Move over smart rings and smartwatches smart earrings are on the way

Date:
Tue, 13 Feb 2024 12:34:52 +0000

Description:
Smart earrings could turn even more of your jewelry into health-monitoring tech, and be more useful than a smartwatch.

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Slowly but surely, tech is finding its way into every wearable accessory we have the best smartwatches have been on the scene for years, serving not
only as an extension of our smartphones but as health and fitness trackers, while the best smart rings offer sensors for key health metrics in a smaller package than watches. And now its time to get ready for smart earrings.

Researchers at the University of Washington have unveiled the Thermal Earring , which is worn in your ear like a regular earring and features two temperature sensors. One of these is in the stud and detects your skin temperature, while the other dangles below, monitoring the ambient
temperature around you and transmitting the readings from both sensors to a compatible device via Bluetooth (via Android Police ).

Thanks to this two-sensor system, the researchers found that its better at measuring body temperature than a smartwatch at least for the six participants who have tried the earring out so far.

If this improved accuracy holds for a larger pool of subjects, the team
behind the earring hopes it could become a useful health tool. Improved temperature accuracy could lead to a more reliable version of the menstrual-cycle tracking weve started to see in smartwatches, and the
earrings could help any wearer by alerting them to fevers, stress, and other conditions that can affect body temperature. Not yet ready to wear (Image credit: Raymond Smith/University of Washington)

Before were all wearing smart earrings, however, several things stil need to be worked out. For a start, as mentioned above, a lot more testing will need to be carried out, as a six-person sample size is far too small to draw far-reaching conclusions from.

Then theres the design. If dangling circuit boards arent your vibe you can
add resin charms to hide them, but this solution wont be to everyones liking, and more universally stylish designs will need to be made available and
tested to ensure they dont impair accuracy.

Plus, the design will need to be altered to use a material such as silver or another hypoallergenic metal, otherwise the Thermal Earrings could create
more problems than they solve for some people.

In general, though were excited by the idea of smart earrings, and cant wait to see these designs featured in a product we could actually buy and wear.

Smartwatches have become one-stop shops for health and fitness, but your
wrist probably isnt the best place to measure all your vitals. By splitting their sensors across multiple wearables all working in tandem you can place them where theyre most effective, which in turn should enable more accurate and useful health and fitness monitoring. You might also like... This smart ring for women's health is beautiful, and it's completely subscription free Samsung Galaxy Ring: here's everything we know I tried the Oura ring for a week - but I still prefer my Garmin smartwatch



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/health-fitness/smartwatches/move-over-smart-rings-an d-smartwatches-smart-earrings-are-on-the-way


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