finland. Aeklys One provides you a PIN code that allows paying purchases above the contactless limit while traveling abroad. I didn’t get to test this because this feature is not yet available in the UK, France, and Finland. You can disable and enable payment easily via the app for safety reasons.

After payment, the app shows you all the details.

Credit upload

With Aeklys, you have to upload credits before you can pay. Two ways:

– Standard. Make standard bank transfer (minimum 10€) to Aeklys IBAN bank account. It is free and takes roughly 2-5 days to see the funds available.

– Express. Credit card transaction (minimum of 50€). Funds are available instantly. 2% fee.

RELATED: Top 10 countries for contactless payment wearables

Aeklys One Test Report

Purposefulness

Stars 1-5 – What can you do with the ring in your everyday life? How does it help? Does it fulfil a real purpose? Is there really a need for this device?

Verdict – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Aeklys One is a payment-only ring. It is a limitation when compared to many other payment rings, which also allow for contactless transit passes, smart keys, and more. Also, the other Aeklys smart ring model provides you with these extended features. So, if you buy Aeklys One for payments, it fulfills its purpose perfectly. If you want more features, this one is probably not your device. Still, 4 stars is justified because payment is still the #1 use-case for these devices, and Aeklys One has no problems doing that job for you.

User experience + Design  

Stars 1-5 – How does the ring look and feel? How robust is the design? How easy/difficult is it to use the ring and the app?

Verdict – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a hard judgment. Visually, Aeklys One looks great. Ergonomically, it is hands down the best smart ring I have ever worn. The ergonomic design makes Aeklys One a perfect companion for all kinds of sports – it fits snugly on your index finger while running, biking, and even at the gym. It is light as a feather. You can forget your wallet and still buy a bottle of ice-cold water during long endurance exercise.

The smartphone app’s look and feel are minimalistic, while usability is good. The app allows you to do everything you need to do with it. A big plus for handling sizing and ordering on the app.

Functionalities + Tech

Stars 1-5 – Listing down the functionalities and tech spec. Does the ring function as promised. Does the tech like Bluetooth, HRV sensor, and others work?

Verdict – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As a payment-only ring, that could be considered a functional limitation compared to many other payment rings that allow contactless transit passes, smart keys, and more. Also, the other Aeklys smart ring model (Aeklys by Starck) provides you with these extended features. But, if you consider Aeklys One a payment-only ring, then that’s fine. No nagging about missing features. There are simply no missing features!  

Otherwise, Aeklys One’s functionalities and tech worked fine throughout the test period. One small minus point – it took some time to learn how to place the ring on the terminals and press the button to get payments through. Pressing the button with thumb requires some pressure. But that’s understandable – it is there to avoid accidental payments.

App + Ecosystem

Stars 1-5 – Does the ring come with an app? What does it do? Is it useful? Does the ring or app provide third-party support for Apple Health, MasterCard payments, banking, and the like?

Verdict – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What does a contactless payment user need from the smart ring ecosystem? An easy way to upload credits using (e.g., Mastercard) and geographical coverage wherever you may roam. Aeklys One is backed by uploads via Mastercard credit card transfer and direct bank transfer, which is a good standard level, similar to most contactless payment devices.

Aeklys One works on all contactless payment terminals that accept MasterCard. This practically means global support for the users.

Overall  

Verdict – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Aeklys One costs you only 49€ and gives just one feature – contactless payments. But it does it with style. The ergonomic design is perhaps its coolest feature. It is easy to order because of the digital sizing app. Looking at value for money, it’s a no-brainer to give it 4 stars. Overall, Aeklys One is one of the best smart rings for contactless payments. There are a few options out there that are more versatile than Aeklys One. But one thing is sure, Aeklys One is the best wearable you’ll get for 49€.

SURVEY: Contactless payment ring is the most popular wearable for paying

The post Aeklys One Test – Our Verdict After Using it for 30 Days first appeared on Smart Ring News.

If you are one of the many people working remotely from home, Genki Instruments’ new smart ring promises to make your days at work, at home, more flexible. With Wave for Work you can manage your favorite applications, including Zoom, PowerPoint, and Spotify, with the press of one of its three buttons or a simple hand gesture.

In 2018, Genki Instruments launched the original Wave smart ring to allow music lovers and professionals to shape sound, control effects easily, and send commands using intuitive gestures. When the pandemic forced the Genki team to shift to working remotely, they realized that the Wave software could be updated to address the new realities of working from home. This led to the creation of Wave for Work.

“As our team began to work from home at the start of the pandemic, we realized that our Wave ring could streamline our workflow by managing the programs that we started using daily, like Zoom and Skype,” said Ólafur Bjarki Bogason, CEO of Genki Instruments.

The Wave for Work ring is based on Genki Instrument’s core gesture controlling technology and the same hardware as its predecessor smart ring, the MIDI controller ring. However, Wave for Work is redesigned to control applications that many of us use throughout the workday. With Wave for Work, people are no longer constrained to their desks during presentations or video calls. They can sit back, stand up or walk around their homes while still controlling work applications with the ring.

RELATED – Reviewing the Wave by Genki Instruments MIDI Controller Smart Ring

How does it work?

