Today’s wearable device makers are looking for cost-effective, turnkey solutions that function as a system to provide faster time to market, increased functionality, superior performance, and supply-chain flexibility. To tackle this problem, Hillcrest Labs is out with its MotionEngine Wear software with always-on, sensor-enabled features optimized for the latest generation of wearable devices.
Said software — the company claims — offers device makers the ability to quickly create differentiated wearable products across the health, fitness, and lifestyle segments of this growing market. MotionEngine Wear is dubbed ideal for smartwatches, activity and fitness bands, health and sleep monitors, and smart clothing. The small software footprint and low-power profile make it ideal for devices targeted to the mass market, active or sports segment, commercial and industrial markets, or for fashion accessories.
MotionEngine Wear provides manufacturers with greater choice and control over sensors, microcontrollers and operating systems.“We are proud to offer our MotionEngine Wear software to manage and enhance the performance of sensors found in wearable devices – enabling high performance, low power motion-based applications, and providing the foundation for new user experiences,” said Chad Lucien, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Hillcrest Labs.
MotionEngine Wear provides high quality context awareness and is able to track desperate user activities such as walking, running and sleeping, while simplifying the user experience with intuitive gesture controls. Moreover, thanks to the “unique power reduction algorithms,” wearable device makers are able to provide their users with always-on sensing without compromising the accuracy, reliability or functionality of the product.
Most notably, MotionEngine Wear is compatible with today’s widely used system architectures, including ARM Cortex-M, Cadence Tensilica Fusion DSP, and Synopsys ARC EM. Also, it is OS independent and can be deployed when using platforms with Android, Android Wear, Tizen, WebOS, an RTOS, or others.
MotionEngine Wear is dubbed ideal for smartwatches, activity and fitness bands, health and sleep monitors, and smart clothing.The new MotionEngine Wear product rounds out Hillcrest’s wearable product portfolio, complementing its BNO070 device. The BNO070 is a 9-axis System in Package (SiP) that enables rapid development of sensor-enabled wearable technology and IoT devices. Developed in partnership with Bosch Sensortec, it features Hillcrest’s proprietary SH-1 sensor hub software and high-performance accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope sensors with a low-power 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU in a small package.
Hillcrest’s MotionEngine Wear and BNO070 products are used today to power a number of exciting wearable devices, including the ALCATEL ONETOUCH’s WATCH, the OSVR (Open-Source Virtual Reality) from Razer, and others.