Winter is coming, and that means your heating bill might start to mount up, but if you’re constantly battling for control of the thermostat, a new gadget is here to help you and your housemates. Say hello to Wristify, a thermoelectric bracelet which is designed to keep your body temperature at an optimal level, meaning you won’t have to hide under blankets in the winter or hog the air-con in the summer. Read on for all the details!
A group of MIT engineering students came up with the new tech, and while it’s currently only a prototype, it’s still still a very promising project. The device monitors air and skin temperature, and will then shoot thermal pulses into your wrist to either cool, or warm you up depending if it’s beach weather or ski season. All it’s down to is small, quick changes in temperature on parts of the body with high blood flow, and that’ll make you feel right at home once the wrist-wear has beamed a thermal pulse.
The wristwatch-looking prototype can be powered for up to eight hours, and it can change the body’s temperature by up to 0.4 degrees Celsius per second. Thanks to the tech, the makers of Wristify scooped the $10,000 (£6,225) first prize at this year’s MADMEC, MIT’s annual materials-science design competition with the intention of using the tech to lower overall costs in buildings that use space heating and cooling. The team thinks that if its Wristify tech can stop even just one building from adjusting its temperature by one degrees Celsius, that would help save around 100 kilowatt-hours per month in costs – not bad for a wearable piece of kit.
