he more they talk about how accurate the CRM is the better it is for investors in QUIK’s biz.

Most fitness trackers aren’t terribly accurate, and heart rate monitors are even more fickle. And some smartwatches give back absurd numbers that belong to corpses or heart attack victims. Apple seems to have figured out a way to make the Apple Watch incredibly accurate, though. One user compared it to a heart rate monitoring strap that’s on par with EKG accuracy ratings, with the Apple Watch returning almost the exact same readings.

Engineer Brad Larson strapped on his Mio Alpha heart rate monitor, one of the most accurate monitors around, to compare its data to the Apple Watch’s results during a run. He posted the graph on Twitter, and the Apple Watch matches the Mio Alpha at nearly every data point. The two line graphs are almost perfectly synced, with only a few variations.

Extracted the raw Apple Watch HealthKit heartrate samples after a run and compared it to an HR monitor I had on: pic.twitter.com/2Ycj49Ctjt

— Brad Larson (@bradlarson) May 7, 2015

Related: Read our Apple Watch review
Seeing as the Mio Alpha is rated at EKG level standards of accuracy,

the fact that the Apple Watch manages to match it so closely is very impressive. Most wearables return results that are very far off from heart rate monitoring chest straps, which are typically considered the most accurate. In our review of the Fitbit Charge HR, we found it to be 20 to 30 beats per minute higher than the chest strap rates during exercise, and between 5 to 15 beats higher during regular walking. That’s also been the case with smartwatches like the LG G Watch R, which took a few weeks to get close to accurate results.

So RIck N. asked the question of how good Fttbits CRM algos…this snipof the Fitbit Charge HR, we found it to be 20 to 30 beats per minute higher than the chest strap rates during exercise, and between 5 to 15 beats higher during regular walking. That’s also been the case with smartwatches like the LG G Watch R, which took a few weeks to get close to accurate results

anecdotally says it all

Of course, the Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor has had its own issues, mainly when it’s been worn by people with dark tattoos on their wrists. The watch uses photoplethysmography technology, which uses green LED lights and light‑sensitive photodiodes to detect the amount of blood flowing through your wrist.

Normally, this tech works very well, as evidenced by Larson’s results, but dark tattoos absorb the light, interfering with the reading. There must be at least a few wrist-tattooed Apple Watch owners today who wish they had listened to their mothers.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wearables/apple-watch-heart-rate-monitor-accuracy/#ixzz3Ze9IW8BH
Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter | digitaltrendsftw on Facebook

So its so important to have this as background info as we learn more about what QUIK will have to say… the table is set

Apple has DONE WELL ( even if the power is high) and others will just have to do the same….now who can help with that?

QUIK let us know ASAP how the CHRM is coming along.

THanks in advance

May 9, 2015 at 9:20 am#4864REPLY

Just nice..this snip..

the Fitbit Charge HR, we found it to be 20 to 30 beats per minute higher than the chest strap rates during exercise, and between 5 to 15 beats higher during regular walking. That’s also been the case with smartwatches like the LG G Watch R, which took a few weeks to get close to accurate results

Anecdotal, but hopefully true..meaning the table is pretty much set then for someone like QUIK who has accuracy of the CHRM as the focus of their offering?

QUIK this really sounds good. THanks again for the hard work on this one. 

May 9, 2015 at 1:12 pm

#4824REPLY

jfieb

Participant

Fitbit files for an IPO – complete with real profits

Fitbit, one of the leading makers of fitness-tracking wristbands, filed to go public on Thursday, planning to raise $100 million. And its financial results in recent years stand out for one significant reason. Sure, the company increased its revenue almost ten-fold in just two years, hitting $745 million last year from just $76 million in 2012. And it’s dominating its market niche, with a 68% share by dollars of the fitness tracker market, according to NPD.
But it’s the bottom line, for a change, that drew all the attention in the Thursday IPO filing. After losing money in the early years, San Francisco-based Fitbit turned a profit of $132 million last year and $48 million alone in the first quarter of 2015. And it’s not a sort of funny profit that excludes the cost of stock compensation, acquisitions, or other kinds of expenses that tech start-ups like to overlook when they report “adjusted” net income.

