AURA – Hydration & Activity Band [Kickstarter]

I’ve mentioned the AURA Band a few times in passing

It’s currently a Kickstarter project (£13k raised vs £71k target as of 18/2/18) and has a nice focus on providing some key insights to certain types of people interested in a slightly deeper level of general fitness. Perhaps it’s not so targeted at ‘athletes’ (whatever that means) but the inclusion of a HYDRATION sensor might tempt some people in the athlete market segment, if hydration ‘works’.

• Bioimpedence – to measure BODY FAT %age and hydration by zapping an electric signal through your body to measure resistance.
• Heart Rate sensor – oHR is improving but I’d guess this would be OK for the ‘mass market’
• Accelerometer – for steps and activity.

So perhaps this is coming in as something like WHOOP but also with fat and hydration? Maybe not…it doesn’t seem to quantify recovery although it does claim to aim to cover sleep stages.

TomTom’s TOUCH made a big play at the BODY COMPOSITION statistic. It’s kinda nice to know periodically, like once every couple of weeks. But I always thought that pushing fat composition tracking as, perhaps, something of daily usefulness was stretching the use of that metric. Conversely, hydration states are very useful to know. If you are exercising vigorously for long periods then I’d definitely like to know my hydration state at several times during exercise.

To get a fat or hydration reading via bioimpedence requires you to touch the band with your hand from the opposite side of the body to which the band is worn in order to make a circuit.

Whilst it has an API to get to the raw data, the AURA won’t be ANT+/CIQ viable in this iteration.