MetaWear Coin gives anyone the ability to construct and sell their own smartwatch or other wearable device, by plugging together key components and sensors.
The MetaWear Coin is a tiny round device that packs in a CPU, memory, motion sensors and Bluetooth support. A tiny replaceable coin-cell battery provides power for between three and six months of use and in all, the thing is about the size of a ten pence piece.
You can add your own sensors and extra components and then tell the MetaWear Coin exactly what to do – for instance, it could constantly log data from one or more of the connected sensors and then raise an alarm if a certain limit is hit.
Activity monitoring for exercise fans is a pretty obvious example given by the creators. So a rock climber, cyclist or all-round adrenaline junkie could use the motion sensors to monitor their session and plot their efforts onto a chart, which is then accessed on an iOS or Android handset. It can also notify you of calls or messages, flashing different colours based on who’s getting in touch – and the small size means that it can be built into a pendant or necklace instead of a smartwatch.
MetaWear Coin is completely open source (meaning you can fiddle with the code as much as you like) and there are example routines and apps provided in case your coding knowledge isn’t up to scratch.
The MetaWear Coin is like a more flexible version of the Blocks modular smartwatch, which is set to launch in the UK early next year. Blocks allows you to assemble your own watch out of various bits such as batteries, heart rate sensors and even different displays, although it doesn’t give general owners the option to code their own functionality.
MetaWear Coin has just launched on Kickstarter.
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