Wave for Work is an adjustable ring worn on the index finger with its three buttons facing the thumb for easy control. It connects instantly with macOS and Windows 10 computers through its accompanying software. Once synced with a computer, you can customize the experience by assigning tasks to control your favorite applications, such as adjusting the volume on Spotify, muting yourself on Zoom, and switching between presentation slides in PowerPoint. Through its proprietary real-time gesture engine, you can also pair commands with a roll hand gesture. Wave for Work’s display allows you to see commands directly on the ring. You can see a video of Wave for Work in action here.

What Can You Do with the Wave for Work Ring?

With a 10-meter (30-foot) operating range, you can easily navigate and control tasks from anywhere in a room. Wave for Work is compatible with popular programs, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, Keynote, Spotify, Photoshop, OBS, and many more. Tasks that can be managed from the ring include: ‍

– Video calls — Mute, push-to-talk, manage cameras and raise-a-hand, on popular call and video conference programs.

– Presentations — Start a slideshow and click through slides using the Wave for Work buttons while standing away from a computer and keeping hands free during a presentation.

– Music — Play, pause, skip, fast forward and adjust the volume to control music streaming services, podcasts, and more.

– Custom — Create shortcuts and personalized tasks for most-used programs and actions.

More about Wafe for Work

Wave for Work ring is available in black, its rechargeable battery lasts eight hours, and pricing starts from $99.  

About Genki Instruments

Genki Instruments was founded in 2015 in Reykjavík in Iceland. It is an award-winning technology company that develops products on the intersection of technology and design to make technology feel natural. The team believes that people should never have to change how they express themselves to fit the devices around them. Genki Instruments’ first product was Wave, the MIDI controller smart ring that allows musicians to control sound.  

The post Wave for Work Is a Smart Ring that Simplifies Working from Home and Controlling Apps first appeared on Smart Ring News.

Read this article for a complete review and seven ways SECORA™ Connect can help you develop contactless wearables!

Contactless Payments Surging Worldwide

Mastercard’s research published in May 2020 (right in the middle of the peaking COVID-19 pandemic) found that 82% of respondents consider contactless a cleaner way to pay their purchases. The company reported a whopping 40% growth in worldwide contactless transactions in the first quarter of 2020 due to people avoiding touching public-use payment terminals during the pandemic.

Europeans have been well accustomed to contactless transactions for many years already. Now they are transferring this tap to pay behavior from cards to wearable devices at record speed. Contactless payment transactions made with wearables – including smartwatches, bracelets, key-fobs, and smart rings grew eight-fold in Europe in 2019!  

SURVEY: Contactless Payment Ring voted as the most popular wearable for paying

Contactless – The Easy and Hygienic Way to Pay!

Contactless payment is the fastest growing payment method today. Users and merchants fell in love with its ultimate ease-of-use, safety, and the clean, germ-free way to carry out transactions. Governments are encouraging the use of contactless paying – over 30 countries increased contactless payment limits just recently.

PRODUCT COMPARISON: 5 Popular Contactless Payment Rings

VIDEO: How contactless payment works with a smart ring, and which are the main components and technologies involved in the payment transaction.

Device Makers’ Challenges

Wearable companies are trying to satisfy the growing demand by pushing new NFC-enabled, contactless payment devices out on the markets. However, many device makers have had to give up their dream of launching a sleek, world-famous payment gadget before it even hit the market. Because building a highly secure, contactless device with a smooth, frictionless payment-experience and global scalability is hard.

The biggest challenges most device makers bump into are, first and foremost, how to provide robust, hardware-based data security and device integrity? Or, how to build a device with a long enough battery life? How to cram all hardware into a tiny wearable form-factor? And, how to do all this, and more, while hitting the right consumer price point?

Infineon’s SECORA™ Connect, and the service enrolment partner ecosystem could be the all-in-one solution device makers have been searching for!

Review: Infineon SECORA™ Connect

What’s SECORA™ Connect?

Infineon is a company that needs no introductions within the global wearable and IoT device maker community. As the leading semiconductor innovator and provider of security chipsets and modules, its products enable a significant share of the world’s wearables, IoT devices, sensors, and roughly half of the world’s smart cards. The company leads the contactless payments market, too.

SECORA™ Connect is Infineon’s latest addition to its secured NFC-enabled System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions portfolio targeting smart wearables and IoT devices. Device makers can embed it to enable contactless and secured payments, digital identification, public transit tickets, access badge, smart key, and other applications via NFC.

SECORA™ Connect is a turnkey solution that aims to help you develop small, power-efficient, secured contactless wearables and IoT devices, which can scale for the global consumer markets. It includes all crucial components a designer needs – security chip, certified operating system, Java Card applets, and optionally an antenna, and more. On top of all the hardware and software, you get complementary enablement services delivered by Infineon and its ecosystem partners. You can use the same hardware, software, and enablement services for developing both active/boosted and passive NFC devices – which saves R&D costs and time to market. Even system designers with no security or antenna design experience can use it to integrate a power-frugal, secured, and standards-compliant NFC device with a minimal PCB footprint.

SECORA Connect Product Family – Comparison Table

The solution family consists of four products and services optimized for various connected devices and applications. Here’s a quick comparison table of key features.

The 7 Advantages for Developers and Designers

1. Power Consumption

As you know, battery life is one of the key decision points for consumers today. Everyone wants effortless usability. So, products that need frequent charging can simply turn-off your buyers!

With SECORA™ Connect, your product will have an advantage over the competition when it comes to battery life. The chipset has an ultra-low power consumption in standby mode – with only 4-6uA with boosted NFC.

