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Can a head-worn fitness device work? Recon seems to think so

Long before Google had ever uttered the word glass, Recon Instruments was rising to prominence with a head-worn display designed for snow sports. You’d be forgiven for not knowing the name, since the technology was buried inside expensive sets of ski goggles like Oakley’s Airwave. Then, the company announced that a new product for cyclists and runners would arrive, this time branded under its own name. Few outside the running/cycling community paid attention to the Recon Jet, since they were all distracted by Google’s rival. Two years later, and Glass has been pulled from the market in the hope that Tony Fadell can turn it into a device people want to buy. As such, the road is clear for Recon’s fitness-oriented wearable, but can this small Canadian company succeed where Google failed? Earlier this year, I sat down with the company’s Tom Fowler and a nearly finished prototype of the final hardware to find out.

Jet, in essence, is a pair of sunglasses that you wear when running or cycling that look a bit heavier than your average pair of Ray-Bans. Style-wise, they’re less geeky or sporty, resembling the sort of tactical eyewear that only hairy vigilante Dog the Bounty Hunter could fall in love with. That’s not to say the device is ugly, but you’ll have to recalibrate your wardrobe to ensure that you don’t look like a reject from a Roger Corman sci-fi movie. I’d suggest ditching the suit in favor of some brightly colored spandex and a cycling helmet at the very least.

Hardware-wise, and assuming that you’re wearing them, you’ll find the “compute module” on the right-hand side of the frame. Tucked inside here is a 1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, Bluetooth, GPS and the various movement sensors that’ll track your activities. There’s a 2.1-megapixel camera up front and the heads-up display that’s held in position below your right eye. One thing you won’t find is a cable that joins this to the battery module stationed on the opposite side, and that’s because there isn’t one.

Instead, energy passes between the two with a microfilament, which is embedded in the lenses themselves. Undeniably cool as that may be, it serves as an added reason to treat the Jet with kid gloves, because you won’t be able to replace anything on the cheap. In the future, the company is hoping to offer some aftermarket lenses in various tints (clear, yellow and mirrored) as well as prescription versions, but don’t hold your breath for these to arrive anytime soon.

You may need a phone to tether your Jet to the internet, but the hardware is designed for standalone use, with the controls built into the compute module itself. There’s a pair of buttons on the underside — OK and Back — while a four-way touch panel sits on the side to respond to your up-down and left-right swipes. There’s also a small nubbin below the display that’ll let you angle the screen to better suit your eyeline, and the company claims that it’s the equivalent of staring at a 30-inch HD display.

If you’re already a glasses wearer, then nothing about the Jet will be too disconcerting, apart from the heaviness. Because the compute module is heavier than the battery by a good margin, the whole thing had a tendency to list to the right a little. Admittedly, after I’d gotten used to the feel, I had to wear the Jet over my existing glasses to try it out properly since I wasn’t wearing contact lenses and there’s no prescription offering.

Once you’ve activated the hardware, the first thing you’re offered is to begin an activity, and running is, tellingly, displayed first. It’s one swipe to the right if you want to switch to cycling. When you start an activity, the small screen will begin pumping the usual bevy of statistics to your eye, with more promised in future software updates. If you want additional numbers, you can pair the appropriate ANT+ accessories like a chest-mounted heart rate monitor or a cadence sensor. At the time of writing, firm battery life information wasn’t available, but only the slowest of marathoners would be put off by the Jet’s life, which should run to an estimated 5.5 hours on a charge.

Unfortunately, in this behind-closed-doors demo, I wasn’t able to take the gear out for a proper field test. Instead, I turned my attention to what Recon hopes to achieve with the Jet and how it intends to avoid the pitfalls other wearables have made. Fowler went to great pains not to mention competing products by name (so I will instead: It rhymes with “Boogle Blass”), but said that their biggest flaw was a lack of “purpose.” I know what he means, since it was never clear what Google’s head-mounted computer was designed to do.

For instance, we don’t use our smartphones as phones anymore, but that’s the task that they’re ostensibly purchased to fulfill. Glass never seemed to have a sense of doing one job well, since it was a fairly rudimentary camera, navigation and notification device. Rather than being designed to stay on your face all day, Fowler believes that the Recon Jet will be used for a specific job — tracking your runs and cycle rides — and then put away when you’re done.