The profits start at the start – Fitbit sold almost 11 million of those plastic fitness tracking bands last year for a lot more than it paid to make them. Devices range from around $60 for the Zip to $129.95 for the Aria smart scale. The company’s gross margin hit 48%. As a point of reference, Apple’s (AAPL) gross margin was almost 39% in its most recent fiscal year.

The filing also brings to mind one of last year’s more successful IPOs, also from a hardware maker with a popular branded product for consumers: GoPro (GPRO).

As PMCW wrote GoPro is conbsidered a wearable and this IPO is being compared to that so, wearables & IPOs are starting to get attention…..
The camera maker went public in June at $24 a share after showing an almost four-fold revenue rise in two years and an annual profit the year before going public of $61 million thanks to a gross margin of 37%. Its shares shot up to almost $100 within a few months and have since fallen back to just under $50, still double the IPO price.

May 7, 2015 at 7:37 pm#4825EDIT | REPLY

jfieb

Participant

Fitbit just filed an S-1 declaring its plans to go public.

The filing states that the fitness-tracking company aims to raise $100 million in its initial public offering (that number could change). It also says the company will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “FIT”.

Fitbit has sold 20.8 million devices total, with 10.9 million of them sold last year. Other details:

Nice as I had been looking for some sales figures….

Fitbit brought in $745.4 million in revenue last year, up from $271.1 million in 2013.
It had 6.7 million active users at the end of 2014, up from 2.6 million at the end of the previous year.
The company reported net income of $131.8 million in 2014, compared to a loss of $51.6 million in 2013.
Foundry Group owns 28.9 percent of the company’s shares, True Ventures owns 22.4 percent and and SoftBank owns 5.6 percent. (Fitbit raised more than $80 million in funding, according to CrunchBase.)
The company unveiled its first Fitbit Tracker at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2008. It now offers six wearable health and fitness trackers (which collect data about things like steps taken and calories burned), as well as web and mobile apps, plus premium services like virtual coaching.

The filing acknowledges that Fitbit faces heavy competition, and yes, it mentions the Apple Watch. Fitbit says it competes successfully based on factors like brand awareness, variety of products, battery life and sensors, the online and mobile app experience, sales and marketing, and distribution:

By offering a broad range of products spanning styles and affordable price points and cross-platform compatibility, we empower a wide range of individuals with different fitness routines and goals that are difficult for other competitors to address. Moreover, our singular focus on building a connected health and fitness platform, coupled with a leading market share, has led to our brand becoming synonymous with the connected health and fitness category. This singular focus on health and fitness has driven us to dedicate significant resources to developing proprietary sensors, algorithms, and software to ensure that our products,

I have added them & Jawbone as companies that have algo crown jewels that they might port to the S2/S3?
Anyway that they have in house algos that they would not trust anyone else with for now.

which are specifically oriented towards health and fitness, have accurate measurements, insightful analytics, compact sizes, durability, and long battery lives. We believe this singular focus allows us to compete favorably with companies that have introduced or have announced plans to introduce devices with broad-based functionalities, including health and fitness tracking capabilities, which are not necessarily optimized for health and fitness usag

A nice change in the ecosystem landscape.

Spencer Reiss talked with Mead, who turned 70 this year, at his house among the redwoods in Woodside, CA.

Technology Review: You’re famous for saying, “Listen to the technology.”

CARVER MEAD: To understand reality, you have to understand how things work. If you do that, you can start to do engineering with it, build things. And if you can’t, whatever you’re doing probably isn’t good science. To me, engineering and science aren’t separate endeavors. It’s like, “Are you a husband or a father?”

TR: How do you decide what to pursue?

