The Examined Life of Rachel Kalmar: Data Scientist #WearableWednesday

rachelkalmar

Nice profile of Misfit Wearables‘ data scientist, Rachel Kalmar, on MAKE:

That elegant aluminum disc on her right wrist: that’s Shine, the “personal activity tracker” created by Misfit Wearables. Kalmar is the company’s data scientist.

Shine enters the crowded health monitoring field with a design centered around a simple question: Are you moving enough? It measures your activity and syncs with an iPhone app (with Android coming soon).

The 40-person company is based in Daly City, California, but has significant operations in Vietnam.

Shine, coming in June from Misfit Wearables.

Earlier this year, Shine completed a spectacularly successful crowdsourcing campaign on Indiegogo, raising $846k, more than eight times its original $100k goal. This was in addition to $7.6 million in VC funding the company raised in April, 2012. Now Misfit Wearables has 10,000 pre-orders to fill for a promised June delivery date. Retail price will be $99.

Like the rest of the company, Kalmar is focused on fulfillment. But she is also wondering what will happen after 10,000+ Shines are collecting and transmitting data from people’s wrists, necklaces, and pockets.

“My question is: What should we be doing with all this data?” she asks. “And how do we make it useful?”


Flora breadboard is Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — New Products 11/15/2024 Featuring Adafruit bq25185 USB / DC / Solar Charger with 3.3V Buck Board! (Video)

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Halloween, WiLo, and more!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — Checking in on Intel

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — Are you grounded?

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.