Hiyd Is a Health Tracker That Attaches to the Watch You Used to Wear

Former Apple engineers have figured out how to attach a biometric sensor to a watch without magnets or glue.

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If you're a watch enthusiast, you probably don't want to trade your precious watch for a bulky fitness tracker. But Hiyd founder Salah Batrokh doesn't think people should sacrifice fashion for function.

"We don't think health tracking should be this overly conscious decision where you have to change something about how you look," Batrokh told TechCrunch. "This is the ethos of the whole company. Our plan is to create this product ecosystem with invisible health tracking."

Hiyd's first device to make health tracking cooler is a small, slim disc that attaches to the back of your watch via microsuction, a material technology that allows the sensor to fit under your watch without magnets or glue. This way, it leaves no residue or mess in the mechanics of watches that keep time using magnets.

"Microsuction is basically a textured silicone where hundreds of tiny pockets per square inch are molded into a flexible sheet," Batroch explained. "So when you push on it, it pulls the air out of all those pockets and you end up with a vacuum - just like traditional vacuums but incredibly reduced." It does a great job of stopping shear forces, but a little tweaking allows it to pop out properly, which is ideal for us. It is also very thin.0.3 mm with our manufacturing processes.

Measuring 2.7mm thick and weighing 7g, the sensor collects the same biometrics as leading wearables, including heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep staging, movement, calories burned and VO2 max estimates, then syncs with an iOS or Android app, according to Batrokh. To fine-tune the sensor, Hiyd's team filmed themselves performing various activities, then labeled that data set to train the AI.

"We go for a walk and say, 'Here's someone walking, here's someone running, here's someone running,'" he said. "The only thing that AI is good at is data analysis, so we can basically put exploratory analytics into our collections very quickly."

Hiyd is also working to include nutrition tracking in its app. The goal is not to count calories, but to help users understand how their eating habits affect their sleep quality or exercise performance.

"What we're going to do is say, 'Hey, on the days you exercise at 10 p.m. instead of 10 a.m., your sleep quality is actually worse,' and that's going to be specific to you," he said.

Batroch spent about seven years as a manufacturing design engineer at Apple, a company synonymous with iconic hardware. But he wanted to know if he could design something great without global support, a brand name and a multi-trillion dollar market value.

"One of the reasons I left Apple was because a lot of the products became a little more about being an Apple product than being something for the customer," he said. [Hyde] gives me the opportunity to do the exact opposite.

Batrokh is joined by co-founders Omar Shaker, a seasoned mechanical engineer who is the startup's chief technology officer, and Mohammad Charawi, who is its head of software. (Charavi previously led Y Combinator-backed startup Loudspeaker through its sales.)

Hiyd is bringing its tiny sensor to the big stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, where the company will compete as one of the top 20 companies in the Startup Battlefield on Wednesday. (Don't miss this action.) In November, the company plans to launch a Kickstarter. So far, more than 16,000 people have deposited to secure the first Hyde units.

When you make a purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.

Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. He has also written for publications such as Polygon, MTV, Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Before joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton Fellow in Asia in Laos.

You can contact or confirm Amanda by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message to @amanda.100 on Signal.

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