wear fin seminar report

2014-2015 WEARFIN

Page:0 DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

CONTENTS

Abstract……………………………………………………………..1

Introduction……………………………………………………....2

What is FIN………………………………………………………...3

Product soursing…………………………………………………5

Competition………………………………………………………..6

Working……………………………………………………………..9

Use cases …………………………………………………………….10

Main components……………………………………………….11

Specifications……………………………………………….……..12

Applications………………………………………………………..12

Conclusion……………………………………………………….….13

References……………………………………………………….….14

2014-2015 WEARFIN


ABSTRACT

Fin is a tiny hardware product that you can wear on the thumb of your hand as a ring and it will make your whole palm as a touch interface. Fin is a Bluetooth enabled device that we can connect To other digital world gadgets likeSmartphones, Smart TVs, Automobiles, And home automation devices. Fin reads different gestures from your palms and its corresponding values control your connected devices. It uses smart Low Energy Technologyas It uses Bluetooth.4 Technology for Communication with target devices. Fin is a compatible wearable technology that can be paired with three distinct Bluetooth devices. Fin is somewhat different because it is available across both the popular platforms which are Android and iOS, and it can control devices like your smartphone, your laptop, your automobile or your home automation system. Fin uses Bluetooth to create connection with these devices and at a time it can support only three devices. Once a user wears it onto his thumb, he/she can use his/her hands like a virtual keypad. It will recognize each and every division of the fingers as a key, so it will perform a function whenever you will touch any division of your finger with the help of your thumb.

There will be an application accompanied by this wearable (obviously expected) and all the functions for all those gestures can be specified with the help of that app on your smartphone or on your laptop/computer or on you home automation system.

So, basically it makes you palm as a virtual keypad where you can use your thumb to give various commands to any of the three devices connected to that ring.

2014-2015 WEARFIN


INTRODUCTION

From smart watches to smart rings, the endless wave of wearable gadgets continues to wash ashore some pretty intriguing ideas Fin is a ring gadget that you wear on the thumb and make your whole palm a digital interface. Fin is a tiny hardware product that you can wear on the thumb of your hand a ring and it will make your whole palm as a touch interface. Fin is a Bluetooth enabled device That we can connect to other digital world gadgets like Smartphones, Smart TVs, Automobiles,and home automation devices. Fin reads different gestures from your palms And its corresponding values control your connected devices.It uses smart Low Energy Technology as uses Bluetooth.4 Technology for Communication with target devices. It works as a universal remote control and the best is you can operate it just by gestures and doesn’t require instructions by voice or even looking at it. Its Head Office is located in Palo Alto in the Silicon Valley whilst the manufacturing is outsourced to China. It can play a significant role in several market segments like education system, office, leisure, aid for the blind/handicap and overall it is a consumer gadget that can be used in day-today life. We are still a young company on a development stage and will be prepared for our first shipment in January 2015. We believe that Germany is a major market for us as it encourages innovative products and has availability of skilled and educated people with a large population of 82million people. Belonging to an oligopolistic market, it has three direct competitors who too are yet in the development stage- Nod ring and Myo armband. Nod is a gesture control ring just like Fin and is compatible to smart phones, home appliances, television etc. however, this ring is bigger in size and does not look like a fashionable gadget to wear around. It is available in several sizes and follows a policy to replace the ring if it’s not of the right size. A passion to change the way humans interact with

technology and long hours of brainstorming led RHL Vision technologies to come

up with a disruptive product Fin, ”Wear the World”. A small wearable of its

kind by which you can control your entire digital world. RHL vision Technologies

Pvt. Ltd. Is a group of passionate individuals, who are dreaming of a world where

technology runs in the palms of your hands, where a mere finger-‐swipe can

bring you resources and functions never imagined before and progressing through the Path to conquer the impossible is the story of our small group of innovators and technology junkies.

http://www.gizmag.com/martian-notifier-smartwatch/30388/

http://www.gizmag.com/smarty-ring/30084/

2014-2015 WEARFIN


What is FIN

Fin has been developed by Rohildev N, who grew up in Malappuram in Kerala and who graduated from Kathir College of Engineering in Coimbatore in 2012. Eight months ago he established RHL Vision Technologies at the Startup Village in Kochi to work on touchless technologies, a project he started during his final year of engineering. RHL Vision was among 50 startups shortlisted from around the world to pitch and showcase their ideas at Pioneers Festival, one of Europe's largest startup events, held in Vienna last year. It was one of the top 15 companies (from 11 countries) at the TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas this year, a competition for hardware startups. And Rohildev would have been the youngest speaker at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, but for a mix-up that led to his visa application being rejected.

