Aurum197

Eep! Good catch, thank you :)

Please tell her thank you for the enthusiastic want and that it's not a club; it's a list so we can send out an announcement as soon as we open the shop next.

Yes, I agree. We made our SmartEarrings™ for situations where AirPods and earbuds are not socially acceptable. And yet, in discussing hearing aids, I forgot that AirPods-as-hearing aids won't work precisely for that reason: the social cost of wearing hearables in meetings.

Thanks coolgeek :)

We have an mvp, and we have been selling the earrings in batches.

Thanks jrexilius!

There is a twitter group around #hearables and they agree that AirPods are already a hearing aid substitute for mild hearing issues.

Yes, you can make your own earrings and wear with this module! (Though our earrings have a feature on the reverse side that make them a slightly better option.)

Yes :)

I am intrigued about "technically simpler." Can you elaborate?

There was also an Alistair Reynolds book in which the protagonist wears earrings that are earphones. I read that after I started working on my idea.

Well, you can't file patents for ideas. You have to show how they work.

For our mvp we just went with the standard firmware.

Think of them as standard earbuds in a form factor that makes them compatible with earrings.

That'd be a good problem to have :)

(And apologies for the all caps open-ear)

deepGem, the earrings are swappable!

Are you sure they had a working prototype? I don't see how they could fit a circuit board and a battery and everything else in that form factor. Also the images don't look like product images.

An "easy" solution then is for hearing aids to look like earbuds; that would normalize hearing aid; but then if you have to spend $5K on them, do you really want them to look like everyday earbuds? Quandary!

You are absolutely right. The distinction between hearing aids and hearables is blurring. We would definitely like to be in that space down the road.

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

Some reasons why we made these: 1. Earbuds are easy to lose for two reasons: they are not attached to your ear and they spend a lot of time in your pockets or messenger bag or purse. Our earrings are at your ears, and attached to your earlobes (albeit loosely!) 2. Earbuds/Airpods are a social faux pas in many situations: meetings for instance. Earrings, even statement earrings, are usually acceptable everywhere. 3. Earbuds/Airpods, however cool they may be, would look wrong with a party outfit when you still want to be connected, and be handsfree. An extreme example would be the Met Gala or a Red Carpet event. For us non-celebs, a dance party. 4. Many of us don't like the idea of putting anything inside the ear. It's uncomfortable. And the "lint" that sticks to the bud is just gross. Our earrings solve that problem. 5. Earbuds can be dangerous by blocking all sound. Transparent mode is a solution. Open-ear (like our earrings) is a more natural solution.

Ultimately, there are specific use cases for our earrings, but even though they are specific, they are not at all uncommon.

Depends on the use case. For instance, it is just barely ok for music but I honestly find most earbuds inadequate when it comes to listening to music. For phone calls, podcasts, etc (basically spoken word) which is what we designed our earrings for, the audio quality is just fine. Keep in mind that this is just an MVP. We will improve the sound quality as we make progress.

Muffled sound is one of my pet peeves; so no, ours, don't block out sound. Do you have any thoughts on what men might want in largish earrings?

We did think of call centers as potential customers! Happy to hear from you about audio quality, etc!

Thanks Jmarchello!

But no one has managed to execute it like we did.

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

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.)

Did not know that!