Silicon Labs announced that Misfit Wearables, a designer and manufacturer of wearable computing products, has chosen Silicon Labs’ EFM32™ Leopard Gecko 32-bit microcontroller (MCU) as the energy-friendly controller for the Misfit Shine™, the world’s most elegant physical activity monitor. The Gecko MCU communicates with the Shine’s 3-axis accelerometer, drives user interface LEDs and hosts a Wicentric Bluetooth® low energy software stack, enabling connectivity with the Shine App running on Apple iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads – all with the utmost energy efficiency.
The Misfit Shine is tapping into today’s burgeoning market for wearable computing devices. According to IMS Research (a part of IHS Electronic Media), sports and fitness monitors, running and cycling computers, and other physical activity trackers will reach 56.2 million unit shipments globally in 2017, up from 43.8 million units in 2013. IMS predicts that a total of 252 million units will ship over the next five years. In a related survey conducted by IMS last year, 62.3 percent of smartphone owners who exercise regularly expressed an interest in mobile health and fitness apps and fitness sensors such as the Misfit Shine that connect to smartphone apps.
Silicon Labs
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