There’s a refreshing lack of grand plans about “platforms” from Fowler, too, although he believes that Jet has the potential to be more than just a cycling accessory. The company has teamed up with professor Samuele Marcora to learn if athletes would run faster if subjected to subliminal training. According to the research, inspirational messages that are flashed into a sprinter’s eyes can help improve their speed and stamina. Recon has also been touting the Jet around various sectors including law enforcement and the oil and gas industry to help remote workers communicate.

For now, however, Recon Jet needs to prove that it can be accepted by the fitness crowd, but will it? At this early stage, I’m struggling to see many runners who would rush to pay the $699 for one of these devices. After all, while it offers a raft of features that you can’t get on a GPS watch, there aren’t any that runners are exactly crying out for. Additionally, the doubled price (over other fitness wearables) doesn’t justify the convenience of not having to check your wrist every now and again for your performance statistics.

Cyclists, on the other hand, are likely to buy these in droves, which is why it’s so incongruous that running is the first option on the menu. The unobtrusive and glanceable heads-up display would be perfect for a rider who doesn’t want to take their eyes off the road. In addition, the built-in camera might just be perfect for recording those moments when douchebags cut you off in city traffic. It may be vastly more expensive than a handlebar-mounted unit, but it also does a lot more and those added features make sense here.

As a kicker, $699 is half what Google was asking people to pay for its equivalent, and many may consider it a cheap way to get into the head-mounted wearable space. As such, if your second skin is spandex and you’re always wearing a crash helmet, then giving this a go seems like a good idea. In addition to the US price, you can also pick Jet up in Europe (€749), the UK (£579.99), Japan (88,800 Yen) and Canada ($879 CAD) via the company’s website.

Filed under: Wearables

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Flextronics brings US manufacturing to the startup set

At the end of the San Francisco Bay, in the center of the town of Milpitas, sits a nondescript office park. The Flextronics’ campus is situated in the middle of this sprawl surrounded by rows of parking spaces and strips of manicured grass. It looks like any other set of buildings in any other industrial park in any other metropolitan area in the United States. But its seemingly boring location is what makes this bland row of buildings in the San Jose suburb so intriguing. Flextronics is doing something that was unheard of just a few years ago — it built a US-based factory that’s manufacturing hardware for small companies. One of those companies is Recon.

Two years ago, sports wearable company Recon had an idea. It would bring its Snow2 HUD technology to sunglasses for runners and cyclists. The Recon Jet (launching today) would be the Google Glass for athletes and the teaser video got people excited. Then it had to build it. The company has used a manufacturing partner in Mexico for its previous hardware. The partnership was fruitful, but the Jet was a new product and the team thought that the 13-hour plane rides to Mexico and the language barrier could delay the lead up to production. It was already into the prototyping phase when CEO and co-founder Dan Eisenhardt met Flextronics President Mike Dennison at CES.

At the time, Flextronics was doing something to expand its manufacturing portfolio. It had set aside a portion of the company’s Milpitas campus to help cultivate the small, but growing wearables market. “Our idea was if we create this capability in this infrastructure and organizational structure — in this case, it was about $15 million of investment — we can create the playground for these young companies to come in and really, really nurture their ideas into a real product,” says Dennison. That playground is right in Silicon Valley’s backyard giving both large and small hardware businesses the opportunity to prototype and manufacture their products without traveling to China, Brazil or Mexico.

Google already took advantage of the campus’ proximity and know-how to bring the Chromecast to market. Unlike other projects, the Chromecast was brought to Flextronics before a design had been finalized. They worked together to iterate the design and production until the unit was ready for manufacturing. Flextronics took the lessons learned during those four weeks and applied them to its partnership with Recon and other hardware companies.

However, building a new product isn’t the same as updating an existing device. It’s an ongoing process that requires continually building new prototypes. “Design it. Run it down the line. Test it. Play with it. Go back and do it again as many times as you can, as cheaply as you can,” says Dennison. Flextronics offers Recon the tools, talent and suppliers to get the Jet out the door quicker than the traditional path of working with factories in other countries. The on-site tooling and molding shops were used not only for the device, but also for the tools being used on the manufacturing line. The facility’s one-stop-shop approach also helps reduce further delays of the already delayed Jet.

Like the Chromecast, the Jet would undergo significant changes before actual manufacturing would begin. It also had to look good. Recon Director of Manufacturing Dominique Kwong noted, “It’s eyewear; it’s fashion; that’s part of the product.” Therefore blemishes and slight variations in the shell color were unacceptable. Recon could give suppliers feedback quicker than when it was manufacturing out of Mexico. “For myself, for my staff, to be able to jump on a plane and two hours later be able to make those decisions is invaluable,” said Kwong.

