Aware Earphone

“World’s first custom-fit headphone with brain & biometric sensing. Bluetooth. Noise cancelling. Activity & sleep tracker. 3D printed.”

How’s that for a sales pitch? Apparently, Aware earphones are kicking up a storm over on Kickstarter, where you can donate money to hopefully see all of that technology compressed into a tiny earphone that is custom-molded to your ear. Using 3D printing! Hot damn!

The Aware uses a biometric scanner to measure focus, sleep, stress, and heart-rate.  It’s also got noise-cancelling and wireless functionality.  While little info has been offered up as to how this earphone will actually sound, the diagrams appear to show a dual-armature design.

Aware is looking for backers to bring this earphone to market:

• $99 will get you the basic wireless earphone with a perfect fit
• $249 will get you the same earphone with the biometric sensors, situational awareness, and support for the Aware app
• $500 will get you the $249 package plus access to the SDK platform that allows you to design applications for the earphones

As for noise-cancellation, it seems as though the Aware is going to be more of a noise-isolating deal, with no mention of Active Noise Cancellation on the Kickstarter page.

There are lots of slick videos, though, that seem to legitimize these earphones, especially for those who live fitness-centered lifestyles.  The fact that it measures sleep, stress, and focus should give you a good indication of just who these earphones are meant for.  But, like feature-laden smartphones, even a casual consumer will probably enjoy all the goodies crammed into these slim buds.

The Aware is a product of United Sciences.  The company plans to visit multiple countries in order to scan the ears of backers.  This ensures the custom fit.

While some areas of the world have been left out (sorry Africa and Australia), the list is still fairly impressive.

If these earphones actually do what they are purported to do while also delivering a decent sound, I’ll be even more impressed.  Because while you might cram biometric sensors and all other sorts of gadgets and gizmos into an earphone, I still think the driver is going to either make or break the whole deal.  Who cares about situational awareness, bluetooth, noise-cancelling, and biometric scanning if your earphones still sound like junk?

If you want to get the full skinny on the Aware earphone, head over to the Kickstarter page and see what’s what.