Finnish company Oura understands the importance of regulating sleep. With the help of its Kickstarter campaign, the company is developing a non-obtrusive and sleek ring that monitors and tracks a person's sleep and suggests improvements for their sleeping habits.
The ring itself is waterproof and built from ceramic zirconium, complete with sensors that measure and track respiration rate, body temperature, heart rate and movement. It can also operate independently from your phone, with an ability to temporarily store memory and hold a charge for up to three days.
Even though this is the case, the app that goes along with the device is also a crucial component. It accumulates, interprets and neatly presents data and suggestions based on how well you slept the previous night, in addition to highlighting long-term goals that you could work toward as well. The system learns as it gets to know its sleeper, and as a result, it is able to provide more specific recommendations.
The device has also paired up with an app new called Curious, which is aimed at collecting and analyzing sleep data. Although the app is still in its beta stage, Oura is the first company it has partnered with.
"We spent a lot of time evaluating various wearable technologies on the market," Linda Avey — the co-founder of 23andMe, who worked to launch Curious — told Fast Company, "We thought, if we're going to focus on sleep, we would really need a technology that would enable accurate tracking. We landed on Oura."
Although the campaign and its peripheral benefits seem enticing, it will cost $229 to reap those benefits. Whether that's too much money remains to be seen, but for now, Oura is preparing to deliver nearly 10,000 orders of the device by November.