The hardware startup world is filled with stories of founders living next to a Chinese factory for months at a time iterating on a design. They patiently wait to pump out a few prototypes between runs of larger-volume products. Flextronics wants to be the one that ends that hassle. But don’t expect the manufacturer to embrace every small company with an idea for a new piece of hardware. So far, it’s built only four highly secure confidential centers for small firms to work on their prototypes with a dedicated team. Interested outfits are vetted on how far along the product is in the prototyping and design phase and whether or not it fits with Flextronics. In other words, if it will sell.

And it’s really all about getting products in consumers’ hands. Flextronics gives these companies the ability to scale quickly because they’re already in its system. If the Recon Jet becomes the next GoPro or Pebble, manufacturing can be moved to the company’s factory in Austin, Texas, or even overseas. It’s a win-win for Flextronics. It gets to be at the forefront of an emerging market and if one of those devices hits the big time, it’s primed for big-time scale and big-time profits.

Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables

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The DEA’s using powerful spyware for surveillance too

The war on drugs has a surprising soldier amongst its ranks: Italian spying software. As Motherboard‘s sources tell it, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s dropped $2.4 million on surveillance tools that are capable of intercepting phone calls, texts, social media messages, and can even take hold of someone’s webcam and microphone. Oh, Remote Control System (as its officially called) can grab passwords, too. Almost sounds like a video game, right? The Hacking Team-developed software (the outfit behind Ethiopian cyberattacks on US journalists), can be installed on the sly and grants access to data that may very well be encrypted or otherwise inaccessible by other means. It comes hot on the heels of news that the DEA’s been collecting phonecall metadata for an awfully lot longer than the NSA, too. Naturally, no one on either side of the story has been eager to open up to Motherboard, and presumably journalists in general.

Perhaps the biggest question this raises is if it’s legal for law enforcement to hack perps. Motherboard‘s privacy analyst sources note that because the laws surrounding how these types of tools are “extremely unclear” it stands to reason that using RCS is possibly illegal. Given how it’s rolled downhill from the intelligence community to law enforcement, there’s a fear that it could eventually hit your local police department too. Remember, for law enforcement to do any sort of searches a judge needs to sign a warrant first.

And there’s precedent for them smacking this sort of thing down: Judges have intervened and not allowed the FBI to use malware before. Hopefully this can spark a public debate and get the drug agency’s use of RCS in front of government officials and formal investigation or reform can begin. Motherboard‘s piece is an excellent read, so be sure to hit the links below.

[Image credit: Anthony de Rosa/Flickr]

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Motherboard

The Navy sees its future in unmanned fighters

The US Navy is creating an office to oversee drones and may never order another manned fighter jet. Navy secretary Ray Mabus told a conference that “the F-35 should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.” His reasoning was simple — a person in a fighter cockpit is a fiscal and logistical liability. “With unmanned technology, removing a human from the machine can open up room to experiment with more risk, improve systems faster and get them to the fleet quicker.”

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: The Register

Source: US Navy

MergeVR to bring Virtual Reality to Android smartphones later this year

MergeVR is bringing the virtual reality experience to millions of Android and iOS smartphone owners this fall. It will be available in the U.S. for $129.

“What we’ve created is fun, easy to use, and affordable,” says Andrew Trickett, Co-founder of MergeVR. “We’ve designed a truly consumer friendly, ground breaking product. We’re confident that MergeVR offers the best experience in mobile virtual reality.”

MergeVR Goggles are compatible with hundreds of VR apps and 360-degree video already on Google Play and in Apple’s App Store, and the amount of content is rapidly expanding with each passing day.

“We want to give people the opportunity to experience things they never thought possible, whether it’s flying through space, exploring a fantasy world, watching favorite musicians perform live in their own living room, or connecting with a loved one in a new way,” says Franklin Lyons, Founder and CEO of MergeVR.

The Merge Goggles are designed from a high-end, durable, soft, and flexible foam and fit comfortably on anyone’s face whereas handheld Motion Controller for Mobile VR is a wireless handheld motion controller that lets users navigate virtual worlds with the click of a button, as well as enable new gameplay and controls never possible before in mobile VR.

“What we’ve created is fun, easy to use, and affordable,” says Andrew Trickett, Co-founder of MergeVR. “We’ve designed a truly consumer friendly, ground breaking product. We’re confident that MergeVR offers the best experience in mobile virtual reality.”

Source: MergeVR

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