At Triposo we make apps that let you travel like a local. Travel guides with smart suggestions, local events and offline maps help you feel free to roam the streets and explore. But you won't really look like a local if you have to consult your phone the whole time, so we're making a belt that will guide you to your destination by buzzing you around.

• You open the Triposo app and pick where you want to go.

• Tap the buzz me there option in the app.

• The app knows where you are, where you are heading and as soon as you start moving it will send signals to the belt telling you what direction to take.  This will make one of the four vibration motors in the belt buzz left, right, straight or back.

• The belt comes with a cable to connect the phone to the belt.

• It uses the headphone jack so it will work with any device that can run our app (iOS and Android).

• Other apps can use the belt too - the protocol to send it signals is as simple as can be.

  
  

It may not be as sophisticated as a turn-by-turn route planner and it might just send you down a couple of streets you had not planned on seeing, but that's part of wandering. And you won't feel like a tourist - no need to get the phone out of your pocket the whole time.

Challenges

The belt in the movie is a working prototype.  We’ve implemented the technology to be able to use the belt with our app by creating a walking route.  However going from there to a real piece of wearable technology that lets you wander presents a few challenges.

The first challenge is to make sure the belt doesn’t drain your battery. By using the audio jack rather than bluetooth, we think we can cover this.

The second challenge is to make sure the belt is comfortable yet durable and also allows the vibrations to be clearly felt. (One of our first prototypes broke within a day.)

Finally, scaling up from one prototype to a sellable product is quite a big challenge. We're partnering with companies that are great at making leather belts and electronic circuits - so we can focus on the part we do best.

Oh and yes, we did check if the belt goes through airport security :-) You have to take it off, of course, but then it passes security checks just fine.  

Thank you