Out of the Top three finger ring gadgets under development, 2 are from India. “Fin” (from Cochin) and “Smarty Ring” (from Chennai) will fight it out with California based Logbar Inc who is developing the “Ring“!
All three have been adequately crowd funded on IndieGogo & Kickstarter.
Fin has raised $200,000 on IndieGogo in March 2014– Promise to Deliver from Sept 2014
Smarty Ring has raised $300,000 on IndieGogo – & Has Promised to Deliver the gadget from April 2014 (Seem to be under pressure)
The “Ring” has raised whopping $880,000 in April 2014 on Kickstarter & has a July 2014 target to ship.
FIN
Fin is a wearable gadget being developed by a group of young engineers in Cochin. Their company, RHL Vision Technologies was on of the first to be incubated at the Startup Village in Cochin, Kerala.
Fin was one of the top 15 gadgets at the 2014 TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas. The company is gearing up to opening it’s online pre-order platform at their website https://www.wearfin.com/
Fin is worn on your thumb and has sensors in it that can uniquely recognize each segment of the fingers. So you can assign different functions to each finger segment, and you can perform a function by just making your thumb touch the relevant segment. It also has Bluetooth that can be used to link Fin to other devices like your smart phone, TV or another wearable device.
You can pre-order Fin (expected to start deliveries in Sept 2014) for $120.
Fin has certainly created a buzz around the world, in tech circles. But will the ride be smooth? There is strong competition brewing in the name of “Ring”!
THE RING
Ring by a Japanese Company “Logbar” with operating office in California provides four functions:
1. A gesture control function to control home appliances and apps;
2. Texting where gesturing of letters in the air enables the user to write a text;
3. Payment information transmission to settle payment of bills with a single gesture;
4. Receive/alert function to detect incoming transmissions/alerts through built-in vibration and LED.
Ring uses precise letter recognition software called Ring Font that enables users to type letters anywhere, including, in the air!
Logbar (https://logbar.jp/en/) has developed its own ultra-small finger gesture recognition technology from scratch. This allows the Ring to detect not just large sweeping gestures with the hand but even minuscule ones made by the finger alone. Ring comes with its own preset gesture for launching and controlling apps.
SMARTY RING
Then there is another gadget called Smarty Ring (https://smartyring.com) also being developed in India (Chennai to be precise). Smarty Ring does not boast of any gesture recognition technology unlike Fin and the Ring. Smarty Ring is a 13mm-wide stainless steel ring with an LED screen, Bluetooth 4.0, and an accompanying smartphone app.
The Smarty Ring pairs with a smartphone and acts as a remote control and notification receiver. The Smarty Ring has raised $300,000 on Indiegogo with the promise of first shipment in April 2014 (Looks unlikely to happen though considering the amount of sarcastic comments seen at their Indiegogo page!)
So will “Fin” with it’s exclusive finger segment & gesture technology, be the winner?!
Will the “Ring” with its much larger funding and ability to recognize “writing in the air”, beat the others in the race?
Will “Smarty Ring” with its long list of features (alert, track, schedule, remote control etc), get to the top?
It would indeed be interesting, to follow their saga!
Note: I am not associated with any of these start-ups.
Originally Published at: https://www.coworkzone.in/blog.html
(Edited to meet Rodinhood Guidelines)
