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This SmartWatch Runs on Body Heat and Measures How Much Electricity You Produce

There’s a new gadget up on Indiegogo that may have Neo shaking in his spiffy black trenchcoat. It’s a smartwatch focused on health metrics that’s powered by body heat. And it’s made by a company called Matrix PowerWatch…

The Matrix PowerWatch, which we discovered at Gizmodo, uses a person’s body heat to power its performance of everything from normal watch functions (y’know, like keeping track of the time) to tracking activity levels and sleep. Because you are its power source, that means it never has to be recharged or have its battery changed. The PowerWatch also keeps track of how much electricity one’s body heat is producing, because that’s a fun stat to know… or because there’s some kind of advanced robot civilization funding the product to obtain that info. (Although hopefully not yet. We still have time, don’t we?! Let’s check our smartwatches.)

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Charging via its user’s body heat means that the Matrix PowerWatch not only never needs to be charged, but is also water resistant up to a whopping 50 meters (165 feet). Measuring calories burned using body heat as its key metric also seems like a better method versus some other fitness trackers, which use activity levels and physical data (age, sex, etc.) stored in the watch. Because a calorie is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C, measuring calorie loss by measuring radiated heat with “thermoelectric technology” makes a lot of sense.

Plus, if you do want to disconnect the Matrix PowerWatch from its battery, i.e. your body, it does go to sleep after saving your data.

If you’re interested in ordering a Matrix PowerWatch, the “suggested retail price” is around $170.00, although as of right now there’s still a chance to donate $99 to the Indiegogo campaign in exchange for one. Estimated delivery date is pegged at July 2017, but as with all crowdfunded projects, caution with your moolah is strongly advised.

What do you think about this Matrix PowerWatch? Are you excited to get some use out of all that body heat that’s currently just sloughed off into the atmosphere? Or do you agree with Bender from Futurama that “anything [would] make a better battery than a human body… Like a potato… or a battery”? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: Matrix PowerWatch/YouTube


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