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Clau in action.
Clau dashboard.
3D Model of the device

The Wearables Company of Toronto presents... Clau.

What is Clau? 🦀

Clau is an (in theory) inconspicuous wearable designed to thwart the scourge of every developer, repetitive strain injuries. It incorporates accelerometers, pressure sensors, and tilt sensors in a ring-shaped form factor to proactively avert joint pain and wrist injuries from repetitive movement. An agentic AI helps make sense of the data and tailor warnings and recommended exercises to the user.

❤️ Made with love...

Clau was completely thought up and developed within the 32 hours of Hack the North. Clau is made with 3D printed parts, Arduino, C++, typescript, React + Vite, n8n, Groq and more. Iteration after iteration of designs were brainstormed and considered before finalizing on a design we believed could be feasible to complete within 32 hours. We were inspired by other wearable technologies such as Human AI and Apple Watch, and jewellery such as Vivienne Westwood's Armour Ring.

...but also a few headaches. 💢

Getting the sensors to connect and communicate with all the steps in the process was tricky, We use a variety of communication methods including HTTP and web-sockets in order to communicate the data between hardware, back end, and front end. Additionally, sourcing the hardware was tricky as well. Many of the specific sensors we needed were unavailable to us, and so we had to get a little creative with using what we did have. For example, we are using pressure sensors as flex sensors, as we discovered that bending these sensors triggers the pressure-sensing effects.

What we're proud of, and what we learned 🔆

We learned a lot about wearable technologies in the process of building Clau. For instance, it is essential to try and fit the prototype to one person, rather than be safe and have a loose fit on a lot more people. Additionally, we learned that there's definitely always going to be more wires than you think, and to be prepared for the bulkiness.

We're ultimately very proud of Clau, and how we were able to accomplish our ambitious goal that arose from wanting to work around a real problem. Our vision was realized; we got our data, used AI to analyze it and recommend pathways, and display it using a beautiful UI.

🔮 What's next for Clau?

Our next goal for Clau is definitely to improve it's form factor. It's quite cumbersome at the moment, but with technology in the modern day, we believe this is possible to fit into a much sleeker ring.

Overall, we believe the Clau has incredible potential to not only help developers, but to become iconic in the wearable technology space.