Ninug Band

A band with nothing to look at.

No screen, no notifications, no glancing down. It reads your pulse, your movement and your skin, and the only thing it ever does on its own is a short vibration when the day is getting ahead of you — which you can tune, or switch off entirely.

Reserve a band →
The Ninug Band, a screenless fitness band with a knitted charcoal strap

What it reads

Five signals, continuously, without asking anything of you.

  • ◆Heart rate and its variabilityFrom an optical sensor against the skin. The beat-to-beat timing is where load and recovery show up, long before anybody notices they are tired
  • ◆MovementActivity through the day, stillness at night, and the motion reference that stops a brisk walk being read as a racing pulse
  • ◆Blood oxygenSampled rather than streamed, because it costs battery and changes slowly
  • ◆Skin temperatureA slow signal. Useful across nights and weeks, meaningless minute to minute
  • ◆Activity and sleep timingWhen you moved, when you stopped, and for how long

Wellness and monitoring. None of this is a diagnosis, none of it is cleared as a medical device, and nothing here should be used to decide whether somebody needs care.

The sensor

The raw signal is yours.

Most bands give you a number and keep the measurement. This one hands over the optical waveform and the motion data it was computed from, so a school, a researcher or a clinician can check the working rather than taking a score on faith.

The underside of the Ninug Band, showing the optical sensor window and charging contacts

The one thing it does

A vibration, and only if you want one.

  • ◆On the band, not the phoneIt fires without a phone in the room, which is the only way it works in a classroom
  • ◆AdjustableStrength, sensitivity and how often it is allowed to interrupt
  • ◆Completely switchable offOff means off. A wearable that insists on buzzing at a child is a wearable nobody should be selling to a school
  • ◆Settings stay on the bandSet once over Bluetooth; they survive the phone going away
Children at desks in a classroom, each wearing a Ninug Band

Schools

A whole class, no phones required

 An adult resting in a chair by a window, wearing a Ninug Band

Care settings

A long quiet record, worn without thinking

 The Ninug Band on wet stone, beaded with water

Every day

Showers, swimming, washing, sweat

Wearing it

One module. Straps that suit whoever is wearing it.

The sensor is a single piece that moves between straps, in sizes from a child’s wrist to an adult’s. Straps wash; the module does not need to.

The Ninug Band module beside four knitted straps in different colours

Also

The rest of it.

  • ◆Two sizesYouth and adult, same module in both
  • ◆Waterproof for daily wearSweat, handwashing, a shower. The exact rating is being settled with the manufacturer and will be published when it is a fact rather than a hope
  • ◆Charges on a dockContacts rather than a port, because a port is a hole and a hole is where water gets in
  • ◆Updates over the airFrom the phone app, or from a Ninug Room in a classroom where the students have no phones

Pre-production. Specifications on this page describe what the band is being built to do, and will be corrected here as manufacturing settles rather than quietly left as they are.

The room matters too.

Carbon dioxide, noise, light and temperature explain a surprising amount of what a body does all day. Ninug Room measures the room, and in a school it is also what keeps a class of bands synced without a single phone.

See the range →

Further reading

The questions behind the numbers.

Why alertness drops in the afternoon

Read the guide →

What HRV actually tells you

Read the guide →