Already smashing through a $90,000 funding goal with over six weeks to finish out the Indiegogo campaign, the Amiigo fitness bracelet advances beyond traditional fitness trackers by monitoring and recording different types of exercises during a typical day. Rather than having to manually log exercises within fitness software, the Amiigo tracks over 100 common exercises and logs interesting data such as number of reps and sets, speed of completion, duration of the exercise and overall intensity. For instance, a user will be able to view how many sets of bicep curls they performed during a workout. Over time, users can view how they have improved in order to increase the intensity of future workouts.
Besides common weight-lifting exercises, the Amiigo can also tell the difference between various cardio exercises as well. For instance, the Amiigo will be able to tell if a person is out jogging, cycling, swimming or standing on an elliptical machine in the gym.
If the Amiigo bracelet doesn’t recognize a specific exercise for some reason, the user has the ability to create a new exercise within the system. After creating and logging a session of that new exercise, the Amiigo fitness bracelet will automatically record that exercise during future workouts.
Beyond tracking progress over time, the Amiigo also monitors heart rate during workouts, core temperature of the skin and blood oxygen levels. Similar to other fitness trackers, the Amiigo also tracks overall activity during a day as well as total calories burned over a 24-hour period. As the plethora of data is collected by the fitness bracelet, the Amiigo software will automatically recommend guidelines for future workouts. Hypothetically, this data could be used by personal trainers in order to escalate progress with clients. However, the client could also analyze the data themselves and skip the cost of a personal trainer completely.
Similar to the Fitbit trackers, users can set goals within the Amiigo software and will earn points as they progress with more workouts. In addition, Amiigo owners can connect with friends in order to set up workout competitions or wager earned points over friendly bets.
Amiigo representatives plan to allow users to redeem points within a storefront for discounts on sports and fitness equipment as well as supplements like protein powder or multi-vitamins.
The Amiigo bracelet is adjustable for different wrist sizes and comes with a shoe clip to track lower body movement . The device can store a large amount of data collect over many hours, but connects to an iOS or Android smartphone over Bluetooth 4.0 in order to upload the data. The group behind the Amiigo is also making the software development kit open source and encouraging anyone to create applications for the fitness band.
According to the Indiegogo campaign page, the group has been working on the fitness device over the past twelve months. The black version of the Amiigo is priced at $99, but the blue and green models are $119. The first batch of Amiigo fitness bracelets are expected to roll out during June 2013. Similar to all Indiegogo or Kickstarter projects, the actual launch date of the device is always subject to potential manufacturing delays. However, if the team behind the Amiigo can push out a working, final product this year, it could significantly impact sales of less-advanced fitness bracelets like the Nike+ FuelBand, Jawbone Up or the Fitbit Flex.
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