According to Infineon, this is at least 50% lower than the competing alternatives while meeting security and tamper-resistance standards and delivering reliable contactless transactions in both the battery-less and low-power active NFC operation.

2. Ultra-Small Dimensions

Size, weight, and dimensions are critical when designing tiny wearables and IoT devices with complex form-factors. Using hardware components with small sizes and flexible dimensions, you can build smaller, slender form-factors and cram in more functionality into the product.

SECORA™ Connect makes the hardware design work easier for you. The boosted NFC version packs all its secured system components and functionalities into ultra-small package dimensions of 5×5 mm – occupying a PCB area of only 13.6 mm2 with SECORA Connect boosted SiP (System-in-Package). This already contains NFC front-end, so no need for an additional NFC modem chip.

If you design products with specific form-factors and materials, the SECORA™ Connect boosted MCP (multi-chip-package) with dimensions of 4×4 mm could be the right choice. The antenna design, contactless performance, and power consumption can be perfectly optimized to the various requirements of your device.

The ultra-compact footprint of SECORA™ Connect gives you more freedom in terms of design choices, allows smaller products, or more space for other components.

3. Security Chip

As said, the most critical challenge for contactless wearable and IoT device designers is security. And it’s becoming even more challenging for two reasons. Firstly, contactless payment devices generate more sensitive data than ever before, and the value of the transactions increases rapidly. Secondly, because of the flexible device platforms, you, as a hardware manufacturer, don’t have full control over the other applications that the user may install on their device. Also, it is hard, if not impossible, to provide robust security throughout the product life due to continuous OS and 3rd party application updates.

This means that the underlying hardware will have to meet even more robust security requirements. That’s why the tamper-resistant, hardware-based security chips and efficient SE field management included in Infineon’s SECORA™ Connect are crucial for you as a developer to manage the various security-critical contactless use-cases.

4. Shared Software & Hardware

As a contactless device and application developer, the worst thing you know is to develop the same thing twice for active and passive NFC! No need to worry. With SECORA™ Connect, both active and passive share the same software and system. This reduces R&D costs and development time because of easy and quick system integration without implementing separate software stacks for active and passive NFC devices and applications.

5. Host Integration

The NFC architecture without a modem is optimized for fast and easy host integration – so you can avoid compromises in product functionalities and design. Simple integration with APDU over ISO7816 or I²C commands speeds up development, too.

The SECORA™ Connect evaluation board is based on the Cypress PSoC 6 host controller. This means that you can onboard SECORA™ Connect wherever PSoC is already in use. (Infineon’s host controller portfolio follows its acquisition of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation.)

6. Pre-Approved & Pre-Certified

Even if you have all software and hardware designed, done, and tested, your contactless payment product is far from ready – as long as you have not carried out all the global approvals and certifications.  These can include EMV, type approvals, and solution approval for end-to-end service enablement. When you reach this point, Infineon and its partnerships can help with security and functional certifications and remove many headaches from your work. Pre-approved EMV solutions shorten certification and qualification processes and lower your risks.

7. Future Roadmap

As you can already see, people will deal more with various digital services in the future. Trusting them to remember all passwords and PIN codes won’t scale in terms of security and privacy. Biometric authentication and passwordless login are becoming the de-facto ways to authenticate users. As a product maker, you don’t want to miss out on these types of emerging technologies. Using a global development ecosystem, which SECORA™ Connect essentially is, provides developers a concrete roadmap of the key technologies in the future – such as support for biometric authentication and passwordless login!

In Conclusion

The time is ripe for contactless payments. Transactions have been surging in several parts of the world already for years. The global pandemic finally showed the full potential of contactless technologies. However, building a contactless payment wearable is not a walk in the park – not least because of the stringent security requirements. Based on this review, Infineon’s SECORA™ Connect covers all aspects of contactless wearable development. For you as a device maker, it simplifies your development work with many critical features such as energy efficiency, compact size, robust security, and global service enrolment – which typically take several man-years to build.  

The post Reviewing Infineon SECORA™ Connect – Seven Ways It Simplifies Development Work for Contactless NFC Wearables first appeared on Smart Ring News.

What Does RingPay Do?

RingPay, by McLEAR, one of the pioneering smart ring makers, makes contactless payments fast, secure, and invisible. You can pay purchases of up to £45 and top up your smart ring by simply adding your preferred credit or debit card onto the RingPay app.

The app allows you to track your spending in real-time, control budgets, set automatic top-ups, respect physical distancing guidelines, and in case of loss, instantly freeze your McLEAR ring.

The Ringpay app allows you to export transaction receipts, add up to four McLEAR smart rings to an individual wallet. It even allows you to add multiple funding sources in case you want to balance where you add your funds from.

RELATED: Compare the top-five contactless payment rings

What’s New in RingPay?

EXTRA SECURITY

When it comes to contactless payment applications, security is critical. The new RingPay provides a secure biometric app login to give extra protection for your funds when you load money into your wallet and while you’re spending it.

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is another security technology in McLEAR and RingPay that limits unauthorized spending in case your ring was lost or stolen. Without SCA, the unauthorized spending could continue almost indefinitely or until your funds run out. With SCA, RingPay requires you to periodically authenticate yourself and confirm that the ring is still with you. It prevents endless and unchecked spending should your payment ring end up in the wrong hands.

