MomentPick Wearable Camera

MomentPick, a project by Mind Success, is a smart wearable camera. It does not feature a large and distracting screen unlike most standard cameras. Instead, it utilizes an array of embedded sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand the scene and help you frame and pick the best shot. The wearable is equipped with advanced motion and environmental sensors, lidar, microphone, wireless charging and a myriad of wireless interfaces including Bluetooth low-energy (BLE), near-field communication (NFC), WiFi and short-range microwave. MomentPick has a large internal eMMC Flash storage and is accompanied with a Docking Station used for wireless charging and offloading of pictures and recordings to a user smartphone app.

The wearable camera can be controlled by hand gestures, touch buttons or audio commands. It features no GPS or Internet connection. Thus, user privacy is maintained.

Hexabitz provided turnkey design solutions for MomenPick starting with early conception to PCB design, firmware development, smartphone apps and mechanical and industrial design.

Project Skills

  • PCB Design
    • 6-layer mixed rigid-flex PCB stack for wearable
    • 4-layer mixed rigid-flex PCB stack for docking station
    • Integration of multiple antennas and wireless interfaces
    • 5W wireless charging
    • Fine-pitch BGAs
  • Wearable Design
    • FDM / SLA 3D printing
    • High integration and ergonomic design
    • Complex PCB/enclosure integration
    • Optical elements (camera, lidar, flash LEDs)
  • Firmware
    • Ultra-low power operation
    • Embedded RTOS
    • 720p RGB camera integrated with high capacity 4GB+ eMMC
    • Four wireless interfaces (BLE 5.2, WiFi 2.5G, NFC, 60Ghz MW)
    • A myriad of embedded sensors (IMU, temperature, humidity, pressure, lidar, microphone)
    • Lithium-Ion battery charging and battery gauge
    • Embedded AI and audio commands via natural voice processing
  • Software
    • Android App (BLE, NFC, sensor graphs, advanced UI)
    • iOS App (BLE, NFC, sensor graphs, advanced UI)

Innovative Solutions

Challenge: Customer requested to build a small, intuitive, and non-intrusive camera that can be carried anywhere

Solution: We removed the camera display, which is the largest and most power-consuming part of a camera. It’s also a distracting and intrusive element. The display, however, helps you frame the object and review the shot before it’s taken. Instead, we installed an array of sensors combined with onboard and offboard AI algorithms to enable the wearable to comprehend the scene and helps you take the best possible shot, intuitively

Challenge: A lot of sensors, wireless technologies and a battery with power charging had to be integrated in a small space and user-friendly formfactor

Solution: We developed complex, multi-layer, flex-rigid PCBs for both the wearable and its docking station in order to fit all components and provide appropriate isolation between the various antennas, optical elements, wireless charging coil, etc. The wearable was designed in an intuitive, hand watch formfactor with a matching beautiful design for its docking station

Challenge: The wearable records a large volume of data (pictures, videos, audio recordings, sensor readings) that must be downloaded later to a user phone

Solution: The wearable has Bluetooth low-energy wireless communication to communicate with its docking station and a user phone. However, at the maximum data rate of BLE 5.2 technology, the internal Flash memory will need 10+ hours to offload its content via BLE, which makes it impractical. The ultra-low power wearable design doesn’t allow for other high speed wireless interfaces such as Wi-Fi due to their high-power consumption.

Hexabitz utilized novel, short distance, 60Ghz microwave communication technology to offload data between the wearable and its docking station. The high-bandwidth 60Ghz microwave interface has a much lower power consumption compared to other high-bandwidth solutions, thus, making it perfectly suitable for our wearable application. After receiving downloaded microwave data from the wearable, the docking station immediately forwards them to a user phone via Wi-Fi

Challenge: The wearable has a small formfactor and must perform lots of functionality while extending battery life to multiple days

Solution: We implemented an ultra-low power design starting with low power microcontrollers and low power wireless interfaces (BLE, 60Ghz microwave) and ending with power-gating and duty-cycling all sensors and components. Advanced time-of-flight (ToF) lidar and IMU sensors allow the wearable to operate on as-needed basis, further reducing its power consumption

Challenge: The wearable requires an advanced and intuitive user interface method to control its complex functionality. Its small form factor does not allow the integration of multiple buttons and user input mechanisms

Solution: We opted for simple user control mechanisms for basic operations via hand gestures (motion sensors) and capacitive touch (button and slider). However, the complex nature of the wearable with its embedded camera, sensors and wireless interfaces requires a more advanced control mechanism. We opted for intuitive audio control via speech recognition of certain keywords and audio commands. User voice is recorded by the wearable microphone and is analyzed via AI algorithms onboard, without the need for Internet connection, ensuring user privacy and reliable operation

0