+  Paul McWIlliams says to read this item

The opinions expressed in the following interview are very well-aligned with some of the points I discussed in my “Micropower Revolution” report. The old strategy of throwing more transistors at design challenges simply does not work when power efficiency (MIPS per mW) is the design goal.

“Interview: Samueli Sees More Focus on Design Skill

By Linley Gwennap

The microprocessor industry is facing a huge challenge now that foundries can no longer double the transistor count every two years at the same cost. Where transistor budgets once increased almost for free, moving to the next node now adds cost. After 50 years of continual improvement in transistor count, the industry must adapt to a new environment. To help guide us through these changes, we turned to some very smart and successful technologists. The first interview in this series is with Henry Samueli, chairman and chief technical officer of Broadcom.

During the interview, Samueli commented, “It’s funny, for the last 20 years, our engineers are always complaining, ‘I don’t have time to optimize my current design because I’m too busy porting it to the next node.’ Now I’m saying, ‘Stay in the same node and just make your design better. Come up with a new architecture, new circuit designs, new algorithms, and optimize your design as opposed to optimizing your manufacturing.’ I think the slowing of Moore’s Law is going to benefit the design companies like Broadcom and hurt the manufacturing companies.”

Samueli has laid down the gauntlet to his engineering teams to focus on making their designs more efficient, not through simple transistor scaling or by throwing more transistors at the problem, but by using new design techniques. These techniques can include new algorithms, new instruction sets, new microarchitectures, and new circuit designs. Even without changing the process node, such techniques can improve efficiency by perhaps an order of magnitude (equivalent to three or four generations). Instead of racing to the next node, engineers will now race against their competitors to find the next clever improvement.”

Enschede, The Netherlands – (Virtual Press Office) -- In its latest update of their Motion Tracker product portfolio, Xsens has added Active Heading Stabilization (AHS) to its core sensor fusion algorithms on the MTi 10-series and MTi 100-series IMU/VRU/AHRSs. The AHS algorithm delivers fundamentally improved heading tracking accuracy. The improved robustness in heading tracking is particularly evident in Xsens’ popular line of Vertical Reference Units (MTi-20 and MTi-200). These products now provide actively stabilized heading tracking, delivering 20x less drift than pure gyroscope dead reckoning for most application scenarios. This means heading tracking drift as low as 1 deg after one hour for many applications, while remaining fully immune to magnetic distortions. This unique characteristic makes the MTi line of products a highly accurate, but cost-effective solution for robotic/indoor navigation, camera stabilization, satellite communication (SoTM), directional drilling, borehole/pipeline inspection and pedestrian navigation applications. Marcel van Hak, Product Manager Industrial Applications invites interested parties to contact Xsens: “Customers are already choosing our MTis because of their accurate heading tracking capabilities, but this algorithm will bring the accuracy to a whole new level, enabling more applications and creating new markets. The 12cm2 MTi comes with an easy-to-use library, so that integrating the solution is straight-forward.”  AHS is available immediately as a free firmware upgrade to all MTi customers as part of the just released MT Software Suite 4.3. About Xsens Xsens is the leading innovator in 3D motion tracking technology and products. Its sensor fusion technologies enable a seamless interaction between the physical and the digital world in applications such as industrial control and stabilization, health, sports and 3D character animation. Clients and partners include Electronic Arts, NBC Universal, Daimler, Autodesk, ABB, Siemens and various other leading institutes and companies throughout the world. Xsens is a Fairchild Semiconductor company, an industry icon delivering power solutions for the mobile, industrial, cloud, automotive, lighting, and computing industries. Xsens has offices in Enschede, the Netherlands and Los Angeles, California. Please contact us on the web at www.xsens.com. ###### Xsens, MVN, MotionGrid, MTi, MTi-G, MTx, MTw, Awinda and KiC are registered trademarks or trademarks of Xsens Technologies B.V. and/or its parent, subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the Netherlands, the USA and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

• IES
• NEWS
• STARTUP ADVICE
• RESOURCES
• RESEARCH
• ASIA
• AFRICA
• USA

How Expensive Is Silicon Valley in 2014

John Rampton | June 29, 2014 at 4:59 pm   

242    

Make no mistake about it. Silicon Valley is expensive. Actually, it’s very expensive. But if you’ve ever spend any time in the Valley than you already knew that. For those on the outside, than you can believe that rumors surrounding Silicon Valley’s pricey cost of living are true.