REWARDS PROGRAM

McLEAR’s partnership with parsnip allows you to earn in-store cash back at the growing number of selected retailers in the RingPay Rewards Programme, such as Nike, Foot Locker, Gap, and River Island.

PREMIUM BENEFITS

RingPay+ subscription allows you to save money on everyday purchases. This premium members’ club opens access to various discounts and cashback generated through hundreds of merchants across numerous categories, including entertainment ticket bookings, cinema trips, restaurant offers, hotel discounts, and holiday travel deals.

THE GIVING FEATURE

The mission of RingPay is to improve the payment experience, making it faster, effortless, and more rewarding. Whether commuting to work, picking up some essentials, or off on your travels, RingPay by McLEAR gives you peace of mind knowing your finances are safely in-hand. Just kick back and fist pump your way to better spending and awesome rewards. – Daniel Blondell, Chief Operating Officer, McLEAR

McLEAR Ring

McLEAR is the pioneer of wearable payment technology for consumers and businesses. Its NFC-enabled smart ring and RingPay application are used by more than 100,000 ringholders worldwide currently.

The McLEAR smart ring is scratch-resistant, stress-tested, and waterproof. Thanks to its passive NFC-enabled technology, RingPay requires no battery or charging.

The smart ring was invented by McLEAR in 2012, designed and manufactured to be water and shock resistant, and requires no battery, making it the ideal wearable payment device that fits seamlessly into any lifestyle. The ring users can set rules and manage their smart ring through a dedicated app, giving access to numerous exclusive features and benefits.

The McLEAR ring was showcased alongside their partner Visa at the Rio Olympics, followed by other key events including Super Bowl 51, Eurovision 2017, FIFA Confederate Cup 2017, and the GRAMMY Gift Lounge 2018; where known celebrities such as The Hooligans, Zac Brown, Jeff Timmons, Paul Shaffer, Anthony Hamilton, Shaggy, Louis Fonsi, Kesha, Ice T, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson became Ringholders!

McLEAR works in partnership with Infineon, the leading manufacturer of NFC-enabled secure semiconductor solutions, Visa, Thales, and other financial and technology partners to bring the smart ring to more users; or financial institutions and businesses that are looking to provide their customers with the latest wearable payment technology.

Conclusions – Is RingPay Worth Buying?

The new RingPay feature-set is a significant leap forward in the contactless payment ring space. Not only because of the benefits and perks and charitable contributions. The thing is, the number of contactless wearable payment transactions is now growing rapidly worldwide, and that’s why we think it’s the extra security that adds value for the users massively!

Back to our original question: Can RingPay deliver on its promise and make life more convenient for its users? Well, the RingPay feature-set included many of the essential functionalities already before this update. But yeah, the new updates definitely add more convenience to your daily use, the extra security is a big, big plus, and the benefits and perks will surely pay back to each individual per her or his own use!

The post Reviewing the Updated RingPay Contactless Payment Ring By McLEAR first appeared on Smart Ring News.

How Oura Ring Is Used for Birth Control

Oura measures the user’s body temperature directly from the finger’s skin continuously. At the moment, the body temperature data is used to diagnose fever and as one of the main factors when calculating the user’s readiness score, which is the overall measurement of the user’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Soon, this body temperature data will have another important role — to assess a woman’s fertility or the lack thereof. Connected to the Oura ring, the Natural Cycles app will import and interpret the user’s body temperate data and provide conclusions based on the collected data. For the app to draw an accurate conclusion, body temperature must be accurate, making a wearable device like smart rings perfect for this birth control method.

Related: Oura vs. Circul: Which Is the Best Smart Ring to Detect Covid-19?

Using the Oura smart ring is much easier than using an oral thermometer every morning. It’s more effective too. Users don’t need to take note of the data or fear forgetting to take their body temperature. With the Oura ring, users can be certain body temperature data is recorded effortlessly.

Oura also measures heart rate. This is instrumental for the app to collect data for days when the user is hungover or has not had enough sleep. Compared to an oral thermometer, body temperature can be inaccurate in such cases.

That said, green days — or days when one can have sex without getting pregnant — may increase when using Natural Cycles with Oura as there’s accuracy with the user’s data.

The Natural Cycles app is already available for both Android and iOS users. However, at press time, the software responsible for reading the temperature data is still waiting for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Natural Cycles has yet to announce the official rollout date of the said feature.

Related: Motiv vs. Oura Ring: Which Is the Best Sleep and Activity Tracking Smart Ring?

First Birth Control Wearable

The Oura Ring is the first wearable technology ever to do this. The smart ring is the perfect wearable device to use for such functionality since they fit snugly on the user’s finger, thereby delivering more accurate body temperature than a smartwatch, smart bracelet, and other wearables.

It’s been long overdue for Natural Cycles to make this birth control method through Oura happen due to hardware issues. In an interview with Sifted, Natural Cycles cofounder Elina Berglund Scherwitzl said wearables are less accurate than oral thermometers in terms of temperature measurements. Although a smart ring is an ideal candidate to bring birth control to the finger, Scherwitzl admitted that it took them a while to figure out an algorithm that meshes well with the Oura ring.

Nevertheless, Scherwitzl is looking forward to bringing its mighty birth control digital technology to other third-party wearables. This means more smart rings might be able to get this birth control method soon.

Oura is the leading health and wellness smart ring that enables users to track sleep and activities and improve daily performance. It attracted massive publicity in the past several months after the Oura ring reportedly helped a user in Finland detect Covid-19 symptoms early. Oura since sealed a deal with the NBA, which reportedly bought 2,000 smart rings from the company.

