Dublin-headquartered wearable technology company Lumafit has just gone live with a campaign on crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise US$60,000 to produce what it describes as the world’s first fitness tracker for body and mind.
The campaign on Kickstarter has just gone live and at the time of writing some 20 backers had pledged US$1,890 towards the Lumafit project. The campaign has 38 more days to go.
Lumafit’s founders CEO Darran Hughes and the company’s CTO Stephen Hughes previously worked at MIT MediaLab Europe when it was in Ireland.
There they worked on multiple projects linking brainwave and other biological data to computer-game applications.
The idea behind the Lumafit technology is to keep its wearers mind fit as well as body fit.
The Lumafit device is worn around the ear to precisely identify and rate cardio workouts.
There are three core tracker apps associated with the device: Home Fitness, Gym Tracker and Yoga Breathing.
At home the Lumafit allows users to track bootcamp sessions including exercises such as lunges, sit-ups or squats. At the gym it tracks your workout with precision allowing you to own your stats and visualize progress over time. The Lumafit also provides medical grade heart data that guide and analyse yoga breathing sessions.
The device contains a photoplethysmograph, a three axis accelerometer, a Bluetooth radio, a 100 mAh battery capable of six hours of battery life, a 30 metre wireless range and it is Android and iOS compatible.
According to the spec on Kickstarter: “The Lumafit uses optical light sensors (Red and Infrared) to measure heart activity. The key to the measurement is the fact that hemoglobin in the blood absorbs light differently depending on whether it is carrying an oxygen molecule or not. Every time your heart beats it pushes oxygenated hemoglobin though the arteries. This waveform can be picked up in high resolution though our optical sensors.
“The head motion is measured via a 3 axis accelerometer. This allows the Lumafit to track head trajectory over time and identify specific types of individual motion (such as a sit-up) or continuous motion (such as on a cross trainer).”
The company has partnered with Liam Casey’s PCH International to manufacture the device.
It is envisaged that the first 1,000 units will be manufactured in October and shipped to Kickstarter supporters.