Should you move your business to Silicon Valley?  Before you make that decision, here are a few things you should keep in mind?

But, just how expensive is Silicon Valley really? Compared to the rest of the country, the cost of living is 87% higher in the Valley than any other American city.

When it comes to housing, Silicon Valley is also the most expensive in the U.S. In fact, based on a survey conducted by Coldwell Bankers in its “Luxury Market Report 2014,” Woodside, CA is the nation’s top luxury market. Woodside wasn’t the only town located in Silicon Valley to crack the top five. Portola Valley was third, with Hillsborough coming in at number four. So, if you wanted to relocate to Woodside, expect to spend $949,000 on a two bedroom house with one bathroom and a fireplace – this for the record was the cheapest listed house in Woodside.

Trulia, however, found that the average listing price for homes in Atherton at $9,347,107, which could make it the most expensive city in the country. But what’s a couple of million dollars when you’re living in the same area as the guys who founded Google, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, George Lucas and Paul Allen? In case you were wondering, there are 71 billionaires who call the Bay Area home, so of course it’s going to be expensive.

So what if you’re not a billionaire? Let’s say you’re just you’re a teacher or even an engineer, what’s the price range? The median price for a home is $550,000 in the whole bay area.  If you’re looking at San Francisco, it’s around $1.1 Million. And rent?  You’re looking at around $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which is 76% more than the national average.  I personally pay $2,700 a month for my one bedroom in Palo Alto.  I had to consider this before I moved my startup to Silicon Valley.

To put it another way, if you have a family of four, you would need $90,000 a year to cover rent, food, transportation and childcare. To be more upfront, Silicon Valley is the 7th least affordable housing market for middle class families, San Francisco captured the top spot.

Of course, the housing situation isn’t the only major cost in the Silicon Valley. Living in California also means that if you make over $46,776 a year, the state is going to hit you with a 9.3% income tax. Speaking of taxes, whenever you go out and do some shopping, just remember that California has the second highest state and local sales tax rates at 9.08%. Even Hawaii has more favorable sales tax rate at 4.35%. If you look at the ten most expensive cities in regard to sales tax, Fremont and San Francisco are included.

As for basic necessities. Silicon Valley is 62% higher than the national average. And gas prices? Both San Jose and San Francisco are included in the ten most expensive cities for gas at over $4 per gallon.

Is any of this that big of concern when you reside in one of the highest paying areas in the country? (Web developers earn $25,000 more than the national average and customer service representatives and lawyers also do well here). Well, it should.

Despite Silicon Valley having a reputation for having a higher median income (it was $60,000 in 1993 compared to the $30,000 elsewhere in the country) it’s still a concern if weighing your options on whether or not to live in Silicon Valley. For example, if you made $92,300 a year in the Valley, you would need $74,800 to live that same exact lifestyle in New York City. That’s not saying that you should relocate or never move to the Valley. It’s just bringing up a comparison to give you a better understanding of how pricey it is to live in Silicon Valley.

If you already reside in the Valley, then you already know how expensive it is for housing, gas, food, etc. And hopefully you’ve been fortunate enough to make enough in your salary that you can enjoy the weather and everything else that Silicon Valley has to offer. However, if you’re looking to move to this area because you think it’s magical and can help make your startup a success, you may want to consider other options if money is tight. While it’s an incredible place to work and play, the Valley is really, really expensive.