Vigekwear Allows You to DIY a Customizable Wearable Device

Hobbyists, DIY-ers and even startups interested in dabbling in wearables or BLE devices could have something new to experiment with – Vigekwear, a micro, modularized, open source BLE product.

Created by Shenzhen-based Shuwen Liu, Vigekwear is based on a Nordic BLE chipset, and its ‘building block’ components allow users to create their ideal wearable. Vigekwear is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter with one week to go, and has already raised about CAD$10,000 of its $12,000 goal.

The variety of micro-sized modules in Vigekwear makes it completely customizable. The different type of modules include a battery charger module, acceleration sensor module, heart rate sensing module and OLED display module, just to name a few.

By assembling the modules together on Vigekwear’s interface board (six 24-pin sockets connected in parallel), a variety of products can be created based on the user’s requirements. Examples include a pedometer, a Bluetooth item locator, e-compass and even a gesture recognition device. To assemble a wrist strap with Vigekwear, for example, one simply puts together the relevant Vigekwear modules and slip them onto a rubber ring.

If one interface board is not sufficient to fit all the modules, a connector board is also available to act as a bridge between two base boards. However, the connector board will only be made available to backers who back two or more sets of Vigekwear.

Vigekwear is also fully open-source, and using it as a development kit can help speed up the development cycle for any Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) project. According to information on its Kickstarter campaign,Vigekwear’s source code will also be opened to backers, as well as a demo Android app and Vigekwear API. The app provided will allow for an exchange of data between BLE devices through Bluetooth – this way, you do not need to develop an app or BLE firmware from scratch.
Backers can choose from different Vigekwear kits, which comprise of different modules, based on their pledge amounts. A basic kit starts at a pledge of CAD$45, a professional kit at $55 and the ultimate kit at $75. If its Kickstarter campaign is successful, Vigekwear is expected to ship in November.

Update: This story was modified to reflect a change in the product’s name from Atomwear to Vigekwear

Credit: technode