The key facts
- The Hiyd sensor attaches to watches via micro-suction — no magnets or glue, attachment thickness 0.3 mm
- Collects heart rate, HRV, sleep stages, movement, calories and VO2 max estimates, syncs with iOS and Android
- More than 16,000 people have placed a deposit; Kickstarter is planned for November, and the company is taking part in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt
A sensor for those who don't want to give up their favorite watch
Startup Hiyd has unveiled a compact health tracker in the form of a thin disc that attaches to the back of a wristwatch already being worn. Company founder Salah Batroukh told TechCrunch that he doesn't believe style should be sacrificed for functionality: in his words, health tracking shouldn't require changing your appearance, and the company's goal is to build an ecosystem of "invisible" health monitoring.
Attachment technology
The sensor is held in place using micro-suction — textured silicone with hundreds of microscopic pockets per square inch. When pressed, air is pushed out of the pockets, creating a vacuum similar to suction cups, but in miniature. Batroukh noted that the material resists shear loads well but is easy to remove by prying it off, and at an attachment thickness of just 0.3 mm it leaves no marks and doesn't interfere with watches that use magnets for their movement.
Sensor capabilities
The device, 2.7 mm thick and weighing 7 g, collects biometric metrics comparable to leading wearables: heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep stages, movement, calories burned and VO2 max estimates, syncing with an iOS and Android app. To train the sensor, the team records videos of their workouts, labels the data and teaches their own AI to recognize activities — walking, jogging, running.
Nutrition and insights plans
The Hiyd app is also developing nutrition tracking. The goal is not calorie counting, but identifying connections between eating habits, sleep and workouts. Batroukh gave examples: the app might report that sleep quality is worse on days with evening workouts at 10 p.m. instead of 10 a.m., or suggest that less deep sleep was caused by a piece of cake eaten before bed.
Team and launch plans
Batroukh worked for about seven years as a production design engineer at Apple and quit, he says, partly because the company's products had become more "Apple products" than products for the customer. He founded the company together with Omar Shakir (CTO, an experienced mechanical engineer) and Mahamad Charawi (head of development, previously co-led the startup Laudspeaker with support from Y Combinator until its sale). Hiyd is among the 20 finalists of Startup Battlefield at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, and in November it plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign. According to the company, more than 16,000 people have already placed deposits for the first devices.