Strengths: • Fin is a compatible wearable technology that can be paired with three distinct Bluetooth devices. • Fin is a light, dust proof, water proof and durable technology which can be worn on fingers which make it soeasy to access mundane activities. • Fin technology is offered at an affordable price and acts asa security authenticator, which recognises each finger print.

2014-2015 WEARFIN


• This technology helps and makes life easier for the visually challenged people and is also fashionable to wear. • Fin provides touchless interactions and gesture interaction on palms (Wearfin, 2014).

Opportunities: • Fin being a wearable ring which has numerous applications with different electronic devices. • Fin has a huge market potential and can grab a larger market share majorly associated with automobile industry and consumer electronics industry. • Fin has a huge opportunity to expand to the whole of EU, as Germany is major economy to start with. • Fin’s use can be helpful to revolutionize the way visually challenged people deal with the world.

Weakness • As Germany being a new market, Fin may face problems with lack of knowledge about the local market, distribution channels and resource and development. • The lack of funds as Fin is a start-up company, which in turn may affect the scenario of dealing with unexpected high demand. • As the assembly unit is based in China, there’s always a threat of replication of the procedure which ia a major problem (EuroMonitor,)

2014-2015 WEARFIN


Threats: • The major threat will be faced by the competitors like Logbar’s ring, Myo armband and Nod ring who will arise due to first mover situation. • The growing consumer production in Germany which in turn attracts so many consumer technologies, will put Fin in a very competitive position. • There may be a low level of demand for the product due to first entrants in the market than estimated level

Product Sourcing Fin ring is made of five components: a led indicator, a battery, water and dust proof material, Bluetooth and a touch-less interactive electronic sensor patented pending protected designed by the firm. The manufacturing of the components, assembling and packaging is outsourced to a foreign company called Foxconn1. The total cost of the manufacturing of one device goes up to 38$ and the device itself is selling for 120$. This means that the profit is roughly 70%. Before explaining how we arrived to these numbers, first we need to estimate the cost of each component (Foxconn, 2014) (HIS Technology, 2014). The LED indicator is a simple, tiny semiconductor device that emits visible light when an electric current passes through it. This light is used to indicate events like connection or battery status to its owner. The cost is estimated in 2$. The battery, is a Li Po custom battery with micro-USB charging dock. One charge can last one week with heavy use and up to a month in standby. This battery is estimated to have a cost of 8$. The flexible material used in the device has an IP2 code of 67, which means that the device is dust tight, with no ingress of dust and complete protection against contact. It also has a water immersion limit of up to one meter. Tested in a period of thirty minutes. The value of this component is priced at 5$. The Bluetooth sensor is a 2.1 + EDR3 and 4.0. Since this is a highly demanded and standard component its price is as low as 4$. The most important part of the device is the touch-less interactive sensor. This sensor is design by the firm and is a major innovative sensor which is their core competence and gives them a competitive advantage. This sensor, since it is exclusively produced for this company, its price is at this point at 8$. The last part of the cost of the manufacturing is the labour. Since the manufacturing is located in China, the labour costs are as low as 11$ per

2014-2015 WEARFIN


device. So, if we combined the costs of the production of its part is goes up to 38$. And subtracting this cost to the selling price of 120$ gives the firm a profit of 70%.