Natural Cycles is a hormone-free birth control method that uses a thermometer in conjunction with a mobile app to evaluate a woman’s unique cycle and identify her fertility status. Launched in 2013 as an early fertility tool by particle physicists Elina Berglund and her now-husband Raoul Scherwitzl, it is the only FDA and CE-certified digital contraceptive globally. Today, the app has over 1.8 million users worldwide and is growing fast in scale and popularity.

Natural Cycles subscription starts at $9.99 per month, while the Oura smart ring costs $299/€314.

Please note that the Oura Ring is not currently an FDA-approved or cleared medical device, and therefore does not market itself as such. While Oura data has provided numerous users with insights into their health, including data that has informed illness detection, period prediction, and even early pregnancy detection, the company does not claim to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition, including fever.

The post Oura Ring First Wearable to Be Used for Birth Control first appeared on Smart Ring News.

Top 10 Countries Using Contactless Payment Wearables

Globally, most wearable payments were made in Australia in 2019, followed by the Netherlands. While the United States comes in eighth place, all other countries in the global top 10 are European. 

Here’s the list of top 10 countries globally:

RELATED: Contactless Payment Ring Is the Most Popular Wearable for Paying

Top 10 European Countries in Wearable Payments

According to MasterCard, contactless payment wearable transactions grew eight times in Europe year-on-year from 2018 to 2019. The total number of transactions in Europe was almost 20 times higher than in North America.

There are several reasons why European consumers have been quick to integrate this new payment method into their daily lives. Many European countries have been promoting non-cash paying for several years, and there are comprehensive infrastructures in place for facilitating contactless payments.

Consumers can use wearables in all instances that accept contactless payments. The adoption of contactless payments, in general, grows rapidly.

In 2019, 61% of all European in-store transactions were contactless. More than 30 different types of contactless payment-enabled wearables are available in 26 EU countries. This advanced ecosystem has spurred the growth in the region.

The Netherlands is at the forefront when it comes to wearable payments in Europe. A third of all wearable transactions in 2019 came from there. The other European countries were the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany and Ukraine. Here’s the complete list:

RELATED: 5 Contactless Payment Rings Compared

Which Devices Were Considered in the Study?

The contactless payment wearables are divided into two main categories — passive near-field communication (NFC) and active NFC devices.

The active devices are battery-powered — typically smartwatches and wristbands —  which means they require regular charging. The users of active devices must enter a PIN code on the device during the payment transaction because they allow for paying purchases of higher amounts compared to the passive NFC devices.

Passive NFC payment devices such as smart rings, bracelets, and key fobs allow paying for small purchases with amounts below the so-called floor limit (around $30-50 depending on the country). You don’t have to enter a PIN code with passive devices, and they don’t have a battery.

MasterCard’s numbers include both active wearables and passive wearables such as bracelets, smart rings, and regular watches.

RELATED: 4 NFC Smart Ring Applications That Make Your Daily Life Easier

In Conclusion

There’s no better time to use contactless payment wearables than today. Apart from the convenience it brings to the table, these wearables are perfect to avoid getting in contact with public-use payment terminals.

Contactless payment wearables may be more popular in Europe, North America, and Australia. It’s easy to see the rest of the world catching up sooner than later. In fact, MasterCard had seen significant contactless payment transactions in countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, and South Africa.

If you are looking for contactless payment rings, some options to consider include Tesla Ring, PAGOPACE, McLear, K Ring, LAKS, and Token Ring. Check out the comparison of contactless payment rings here.

The post Top 10 Countries for Contactless Payment Wearables first appeared on Smart Ring News.

One cannot help but ask whether smart rings are really up for detecting the coronavirus disease. How can they do it? Which products currently have this capability?

In this post, I will introduce two products that claim capable of detecting COVID-19 – Oura and CIRCUL – and explain how they can do it.

Smart Rings Detecting the Coronavirus COVID-19 – How Did It Start? 

The short history of detecting the symptoms of COVID-19 with a smart ring dates back to early March 2020. Finnish Petri Hollmén, an active sportsman and an avid Oura ring user, saw his readiness score dropped to 54 from his usual 80 to 90, a range considered to be optimal. Apart from having his body temperature slightly above the normal, Hollmén was mostly asymptomatic.

But Hollmén had just returned from traveling across a couple of coronavirus-impacted areas in Central Europe, so he took it upon himself to visit a local hospital and get tested for COVID-19. He turned out positive. This case was the first reported occasion when a smart ring helped a user to detect COVID-19.

RELATED: What Are Smart Rings? How Do They Work?

Can Smart Rings Diagnose Illnesses?

Not yet. Oura, CIRCUL, and other health and wellness smart rings on the market are not classified as medical devices. They cannot diagnose any illness, including COVID-19.

However, health smart rings like Oura and CIRCUL track a wide range of biometric data every day as you wear them. The same data can give you a glance at the state of your health. Sudden deviations or disruptions from your long-term baselines can be an indicator of incubation of an illness. Ideally, with the help of this data, and the algorithms and machine learning developed by the ring-makers, you can foresee an illness such as COVID-19 several days before becoming symptomatic, seek medical advice, get tested earlier, and avoid spreading the virus to others.

Quick Comparison Table

Here’s a quick comparison table of the main features of the Oura and CIRCUL rings. Read forward for detailed information on both health rings.

