Life Beam Smart Cycling Helmet

Life Beam has a funding project going on IndieGogo right now for a helmet that they have co-developed with Lazer (a Belgian helmet manufacturer).  Life Beam’s first product was a monitoring system for fighter pilots that would show vital signs in flight (kind of important).  The technology worked so great (they won the “Ramon Breakthrough” contest sponsored by Google), that a couple of engineers that work for Life Beam decided to place the monitoring system inside of a bicycle helmet.  Neat.

Road biking or mountain biking. Monitors just the same...
Road biking or mountain biking. Monitors just the same…

I’m not sure that I would use this kind of technology.  I think that my heart rate would be slightly higher going home from work compared to in the morning because…I’m going home and not to work.  However, if you are at all interested in monitoring your heart rate and you’re tired of your chest mounted heart rate strap chafing, you should check this out.

“SMART uses electro-optical technology to continuously measure your heart-rate.

The optical sensor is placed on the helmet’s front, gently touching your forehead. The sensor samples the blood pulse in a high frequency and transmits a raw signal to the processing unit, which is placed in the helmet’s back.”

The system is very non-invasive with the front sensor resting on the front of your head, reading your pulse and sending that information to the processing unit in the back of the helmet.  With a battery life of 15 hours, you can go on some fairly lengthy rides and collect all of the non-chafing data you want.  The nice thing is that the sensing unit goes into a sleep mode if it hasn’t been used in three minutes.

Check out more in the video below:

If you still need a fix, head over to their website.


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