Competition Belonging to an oligopolistic market, it has three direct competitors who too are yet in the development stage- Nod ring and Myo armband. Nod is a gesture control ring just like Fin and is compatible to smart phones, home appliances, television etc. however, this ring is bigger in size and does not look like a fashionable gadget to wear around. It is available in several sizes and follows a policy to replace the ring if it’s not of the right size. This kind of practice will increase its costs of transportation and packaging as well as increases complications of operations. Moreover, Fin has one universal size and the ring is flexible to fit different sized fingers. On the other hand, Myo is an armband that understands the electrical movement of your muscles to automatically get connected to your computers, television or other electronic devices. The shipment begins in September 2014

First prototype of FIN

2014-2015 WEARFIN


that can be a threat to the market potential and growth of Fin as its still in the development stage. As Myo armband would be ready to use by consumers before Fin and Nod, it will have its first-movers advantage of building a customer base, brand loyalty, establishing its market share, and surveying consumer tastes and demand patterns would probably give Myo armband an upper-hand over its competitors. To add on, it is also skeptical how Myo armband and Nod ring are priced the same at $149(Nod, 2014), (Thalmic Labs, 2014). This is a psychological pricing strategy where the buyer psychologically feels that they paying somewhere in the range of 140s but they almost paying $150. This pricing strategy makes buyers underestimate the price due to smart arrangement of number pricing. Nod is also aiming at competitive pricing by cutting competition with Myo armbands by pricing its ring at the same rate as Myo. However as we see, Fin has priced its product at $120 persistently despite the few competitors having a higher price. Fin can have a competitive edge over Nod and Myo as it is priced much lesser than the two hence they may lose their cliental base to Fin. However, logbar rings are already in the US market as they started shipment in July, 2014. Just like the nod ring it is available in several sizes but it priced the highest at $185. Just like Fin, it is also featured by Mashable, and Techcrunch (Kickstarter, 2014). Being run by Japanese owners, we assume that they may begin exporting to Japan. Considering competition in Germany, there have not been any direct competitors to Fin in Germany’s local market. If Fin enters the market, it can remain the only market player in Germany. However if we use the Multi-point argument similar to game theory of oligopolies, if Fin is acquiring the German market, Nod, Logbar and Myo will see the market potential and penetrate the German market as well in order to increase their sales and profits and carrying on the cut-throat competition with Fin.

Nod

Nod has funding from Menlo Ventures and Sequoia Capital to name a few, and the Mountain View-based startup has talent from Apple, Google, Jawbone, Samsung and many other big tech companies with plenty of expertise in both hardware and software design and production. The device itself is a waterproof (up to 5 ATM) ring, with a metal rim around the inside (for all-day comfort and hypoallergenic purposes) and a transmission-friendly plastic outer case. It comes with a charging cradle that doubles as a ring holder, is available in

2014-2015 WEARFIN


12 different sizes (using spacers within a few set sizes for adjustability) and offers about a full day of regular usage connected to devices via Bluetooth LE.

“We came together with the idea of trying to solve something that we think could possibly be the next computing revolution around input,” explained Nod Labs CEO and founder Anush Elangovan in an interview. “We took a step back and looked at how we’ve progressed from plug panels and dip switches to the mouse in the PC era, and then touch in the mobile era, and we were like ‘what’s next?’ Speech has always been one part of it, but speech doesn’t work in a crowded room for example, so the next obvious one is gestures.”Nod is a device like Fin…

Price- As mentioned, each unit would cost $130 for whoever orders it in whichever part of the world. Moreover, Fin is priced much lower than its competitors Nod ring, logbar ring and Myo armband. Myo and Nod are priced at $149, logbar is $185 whilst Fin is $120 excluding the transportation cost (Nod, 2014), (Thalmic Labs, 2014).

2014-2015 WEARFIN


Working

Fin uses Bluetooth to create connection with these devices and at a time it can support only three devices. Once a user wears it onto his thumb, he/she can use his/her hands like a virtual keypad. It will recognize each and every division of the fingers as a key, so it will perform a function whenever you will touch any division of your finger with the help of your thumb.

There will be an application accompanied by this wearable (obviously expected) and all the functions for all those gestures can be specified with the help of that app on your smartphone or on your laptop/computer or on you home automation system. So, basically it makes you palm as a virtual keypad where you can use your thumb to give various commands to any of the three devices connected to that ring.