Oura Ring

Oura Ring is the market-leading health and wellness smart ring that focuses heavily on sleep and activity tracking and self-performance improvement. Oura’s sensors, data analytics, and the mobile app are all perfected towards one goal – to deliver personalized recommendations based on the user’s biometric data so that he/she can optimize life according to his/her unique circadian rhythm.  

Biometric Data in Oura

Oura Ring boasts an advanced sleep monitoring technology, tracking sleep duration and quality on a daily basis and how much time is spent in various sleep stages.  

Oura’s sleep score is calculated based on bedtime, deep sleep, latency, REM sleep, sleep efficiency, time in bed, total sleep time, and wake-up time data. The readiness score, on the other hand, is derived based on body temperature, resting heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and respiratory rate. The third score, called the activity score, is based on the following data: activity burn, total burn, activity goal completion, activity score, inactive time, steps, and walking equivalency.

Apart from sleep tracking, the Oura Ring features a range of tracking capabilities for body temperature, pulse amplitude, heart rate, heart rate variation, respiratory rate, and even slight hand and finger movements.

How Oura Detects Symptoms of COVID-19

When the new NBA basketball season kicks off again after the break in the Walt Disney World in Orlando, the players and staffers have the option of wearing the Oura ring to enable an additional safety measure against the spread of COVID-19.

Oura’s algorithm derives the likely symptoms of COVID-19 by combining the following data: heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), temperature, and respiratory rate. The algorithm calculates a risk score, which indicates a risk of a player having COVID-19 contraction. In case the score is high enough, the player should get tested by the medical professionals.

It takes five days on average for a person to feel any symptoms of the coronavirus disease. During that incubation period, they can spread the virus to others around them. According to Oura, its ring can detect the symptoms typical for illnesses such as COVID-19 (fever, disruption of sleep, tiredness, etc.) several days before the user feels sick. 

So, although Oura cannot diagnose COVID-19, it enables informed testing, which can be an effective and cost-efficient way to slow down the viral spread of COVID-19.

Oura’s Research

Oura is currently investing heavily in research work, partnering with a few universities such as the Universities of San Francisco (UCSF) and San Diego (UCSD) and West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institue (WVU-RNI) to find out how its product can be used in identifying various illnesses. The study with UCSF centers on discovering whether the Oura ring can predict illness symptoms. Meanwhile, the national study with RNI is designed to fast-track early detection of the COVID-19 symptoms.

CIRCUL Ring

The CIRCUL ring is developed by BodiMetrics, an American health and medical tech specialist company. The Reddot award-winning CIRCUL is a sleep and fitness ring with blood oxygen tracking. In fact, based on the breadth and depth of its spec sheet, the origins of the CIRCUL ring seem to stem from the health/medical wearable technology world. However, it is not cleared as a medical instrument yet.

BodiMetrics CIRCUL Waterproof Sleep & Fitness Ring

Buy on Amazon

What Does the CIRCUL Ring Do?

CIRCUL is a highly functional sleep and fitness ring, which also features blood oxygen tracking. You can use CIRCUL for continuous daytime and workout monitoring and overnight sleep tracking for up to 12 hours.

The rich biometric sleep data tracked by CIRCUL includes the blood oxygen level (SpO2), heart rate (HR), oxygen desaturation index (ODI), and the four sleep stages: awake, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. The daytime monitoring of SpO2 and heart rate are also included, as well as workout monitoring for running, walking, and biking. The data for the workouts and sleep are recorded and can be viewed on the mobile app and easily shared with a trainer, physician, caregiver, or family member.

The CIRCUL ring design features a unique adjustable sizing mechanism, which makes choosing the right size a lot less of an issue. There are only three adjustable sizes available: small, large, and extra-large. A sizing kit is not necessary with CIRCUL, and it can be used on all fingers.

How Does CIRCUL Detect Symptoms of COVID-19?

Whereas Oura combines body temperature, heart rate, heart rate variation, and respiratory rate data for detecting the symptoms of COVID-19, CIRCUL has a different approach. CIRCUL is based on tracking the blood oxygen level.

Why does blood oxygen level matter in COVID-19? When you breathe in air, tiny capillaries in your lungs absorb the oxygen, allowing it to enter your bloodstream. Red blood cells then carry that oxygen to the tissues throughout your body, including your brain and other vital organs. A low oxygen level in your blood could lead to low oxygen in your tissues, and, ultimately, organ failure.

Based on the learnings as of today, the coronavirus primarily attacks via lungs. It affects the lung cells that make surfactant, a substance that helps the air sacs in the lungs stay open between breaths to enable normal lung function. The inflammation developed by COVID-19 causes these air sacs to collapse and disrupt the blood oxygen level. Initially, during the so-called silent hypoxia, patients can still feel fine – i.e., do not feel short of breath. This allows pneumonia to worsen, and, for some patients, it can eventually develop to acute respiratory failure.

A COVID-19-infected person may be dangerously low on oxygen without realizing it. This can be detected by measuring blood oxygen level, and this is how the CIRCUL ring claims to detect COVID-19. The same method is used in pulse oximetry devices (the clip-like device mounted on your finger to measure the blood oxygen saturation in hospitals), which are used in hospitals to detect symptoms of COVID-19, among many other illnesses. 

