Vancouver-raised engineer started work on gadget in university
Gillian Shaw
Sun
The inPulse is a wireless-enabled wristwatch that lets BlackBerry users see at a glance who’s calling them or sending e-mails. It doesn’t make outgoing calls or send e-mails.
Eric Migicovshy of Allerta Inc. in Waterloo, Ont., wears an inPulse created by the company.
A Vancouver-born entrepreneur is cashing in on the cellphone driving ban with a wireless-enabled wristwatch that keeps BlackBerry users updated on their messages and calls.
Eric Migicovsky, who left Vancouver to study at the University of Waterloo and launched the startup Allerta Inc. there, released the inPulse wristwatch Monday to coincide with Ontario’s newly introduced ban and just ahead of British Columbia’s ban.
The $149 inPulse watch connects via Bluetooth wireless to the BlackBerry smartphone, delivering alerts for incoming e-mails, text messages and calls. It also vibrates to alert users to incoming calls.
The inPulse started as a team project when Migicovsky, 23 and a graduate of Sir Winston Churchill secondary, was still in university.
“During your fourth year of engineering you get to work on a design project of your own and we were working on a BlackBerry accessory,” said Migicovsky, who studied systems design engineering in the co-op program at the University of Waterloo. “We started with the business community; we got a lot of good feedback and we had a lot of requests to make this into a product.”
Migicovsky came up with the idea for the inPulse while he was on a year-long exchange studying design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and he worried he’d lose his phone while he was biking over cobblestones near canals. Migicovsky said when he graduated, he and a team of five other engineers created a company to turn the university project into a product.
“Over the last eight to 10 months we have been working at shifting our project from hardware that we hacked together for a school project and turning it into a real production device,” he said.
They are launching the inPulse just as restrictions come into effect in Ontario that make it illegal for drivers to talk, dial, text or e-mail on personal hand-held devices, with Ontario the fourth province to introduce such rules. Legislation introduced in Victoria last week to put cellphone restrictions on B.C. drivers comes into effect Jan. 1, 2010.
Migicovsky said the inPulse is being billed as a BlackBerry accessory and not a complete solution for drivers.
“You might have a Bluetooth headset for answering calls, but at the moment there is nothing that lets you view e-mail or text messages without holding the BlackBerry in your hand,” he said. “You can’t input on the watch, but you can glance at it and see if an e-mail was one from your mother and not a really important business e-mail.
“It’s an extension of the BlackBerry, not a replacement.”
The display on the watch doesn’t show the entire e-mail, just the sender and the subject or part of it depending on the length.
“It’s not meant for people to read their e-mail,” Migicovsky said. “It notifies you and gives you a quick summary of what’s going on, it allows you to put it off for later.”
Migicovsky said the inPulse watch is also useful outside the car, letting users who just have a few seconds check for messages without having to pull out their BlackBerry. The inPulse website, at www.freeupyourhands.com, launched Monday for pre-orders.
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