Bluetooth LE Smart Ring - API Access

Third party integrations
1

Hey everyone!

I’m one of the founders of Genki Instruments. Last fall we launched our first product - Wave - to market. Wave is the ring that allows musicians to shape sound, control effects and send commands with the motion of their hands.

We have gotten a lot of inbound requests for using Wave to control other aspects of our digital lives, not just music. That is why we’ve made a small API available for the device. The API opens up two-way communication to Wave, exposing your scripts and applications to our proprietary motion sensing algorithms, button events, LED display control and a handful of other things.

Please check out the documentation if you want to know more about the API. And don’t hesitate to reach out if anything is unclear.

2

Here you can see a few demos we’ve made internally with the ring.

If you’re interested to know more about Genki Instruments and our vision, here is a talk my co-founder gave recently.

3

As mentioned in my reddit comment here:

Although I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to create an API for the device, unless you also put in the work time for getting it working in a HA component, or provide devices to developers that are willing to put in the work load (with such a device, the work load might be big), then I don’t see a scenario in which home automation enthusiasts will buy a $200 device that is advertised as a sound editing tool for the slight chance of it being useful for their setup.

I think this device could be very useful or completely useless.

Why I think it could be useful:

  • it has BTLE, so maybe room presence could be achieved
  • as a remote (gestures) for all kinds of automations

Why I think it could be useless:

  • you state in the docs “Interfacing through other programming languages, such as Python or JavaScript, can be achieved if a Bluetooth LE module is available for the language.”, Python is the most popular programming language around here, Node.js seems to take the second place… some examples of getting those working would be nice. But if interfacing with the device needs to be done through Bluetooth, then it can only work in the same room where the device running HA is, (which hopefully also supports BT) or am I wrong here? Does the device announce the gestures through Bluetooth?

I would of personally liked a smart ring that sends hand gestures in real time through WiFi (so it can cover the entire house), and also had BTLE for room presence. But if it only sends data through BT, then it would be an expensive device that would need a BT listener in every room and multiple such rings in one home might create issues too.