KipstR: a 3D-printed wearable that records TV shows when you doze off
A new wristband, called KipstR, wants to make sure you never miss another minute of your favorite TV show because you dozed off on the couch. The 3D-printed wearable acts like a TiVo remote and can pause or record whatever TV show you are watching if it detects that you have fallen asleep.
The KipstR (‘Kip’ is British slang for ‘a nap’) was created by two British teens, Ryan Oliver, 15, and Jonathan Kingsley, 14, students at Manchester Creative Studio, in collaboration with Virgin Media, as part of its Switched on Futures initiative.
KipstR uses a pulse-oximeter to sense if the wearer is asleep or awake and then impersonates the users’ TiVo remote control to pause or record whatever TV show they’re watching. It can also resume play if it senses that you have woken up again.
The pulse-oximeter measures blood flow and the amount of oxygen circulating through the wearer’s body to know when you are awake or asleep. The KipstR features a lithium-polymer battery, a push button, sleep mode indicator and a spark core chip to handle data processing.
The prototype’s wristband was 3D-printed with an Object Connex 3D printer using a resin called Polyjet that’s tougher than the more common rigid plastics created by 3D printers.
Virgin Media envisions a broad range of use cases for wearable technologies like KipstR saying that it could be used to help TiVo learn which shows evoke the strongest responses from wearers by monitoring their emotional reactions or to save time and money by sleep-controlling other connected devices in a home, such as central heating.
Right now the KipstR only works with Virgin Media’s TiVo box and is being trialed by Oliver and Kingsley. There is no planned release date, but customers can register their interest with Virgin media.
Image via Virgin Media
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