Wrist-borne fitness trackers and smartwatches are so 2012. In the not-so-distant future, all the cool kids will be rocking smart textiles to track their activity. That is, if Montreal-based startup OMsignal has anything to say about it.
Today, the company officially launched it’s first four products: a line of bio-sensing smart shirts that track your heart rate, respiration rate, respiration volume, movement intensity, the number of calories you’ve burned, and a whole lot more. The technology has been in private beta since October of last year, and after extensive testing on athletes around the globe, OMsignal is finally ready to release it to consumers.
The shirts, which currently come in four different styles, are woven with a silver-based thread that can read your body’s electrical signals and detect your heartbeat. Movement is measured with the help of a detachable “black box” that clips onto the shirt around the torso. This little module, which is roughly the size of a credit card, is equipped with a magnetometer, gyrometer, a few accelerometers, and a Bluetooth radio to communicate all the data to your smartphone.
With the help of OMsignal’s specially-designed algorithms, the accompanying app can give you real-time stats on a huge range of different performance metrics. According to the company, the shirt not only knows how much you’re moving and breathing, but also understands compression, how much stress you’re under, and when you’re reaching exhaustion. In other words, it’s much more capable than the average fitness-tracking wristband
Furthermore, despite the fact that they’re extremely high-tech, the shirts themselves are completely machine washable. They won’t make you look like a cyborg either, and even with the black box attached, the shrits look almost exactly like normal compression gear from the likes of Nike or Under Armour.
Starting today, you can lock one down for the special pre-order price of $199, which includes the transferrable black box. Two shirts will run you $269, and if you want all four, it’ll only put you back $349. Find out more here.
