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Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

I don't tennis, but it looks pretty cool.

At the risk of thread hijacking, I have a broader question. My assumption is that most wearable bracelets have the same tech/sensors inside and the difference is in how your software interprets said sensor signals. So why doesn't someone create an open bracelet that people can hack and customize for any sports/fitness application?

I mean, I would have loved something like this for baseball back in the day (both for pitching and hitting). There are wearables for golf too[0].

So, why not just a generic wearable + SDK/app store?

[0] http://mashable.com/2014/05/22/zepp-golf-sensor-review/

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Oh man, you have no idea how much this gnaws at me. Especially with the Myo.

So, for a bit of background, the Myo has 6 (or was it 9?) EMG channels, and at least a 6 axis IMU (I think it might have magnetometer as well). The developer API they plan on releasing will only give you the post processed signal + the raw IMU signal - that is to say, they'll tell you the current affinity to each of the pre-programmed gestures (~6 or so) that Thalmic has set up. There is no way to normally get access to the EMG data.

They will however give you units with 'special firmware' if you sign up for their researcher partnership program which costs $10k+ the last time I talked to them (this winter). Needless to say, this is clearly aimed at university research labs.

I can't really say just how frustrating this is, as someone just leaving undergrad, and with a passion for sport and science/engineering. The worst part is just how understandable it is.

Nearly all the players in this field are startups of some sort. Their #1 goal is to get stable positive cash flow out of some niche market. As a hardware startup, they have significant costs to overcome. There just is no incentive for them to split off some effort to try to capture this type of open system/market.

But seriously, I crave an open hardware platform for this. But at the same time, it's obvious that the costs are non-trivial. The 'science' part of the payload isn't even hard. IMU + microprocessor + bluetooth. The hard part is hardware packaging, getting it into a form factor that has enough battery life, will stay in position on the body, will not adversely bother the user, or modify their movement. All of these issues are non-trivial and have to be solved for hardware release.

Seriously, I wish I just had a pile of cash, and a couple years to ticker. sigh

I work for MapMyFitness, and we're aiming at the software side of the equation. We used to be a startup until we were acquired by UnderArmour, so now we're starting to plot out projects that will be taking years to pay off.

Drop me a line if you want to talk more: dave.mclain@mapmyfitnessinc.com

I'm one of the co-founders at Thalmic (Myo).

We get the request for raw muscle data quite often, and are trying to find a way to handle it better in the future. The reason we don't provide it now actually has nothing to do with money (we do have a small number of research groups that pay for this, engineering support, and other services, but it represents a tiny fraction of a percent of revenue).

The reason is actually two-fold:

1. User Experience - Unfortunately you're probably the exception, in that it sounds like you may be able to build a great experience using the raw data. The reality we've found is that it requires a deep machine learning and statistical analysis background to do much useful with the data, considering the need to account for a wide variety of variations in data intra and inter person. What we're trying to prevent is developers attempting to create "custom" gestures improperly (e.g. if (myo.sensor1 > 67% && myo.sensor2 > 30%){output = Rock_On}), which will not work reliably on the population, in different orientations, etc., then the user has a bad experience, and blames the device hardware.

2. Battery Life - Streaming raw data uses much much more power than when we process the data on the device, and recognize gestures directly on-board.

We are considering options to provide this data in some way, as there are certainly good uses in some applications, such as Tennis analysis.

You could quite easily do everything the Smash device does, plus additional information on grip strength, using a Myo armband. It's all about the software!

It's great to hear that. I'm sure you've heard this already, but there are non-trivial amounts of part-time researchers who are salivating over your tech, principally as a tool for scientific exploration, or just tickering. These aren't so much people coming out a developer background, but those coming from a research background, people who can totally understand and stomach difficulties associated with EMG.

Basically, I believe there to be a great deal of people who are in similar situations to your current research group partners in technical aptitude and expectations, but differ in their financial resources - which is why your product in particular is so attractive in the first place.

I really look forward to seeing how this develops.

The market for a generic would probably be smaller. My guess is each application probably shares basics (like an accelerometer) but has different requirements (accuracy, noise, processing power, sample rate) if not entirely different sensors (maybe one needs GPS and one needs a barometer). Which means the generic bracelet that would work for every application would have to be the superset of all possible requirements- and that's $$$$.

But you probably could market one bracelet for a couple different sports, so long as they are similar & you can write the software. Baseball & tennis might overlap a lot, for example.

I don't think accuracy of IMU's out there vary dramatically, and the noise shouldn't matter too much (all major ones within some +-3 db?) -- sure, if they were a few orders of magnitude more accurate you would get a whole new type of applications -- but with current ranges you're restricted to some kind of pattern recognition (i.e. not full motion tracking), which is quite noise resilient.

By "noise" I wasn't just referring to noise in the sensor. PSU noise, for example, needs to be controlled to below some limit. That increases the BOM count and thus $$$.

I agree. An open bracelet would be cool but from a bussiness point of view it doesn't make that much sense. There are countless of startups who refused to focus on a core target market and failed. Instead what you should do is focus your development efforts on the core product and listen to community feedback for cool ideas, then provide the necessary API for them to build it. Which is basically what these guys are doing.

I think smash aims to be that sort of wearable. From the kickstarter page:

We’re planning to open up an API to developers. There’s going to be a truckload of data, and whilst we have our own visions of where Smash can go, we wouldn’t want to restrict others from creating greatness. We're keen to move Smash into more sports and create more insightful features for players.

Hmm, perhaps an iWatch would fulfill such a role

I'm still willing to bet a steak or sushi dinner that Apple will not release an iWatch. A wearable bracelet, maybe. But not a watch.

What do you call a bracelet with a touch screen? Semantics, anyhow.

Agree, it's as valid as calling your pocket touchscreen computer a "phone".

I believe that they're already doing tooling for it at the manufacturing company where I intern. So don't make that bet with too many people

Foxconn intern?

a watch is a wearable bracelet that just happens to tell time, and often a few other things.

Watches made the transition from time piece to jewelery many years ago. With the time being ubiquitously available watches have been relegated to being a "wearable bracelet" (is there any other kind?) - A Rolex submariner, for example, does the exact same thing as a $5 plastic cheapy, but people still buy Rolex and all the other > $5 watches as jewelery (i.e. social signalling of status)

Why wouldn't they include the time on a wearable bracelet?

Personally, I can't agree enough with this. Positioning the wearable as a "iBracelet" means that it can be work at the same time as a consumer's watch; whereas an "iWatch" potentially limits the market.

That said, I can completely understand the position of making an iWatch and forcing the choice between existing watches and Apple's. However, to me it's better to competing with fitbit than rolex.

The bet has to have a deadline or noone will be eating steak or sushi.

No deadline means he can never win the bet, but whoever he is betting with can, so seems win win ;)

The Pebble has the potential to be the generic wearable you describe. It's accelerometer and CPU are very similar to the FuelBand, and it's easy to write apps for. I'm not sure why it hasn't taken off as a sport platform. Perhaps there are software limitations or it's difficult to monetize apps.

Or perhaps there are physical constrains like the durability. On pebble's website it does mention being scratch resistant but I don't know if it can endure the frequent impact it will encounter in many sports.

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