7 Awesome Wearable Techs That You Never Knew About

Wearable technology is kind of a big deal nright ow. It doesn’t matter what part of the industry you look at. Katy Perry and Lady Gaga have ridiculous light up cloths now. You can put things on your wrist that could double for medical equipment. In the near future, we’ll have smart glasses, smart cloths, and other smart objects. Some of this stuff is already available now. Here are some wearable techs you can get your hands on right now.

1. Misfit Shine Activity Tracker

The Misfit Chine Activity Tracker is a minimal piece of wearable tech that tracks your activities. It’s great for people who want to see how far they’ve run or what they’re doing but don’t want the weighty, bulky, and in-the-way wearable techs that other companies have. There is a companion app that is available for iOS and Android where you can also do things like plan workouts and see your progress. It’s also relatively cheap compared to other wearables.

2. FitBark

There are a ton of activity tracker wearables for people but there is also one for animals! This one is called FitBark and it’s designed to let you see how active your dog is. A lot of people have dogs that aren’t getting enough exercise and using this wearable, you know whether or not Fido needs another trip outside to play some Frisbee. You can even use the stats to see if your dog isn’t feeling well (because their activity will be way down just like ours is). It’s in the Kickstarter phase right now but the project was funded twice over so we expect this to be readily available eventually.

3. UP 24 by Fitbit

UP 24 is another activity tracker (we promise, this is the last one). This one is a more fashionable version that comes in several colors so you can get one that goes well with your clothes. Like with the others, there is a companion app. The premise behind this one is that it’s supposed to help you see how you sleep, your activity, and other things. The app will even take a look at what you eat and drink to see if maybe your weight may be a diet problem and not an exercise problem.

4. GPSports

GPSports is among the world’s highest quality trackers. It’s used by professional athletes the world over to help track their performance, vitals, and injuries. They can take a serious beating, be used with other units to track entire teams worth of people, and they’re extremely expensive. It won’t be long until more people in more sports get in on these.

5. Alert Shirt

Price: Not out yet

The Alert Shirt is a fun shirt idea that lets you feel what players feel in your favorite sports. If you watch the video on the homepage, they explain it better than I can but here’s how it works. You put on this shirt and connect it to the app via Bluetooth. Then, during matches, when your favorite player gets nervous, excited, or (in contact sports) gets waxed by his competition, the shirt will response and let you know what the player is feeling. It’s admittedly niche but it’s still really cool.

6. Navigate

Price: Not out yet

Navigate is a GPS enabled jacket that helps guide you around. Here’s how it works. There are electronics built into the back of the jacket. When you need to go right, the right side of the jacket will vibrate briefly, and the left side will vibrate when you need to turn left. It’ll then vibrate altogether briefly when you’ve arrived at your destination. You don’t have the visual comfort of having a map but you should be able to get to where you’re going on foot without a problem and without looking into your phone.

7. LED Clothing

Price: Varies

In the video for Navigate, you’ll also see a bit about this next one which is clothing that have LED lights in them. This seems really cheesy at first but as the technology evolves, you’ll find that you can do all sorts of things. It’s kind of a way to design your own clothes because you can make the LEDs flash in various shapes or not at all if you so choose. It’s a unique way to express yourself and thanks to celebrities like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, this is a fashion that’s starting to gain mainstream popularity.

Wearable techs are everywhere but they’re still kind of new. Over the next couple of decades, we’re going to see a wave of amazing things happen in the world of wearable technology. These are just a few awesome examples of where this is headed!

Featured photo credit: ECouterre via ecouterre.com