Whenever I’m watching television late at night, I worry incessantly about whether or not I’ll be able to stay awake during my favorite shows. Will we finally find out who the mother is? What will Lady Gaga wear on the Tonight Show this time? Who shot J.R.? Who am I kidding? I don’t watch television anymore. Instead, I stream just about everything straight into my brain – be it live, later, or “borrowed” from the internet.
But for those of you late-night watchers who haven’t discovered DVR yet, a few kids in the United Kingdom just invented something worth your attention. It’s a 3D printed wristband that will record whatever you’re watching the moment you start snoring.
According to 3ders:
[Fifteen-year-old] Ryan Oliver and fourteen-year-old Jonathan Kingsley are both students at industry specialists Manchester Creative Studio, and were commissioned by Virgin Media to develop the KipstR wristband. The device therefore works alongside the Virgin Media’s TiVo service, which can also be used to pause and resume live TV. The wristband (which hasn’t been released yet) will therefore only be available for Virgin Media-users in Britain and will be trialled this Christmas by a select number of customers. Hopefully it will be available next Christmas.
So how does it work? Well, the current prototype KipstR features a pulse-oximeter, a non-invasive device capable of measuring when someone dozes off. For when people fall asleep, the blood flow (and the amount of oxygen that circulates through it), slightly changes, and the oximeter (which is essentially a sensor for your pulse) picks up on that alteration. Theoretically, it future iterations could also be capable of picking up on emotional reactions from viewers, which also affects blood flow.
Pretty nifty, right? It’s actually a neat idea, especially since the technology is “non-invasive” and uses simple sensory measurements to activate the device. No need to mess around with your DVR’s pesky recording features – just slap this puppy on and let your worries subside.
However, there’s an unforeseen problem lingering in the air. If KipstR relies on measuring the wearer’s blood flow, what happens when it subsides for reasons other than sleep? What if the rate of blood flow suddenly increases for certain adult biological reasons? You’d think two horny British teenagers would have considered this for their initial designs.
Source: 3ders and Virgin Media
