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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

It looks really cool and innovative, so congrats.

However, it's pretty hard to evaluate since there's nothing concrete on the site and it's hard to imagine how they work.

What buttons do they have? How do they charge? How do you actually hear the audio when it doesn't actually go in your ear? Since it doesn't go in your ear, can someone next to you hear your audio -- is it private? What part swaps out? What's the battery life? What's the price? How much is the base price, and how much for each swappable part? Etc. etc. etc.

From the website alone (ignoring your HN title), I'd assume you haven't made these yet and you're just trying to gauge demand. But assuming you actually have made them... please show them off not just on the fashion side, but on the functionality side! Give us all the info please. :)

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Thanks crazygringo. To answer your questions: - We have made an MVP, and it works. - While the speaker doesn't go into the earcanal, it hovers over it. - It is private. Much like holding your phone to your ear while speaking. - The part that swaps out is the audiomodule. - The battery life isn't that great for the MVP; but we hope to improve it with our production model.

Battery life and battery weight are my two big concerns. Otherwise I think this has potential to be an absolute blockbuster. Especially if you can produce a whole line of unique designs.

Tootie, while the battery life is short of AirPods, it is at par with many other earbuds. Since our module is independent of the earrings, we do plan to offer many styles of earrings. That's part of our business model: that the same customer will buy multiple earrings per module. About the weight: that was our big concern as well. But we did make a few that are lighter than some standard dangler style earrings.

Great work! First person I showed your site to said "Why didn't I think of that?!", which is always a great sign.

If you can compete with or beat most other earphones for battery time, you're already set. Unless you can identify some low hanging fruit, I wouldn't invest much more time into power management because getting Apple-like power management without degrading the connection and user experience is really hard. The two work against each other unless you've got the resources to run large tests to compare changes and perturb towards a solution.

I'd recommend focusing on sourcing. The manufacturers who make cells for Apple and auto manufacturers bin their output just like other silicon fabs and only give Apple/automotive customers the best cells (selling the rest to less discerning clients making consumer electronics, ecigs, etc.). On the extreme, I've seen batches of 18650s from the same manufacturer vary from 2Ah to 3.5Ah depending on what quality of Samsung cells they got. You could probably eek out 10-30% more life that way, but it's hard to predict the final outcome during R&D.

Binning could be done too. Selling a normal and a pro version, with the pro one receiving the better batteries they got from their supplier

What does binning mean in this context?

It refers to manufacturing a product and then separating it into tiers based on how well the process went. It's like how 16 GB MicroSD cards are just failed 32 GB cards, they don't set out to manufacture multiple sizes.

Did not know that!

Thanks tpetry. I wasn't familiar with binning.

Thank you, Akiselev! And that's exactly where we are: trying to figure out sourcing.

Perhaps you could integrate the battery into the earring part so while you're wearing one pair you can hot-swap to a fully charged pair. I like the concept though, very interesting!

It's an idea we considered seriously. But ultimately we decided that we wanted our customers to have the option of throwing away the module when it got outdated, but be able to hang on to the jewelry especially if they buy a precious metal version.

Well, hopefully they will recycle the batteries but it's a good point!

Have you spent much time looking at hearing aid designs?

I think you'll find a lot of embodied wisdom on how to discreetly route audio into the ear canal.

One of the design features that we wanted to include in our main embodiment was: OPEN-EAR audio. Having something sitting inside the ear all day did not appeal to us; which is why we went with this design. There are a number of ways to disguise an in-canal hearable, but the "in-canal" option was something we wanted to avoid for all-day wear.

OPEN-EAR audio doesn't work in crowded cities, where you will find most of your demand.

If it's just podcasts or notifications it works fine 99% of the time. It's really just when the subway is pulling in, or an ambulance is going by, that you won't be able to hear. But as long as the button on the earring works as pause/play, it seems fine.

True. There are situations where open-ear is not a great solution. But it works well for most of our use cases.

(And apologies for the all caps open-ear)

I dont understand why would anyone wear this. It is less annoying regarding look than Apple earphones (that look like in-ear cigarette, I am still unable to get used to someone wearing them). I cant remember when it was last time I have seen someone wearing such a large piece of earrings - except maybe some old lady.

Is this just a prototype and you can make them smaller? Probably not as you need that part over the ear channel to hide the transparent tube, like with hearing aid, right?

If you live in any city where people have a sense of style; London, Tokyo, Paris, you'll find a plenty of people wearing "such large [...] earrings".

Yes it's somewhat of a niche market; but if done right, it can work. If they're selling them with precious gems/metals they wouldn't even need a huge market to be viable.

Imagine if they designed the audio-module so you can slip it out of the earring and into an in-ear device/holder for in-ear use a la AirPods, then on your casual days you don't need the fancy jewellery.

We do need the earrings to be reasonably large if they are to cover the battery, the circuit board, and the speaker. HOWEVER, the module can be worn with stud earrings (in which case the module will show but they still have many advantages over earbuds.)

Check out the PDF of the patent for what look like all the details on how it works: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017049261A1/en

Our production model uses a removable audio module. So the earrings can be worn with or without the audio.

They do sit in the ear like a low-profile earbud. You can kind of tell from some of the photos (but the video makes it more obvious) that these aren't using the pierced hole of the model's ear. They're sitting on the ear canal opening. The video also shows some of the interaction similar to an airpod tap.

edit: Yea, I assumed wrong as several commenters pointed out.

Are you sure? To me in the video it definitely seems like they are using an actual piercing, @ 1:05 you can see it swing away from her ear

edit:

In the pdf link above it states

> "Ear Jewelry with Wireless Audio Device" provides a headset apparatus in which the audio device extends through the piercing in the wearer's ear, with the signal path passing through the piercing of the ear itself from a wireless communications device at the first end to the sound production unit at the opposite end.

At 1:10 you can see someone attaching the backing to the earring

I don't think that's accurate. Looking at the patent application (courtesy of klyrs below, https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017049261A1/en), it is indeed an earring that fits into a person's pierced ears. The speaker reaches up to and maybe into the ear canal, but unliked bud earphones, they are not held in place by the speaker.

In the linked pdf, see pages 1, 37, 38, 39 and 41 for diagrams. In the background, they also say "a headset apparatus in which the audio device extends through the piercing in the wearer's ear."

Scott_s, that's right. We use the piercing of the ear. But we are also working on a clip-on version for those who don't have pierced ears. Also, as you said, the speaker reaches unto the ear canal (which helps support the speaker somewhat as well.)

You might consider variants that use a conch piercing or a stretched earlobe piercing instead - I'm pretty sure, among the earring wearers of the affluent world, far more have stretched earlobes than have unpierced earlobes, and probably also more have conch piercings.

Conch piercing will likely be an easy adaptation, but the stretched earlobe variant sounds daunting. An interesting design challenge for sure.

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