These students from Singapore are making a smart strap for your watch

The current Patch prototype. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Almost two years after the Apple Watch, I’m still not sold on smartwatches – and I don’t know if I’ll ever be. The combination of cost and limited usability just doesn’t make sense to me. Not to mention that no smartwatch comes close to the aesthetics of even a moderately priced timepiece.

The prototype is at a very early stage but already feels good to wear.

But here’s my conundrum: I’m still a fan of tech. I like some of the functionality a smartwatch – or even a basic activity tracker – provides. Why not have a sleek-looking watch that can do this while still being a piece of engineering that can survive more than a couple of hardware cycles?

Singapore University of Technology and Design student Kai Yuan See feels the same way. A fan of timepieces, as he puts it, he tried a smartwatch and was disappointed. “I feel a smartwatch should not be called a timepiece, it should just be called a gadget,” he tells Tech in Asia.

So his idea was, why not put all the tech in a watch strap, which can then be attached to any timepiece you like?

Together with his teammates, Jun Hao Chiew and Gelin Liu, they are developing Patch, a smart strap that bestows “smart” functionality upon regular watches. The trio has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, asking for US$35,140.

Photo credit: Patch.

Strap in

The strap – available in leather and nylon versions – combines with a mobile app to track your steps. Sleep-tracking functionality will be added as well. It vibrates for notifications and reminders, like when you’ve left your phone behind or you have been sitting too long.

It can also control certain functions of your phone through gestures. The team demonstrates this by shaking the watch to take a selfie with Kai Yuan’s phone. More gesture options could be on the way too, depending on user feedback.

The prototype version I tried, made of leather, is at a very early stage but already feels good to wear. The vibration function and gesture detection work well. What feels a little off is that Patch contains a hard circuit board, which makes the strap containing it a little too rigid.

“Once we get funded, our aim is to look into flexible circuit boards,” Kai Yuan says. About one-fifth of the total crowdfunding amount will be devoted to that.

Smart competition