The FDA has neither reviewed nor cleared the CIRCUL ring for diagnostic use. CIRCUL recommends you speak with your physician about the use of CIRCUL during the pandemic.

You can set up the CIRCUL ring to alert if the blood oxygen level dips below a certain threshold. While this does not qualify as a COVID-19 diagnosis, you can contact your doctor for further medical advice and virus testing. 

Oura or CIRCUL – Which One to Choose?

Despite smart rings cannot directly diagnose illnesses just yet, their data can give you an early indication of illness to enable informed testing – to help you to take better care of yourself and avoid spreading diseases to others around you.

Both Oura and CIRCUL provide viable, yet medically unverified solutions for getting help for tracking the early signs of COVID-19. To make a definitive judgment as to which one of these methods (HRV vs. SPo2) provides a better alternative for detecting COVID-19 still requires more objective medical evidence on how the virus affects our various biometric signals.

That said, both of these products have a lot more to offer when it comes to helping you to live a healthier and more balanced life.

For example, should you want to make the most out of your career, maximize your physical output during exercise, or optimize your daily work-life balance, you probably benefit most from Oura’s vast expertise in how to best align your schedules according to your circadian rhythm. Oura looks good, too. It will keep your fashion-savvy, yet street-wise facade intact no matter where you go, and what you wear with it!

On the other hand, if you want to get an easy-to-use, hassle-free device that fits any finger, and simply provides you with accurate and continuous tracking of the most essential biometric data on a clear mobile app, and allows you to easily share online reports with your family members, trainer, or doctor, you are probably better off with the CIRCUL ring. Thanks to its ingenious adjustable body, sizing is the least of your problems when ordering it!

The post Oura vs. CIRCUL: Which Is the Best Smart Ring to Detect COVID-19? first appeared on Smart Ring News.

Natural User Interface (NUI) allows you to use technology in more natural ways – using motion and gestures. Since we use our hands all the time for communicating, steering, and pointing at things, what could be a more natural user interface than a smart ring?  

Wave ring developed by Icelandic startup, Genki Instruments, is essentially a NUI for musicians to control music naturally with gestures. It’s a wearable MIDI Controller that allows you to control sound, and shape effects on a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) through six motion-based hand gestures. The Wave ring is meant to be worn on the index finger and includes an adjustable strap, three control buttons, and a LED display.

The gestures include: roll, tilt, pan, vibrato, tap, and click. You can move your hand in horizontal and vertical directions or roll the hand from one side to another control, for example, reverb or resonance. You can move  your finger quickly back and forth for vibrato effect, or tap any surface to trigger a kick drum or play a sample. These functions are all fully customizable.

Review of the Wave MIDI Controller Ring

We asked Sunset Strangler to test Wave out. Sunset Strangler is a Los Angeles-based band and music production team. They work behind the scenes with several globally known, top artists in the industry, and the leading production teams in the US and Europe. Sunset Strangler is also working on their debut EP.

The Sunset Strangler team thinks that the trend in digital music production today is bringing back the human touch, and that Wave can help musicians add human touch to digital music in alternative ways.

Five takeaways on using Wave Ring

1. Wave ring helps you to “humanize” digital music production

A lack of human touch is a common challenge for digital music production today! It is frequently heard in today’s production that even sample and midi programmed tracks should be humanized in different ways – like nudging drums or bass to add more swing and groove to the beat instead of it being precisely in the grid.  

Wave ring allows you to introduce that state of mind into processing. So, you can humanize the effects in an intuitive way via motions and gestures.

Let’s say that you want to record a synth section using a midi keyboard, and add a filter that you want to be able to control. Obviously, you could simply record the midi in and then automate the section, but with Wave, you can play and control the FX simultaneously.

2. Spice-up Your Live Sets

One of the cool things with Wave, and the available effects, is that you can easily spice up your live performance regardless of the instrument you’re playing. Softwave provides both a standalone-mode and compatibility with all the major DAWs.‍

3. Get the Audience’s Full Attention

Whether you’re performing in front of a live audience, or in the studio, this ring is excellent for drawing the full attention. Audience get more fascinated when they can actually see and understand what the performer is doing. Wave definitely adds a unique visual component for the audience, as opposed to simply watching you sliding and turning the knobs on the table.

4. Enjoy the Preset Banks!

One of the best things in Softwave is the ready-made preset banks, which you can modify or create your own. Preset banks allow you to control different parameters simultaneously with 3D motion. It basically works with any parameter – so, just get creative!‍

5. Tap Gestures

The tap gesture allows you to play and record your selected sampler instruments. You can change the used sample by clicking the buttons, and play the sample by tapping your finger. Wave’s tap gesture is also velocity-sensitive. That makes it easier to create patterns with a more human sound.

In Conclusion

The first prototype of the Wave ring was introduced at the NAMM show in the US in 2018. Today, after just two years of hard work, the Genki team has been able to ship the first generation of its product out.  

Learn more about the Wave by Genki Instruments.

‍

The post Reviewing Genki Instruments’ Wave Ring – Five Ways this MIDI Controller Ring Can Help Humanize Digital Music Production first appeared on Smart Ring News.

So, here you have it – the review of the Moodmetric smart ring. It totally surprised me with mind-blowing data about how my autonomic nervous system responds to various signals around me – and determines how stressed I feel!  