Main components

2014-2015 WEARFIN


By tucking an optical sensor into a small ring placed around your thumb, the fin is able to detect swipes and taps across your hand When it detect a gesture , it sends that command of to the connected device- be it a smartphone, TV, or another devices Swiping your thumb down your index finger , for example could turn your phone’s volume down

Use cases Thumb is accessible to anywhere in the palm and its more natural too. So wearing aFin will make your palm a touch interface that enables the people to interact with smart phones[Dial Numbers, Attending calls, SMS, Social media, Taking Quick Notes etc.] especially for Blind people since they sense the world through touch. Fin can control your smar TV, to just change the channels, control sounds by mere natural finger swipes. Fin can control your car from being your cars key to controlling your phone while driving, navigate your maps, receive calls and read messages, change music, and other car utilities justby finger swipe without even taking your hands out of the steering wheel there by not distracting yourself from driving. A big problem in all the wearable is the input of Instructions. In the much--‐Hyped Google glass,a voice instruction and a touch pad on the wearable is provided, but Both the input methods are cumbersome in odd situations. Integration with FIN will be Ideal for these wearable as FIN can control the device with much ease And accuracy. For better entertainmen experience FIN can serve as joysticks in gaming industry.

2014-2015 WEARFIN


Main Components

IMU Inertial measurement unit IMU is a single unit in electronics module which collects angular velocity

and linear acceleration data which is sent to the main processor.

This is the motion sensor This detect all motions of that ring Seiko Epson Corporation (TSE: 6724, "Epson") the world's smallest inertial

measurement unit (IMU)*1

MICROCONTROLLER

It is the CPU of the wearfin 32 bit ARM Cortex MCU is used for this device.as they provide best

computing performance and energy efficiency. It offers a 32 bit product range that combines very high performance,

real time capabilities, digital signal processing and low power low voltage operations

2014-2015 WEARFIN


DETECTION SENSOR

Detection sensor is optical sensor It is capable to detect all swipes and taps from the fingers and sent

to the microcontroller

SPECIFICATIONS

Fin should come with Water-proof: IP67 Size/Fit: Flexible. Battery: Li Po custom battery with micro-USB charging dock ; One charge

will last for 1 week; more than one year durable. Sensors: Fin can track accurate movement of your thumb on the palm also

detect each part of your finger where you are touching. Communication: Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR and 4.0 Compatibility: Windows, MAC, iOS, Android, Windows Phones

MAIN APPLICATIONS

FIN for smart TV:

FIN can control the smart TV, No need of multiple remotes FIN can change channels , control the sound by a finger swipe Makes your interaction with the smart device

FIN for smart phones:

2014-2015 WEARFIN


FIN can be used to attend a call Dial numbers from your palm Controlling other smartphone utility applications

FIN for Automobiles:

Navigate your maps, change music , receive calls, read messages just by your finger control without distracting yourself from driving FIN for Entertaintment: For better entertaintment experience,FIN serve instead of joystick

CONCLUSION Fin is a ring gadget that you wear on the thumb and make your whole palm a digital interface. Fin is a Bluetooth enabled device that we can connect To other digital world gadgets likeSmartphones, Smart TVs, Automobiles, And home automation devices. Fin reads different gestures from your palms and its corresponding values control your connected devices. Fin has been developed by Rohildev N, Fin is a light, dust proof, water proof and durable technology which can be worn on fingers which make it soeasy to access mundane activities. Fin uses Bluetooth to create connection with these devices and at a time it can support only three devices. It will recognize each and every division of the fingers. Main components are used in fin is Bluetooth, microcontroller,imu , detection sensor.

2014-2015 WEARFIN


REFERENCES

-> EASE YOUR RIDE LIKE NEVER BEFORE. (n.d.). Fin : Wearable Ring Make your

Palm as Numeric Keypad and Gesture Interface. Retrieved July 31, 2014, from http://wearfin.com

-> Fin : Wearable Ring Make your Palm as Numeric Keypad and Gesture

Interface. (n.d.). Indiegogo. Retrieved July 30, 2014, from https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fin-wearable-ring-make-your-palm-as-numerickeypad- and-gesture-interface

-> Wave hello to Nod.. (n.d.). Nod. Retrieved July 31, 2014, from

https://www.hellonod.com

->MIT Technology Review. (n.d.). MIT Technology Review. Retrieved July 29,

2014, from http://www.technologyreview.com/news

http://wearfin.com/

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fin-wearable-ring-make-your-palm-as-numerickeypad-

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fin-wearable-ring-make-your-palm-as-numerickeypad-

https://www.hellonod.com/

Devices & Hardware

wear fin seminar report