Wearable Electronics

They may look somewhat bulky and a bit like someone wandered out of an avant garde theater, but a pair of concept pieces developed by students and the Royal College of Arts in London allow wearers to fine tune their senses of sight and hearing. Called “Eidos,” from the Greek for "form," "essence," "type," or "species," the system uses sensors and computer processing to select sensory input and alter it for applications in sport, the arts and medicine.  Read More

While the world waits for fully capable smart watches like the rumored iWatch and Neptune Pine, it'll have to be content with watches that provide a bridge to the smartphone. The Pebble Watch is the most well-known, but it does have some competition. One example is the new Dew Motion iStick Playtime, a sport-specific armband that controls key smartphone functions.  Read More

Emergency beacons are great insurance for aviators and sailors, but they aren't worth much if a disaster leaves you in one place and the beacon in another. Just to be safe, you might as well strap the beacon to your wrist, which is what the Breitling Emergency II does. The Swiss-made wrist chronograph watch provides those who travel in remote, risky places with a dual-channel emergency satellite transmitter that activates with a twist and a yank.  Read More

The average watch uses a simple formula of rotating inner hour and minute hands pointing at fixed numerical designations. The Harry Winston Opus XIII, the result of a collaboration with renowned watchmaker Ludovic Ballouard, turns that simple formula on its ear, using an outer ring of 59 moving minutes and 11 moving hours.  Read More

While it still remains to be seen exactly how many people will be willing to get about town with a wearable computer strapped to their heads, the market looks set to be a competitive one. Google got the ball rolling with the announcement of Google Glass, then reports surfaced that Chinese search company Baidu and Microsoft were getting in on the act with their own devices. Now Japanese designer and self-described augmented reality entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi is throwing his hat into the ring with Telepathy One.  Read More

At the 2013 Geneva Motor Show in March, Ferrari unveiled its latest flagship supercar, elegantly titled LaFerrari. It's a beast of a machine sporting almost 1,000 horsepower, and we featured a full write-up (with plenty of photos) at the time of its unveiling. Now, just a couple of months later, a wristwatch designed to match the look and feel of the LaFerrari has been announced. Those with deep pockets and a penchant for luxury watches should read on, while the rest of us instead resign ourselves to looking at our phones when we need to know what the time is.  Read More

Last year, Hublot hit Baselworld 2012 with its limited edition Antikythera watch inspired by the Antikythera mechanism – a 2100 year old analog computer found off the shores of Crete that is considered the first "astronomical calculator." The company has kept the ball rolling at this year's Baselworld with another Antikythera device, this time in the form of the MP-08 Antikythera SunMoon watch.  Read More

Over the years, we've seen a number of worthy attempts at turning our clothes into electronic instruments, from drum kits built into shirts and pants to a motion-activated MIDI controller concealed in a jacket. The latest addition to the wearable instrument ensemble is "Drop The Beat" from industrial design student Wesley Chau, a vest outfitted with pads for a drum kit that musicians can rearrange and reprogram to their liking.  Read More

The makers of the Pebble smartwatch have released a "proof-of-concept" watchface SDK that allows third party developers to create custom watch faces and very basic apps. Shortly after the release there was already various watchface designs, a stopwatch app and a Tetris game (Pebblis) available for download in the Pebble forums.  Read More