Now, a new hardware hack will keep officer workers from slouching and will help them to improve their postures.
Developed by Joe Heenan, who works for a New York-based startup called Segovia during the day, Posture.io hack combines a Texas Instruments Bluetooth Low Energy sensor (which costs 20 to 30 dollars) attached to the back of an office chair with velcro, and an adhesive magnetic rubber strip that’s stuck to the back of the wearer’s belt. The TI sensor detects the distance and angle of the magnetic strip on the belt to determine if the wearer is sitting up straight or slouching.
The app uses the data to keep a tab on the wearer’s posture score throughout the day and encourages them to sit better or slouch less, without being too obtrusive. Heenan said that the goal should be to keep the posture score as close to 100 as possible.
He said that the idea struck him after he suffered some posture-related health troubles recently.
A secondary component of the hack also uses the Leap Motion gesture controller to direct the user to perform atypical hand exercises which are designed to relieve the damaging repetition of typing.
Posture.io is capable of pushing reminder notifications to the Pebble smartwatch and also generating an Outlook calendar reminder for the user to perform micro exercises if a user’s score looks bad enough.