Wellness Wearables Introduction

The smart ring is probably the best wearable form-factor for wellness, health, fitness, and activity tracking applications. There are a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, the many arteries in our fingers are excellent for measuring the heart rate and blood oxygen level. These are the primary biometric signals most of these applications use to determine your health and wellbeing. A smart ring is also comfortable to wear 24/7. A ring is unnoticeable, doesn’t fall off easily, and it doesn’t disturb you when sleeping.

What Does Moodmetric Do for You?

‍The Moodmetric Smart Ring measures your stress level on the finger. It uses a unique biometric signal – the electric conductivity of the skin, also known as Electrodermal Activity (EDA).

The mobile app shows your stress level with a simple index. It provides customized recommendations for how you can recover from stress. The ring helps to recognize your stressors and stress relievers. So, with Moodmetric, you can find specific ways to manage stress and balance the autonomic nervous system to feel and perform better in your daily life.

Who Can Use Moodmetric?‍

You don’t have to be wellness-savvy, a wearable geek or biohacker to use Moodmetric. Anybody who wants to monitor their stress level can use it, really. It is easy to get started, and you won’t be overwhelmed by data, graphs, and trends.

According to Moodmetric, also companies and various organizations such as health care professionals and researchers use it. Companies have used Moodmetric for monitoring the collective wellbeing of their organization and avoiding chronic stress among employees. You can read about two case studies of companies using Moodmetric: HERE Technologies and Gigantti.

Research organizations and health care professionals use Moodmetric to measure patients’ stress responses in real-time.

‍How Does it Work? ‍

The measurement method used by Moodmetric is called Electrodermal Activity (EDA). Although Moodmetric is one of the few companies applying EDA in wearable tech, EDA itself, has been known for more than a hundred years. EDA is one of the most studied psychophysiological markers for describing the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. It is an indicator of the sympathetic activity of the autonomic nervous system that is associated with emotion, cognition, and affection. For example, lie detection tests are based on measuring EDA.

EDA is based on the electric conductivity of the skin. It varies according to the level of skin moisture and enables the measuring of electricity. The palmar and sole skin contains the highest density of the eccrine sweat glands, which is why Moodmetric’s metallic ring holder can measure changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin so accurately.

Moodmetric says that the measurement results should not be affected by hand movements or palm sweating.

Moodmetric App

The data points are stored on the ring memory and transmitted over Bluetooth to the Moodmetric App on your smartphone (press the little calendar icon on the app to initiate transmission).

The level of stress is calculated based on a complicated formula. The app luckily shows you the data simply via Moodmetric (MM) index on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the more stressed the user is. The stress level is expressed as follows: a long-term trend graph, daily charts, and real-time value. You can easily import events from calendars, or create events and activities (work, sports, family, sleep, etc.) manually. The app shows the average stress level during the events. You can also practice mediation with the app!

Getting Started

Getting on board with this stress measurement ring is easy. Moodmetric provides you with a helpful getting started-online guide on their website. You simply cannot go wrong in setting it up.

There is a brief calibration period when you take Moodmetric into use for the first time. All in all, it takes roughly 12 hours for Moodmetric to adapt to your skin moisture variations fully. However, you start to see the real-time stress index (violet line) on the app pretty much right away.

The nice thing with Moodmetric is that you don’t have to register if you don’t want to. However, if you do register, you can have Moodmetric remotely help you in interpreting the data!

How to Interpret the Moodmetric Stress Index?‍

Moodmetric has developed a proprietary algorithm for deriving the stress, the MM index. It indicates your arousal on a scale from 1 to 100. A high MM index value (usually 75 or above) means high arousal level, and that your sympathetic nervous system is very active. You can take this as both positive and negative feedback. It could be due to that you are enthusiastic. On the other hand, it can also mean that you are distraught, which is negative.

A low MM index value can indicate that your parasympathetic nervous system is working to recover from stress. A stress index 15 or below indicates that you are fine and calmed down.

Moodmetric Test Findings ‍

The data Moodmetric provides is, in my opinion, truly fascinating! You can clearly see what stresses you most, and how can you relieve stress most efficiently. You can see an instant response between a stress signal and your autonomic nervous system reaction.

Here is an example of how walking in nature, through a silent patch of a park, instantly lowered my stress index. And how noisy traffic in an urban area raised it up again.

Hardware and Software

The first version of Moodmetric was launched in 2015, and the product does feel like a mature and solid piece of splash-water-resistant wearable hardware. The app software and synching are functioning properly without disturbing glitches. Battery-life allows you for roughly one week of use, after which you can plug it on USB and charge it fully in only 2 hours. ‍

In Conclusion

Moodmetric’s design is most definitely elegant and sophisticated. Despite its sizeable embodiment, the device does not disturb you in regular use at the office, when taking care of daily chores at home, or when sleeping.

Can you use Moodmetric during sports and exercise? Yes and no. If you do yoga, or go out for jogging, walking or skiing, just take Moodmetric with you and you won’t even notice wearing it. However, forget it in team sports, contact sports, and whenever you are bound to take in some hard-hit and rough ride.

As with any wellness wearable, Moodmetric doesn’t reduce your stress. Its sole purpose is to provide you with simple, factual data to help you to manage your life better. It shows where your body and mind is at any moment so that you can adjust your level of doing and going accordingly. It is a tool that helps you to learn what’s right for you in terms of winding down, and what you should avoid doing to live a healthier life.

The post Reviewing Moodmetric Smart Ring – A Wearable Companion for Stress Measurement and Management! first appeared on Smart Ring News.