So we are all familiar with motion capture. The most common uses I think about are video games and movies. Huge setups with elaborate software that requires years of learning and understanding to make anything watchable. There are many examples of this in our media these are just a few

Rendering movements would be clunky and very time consuming

Rather than watching some random people walking toward the screen we see skeletons

Now the technology used to create these is expensive, at least when it comes to people like me. The Optitrack Flex 3 is touted as ‘The industries most affordable mocap camera” Mocap in this case is probably motion capture (or possibly ‘Mobile Origami Caption Anagram Packages’ designed to create origami that folds into a anagram that makes a statement about society, could be either one) This product runs a cool $7858 with 6 sensors and a limited field of 3D modeling.

Lets now meet Notch. Notch is a clip on sensor array that will communicate to a mobile device and record movement on a 1:1 basis. These devices connect through Bluetooth and save the data into the Notch app on your mobile phone.

30x35x8mm, <8 grams per connector

These small devices have straps that attach to different parts of the body, depending on what you want to track you can place these is different locations. Using as many as 18 sensors to get more and more accurate data and specific smaller specific movements. The nodes charge in an hour and last for 6 hours, which makes them usable quickly after you get your time in. With this setup you can capture sports movements, baseball swings, golf swings, Boxing punches, even swimming (yes these are water resistant). The use cases for these are very high for schools, physical therapy offices; places where you will have multiple users and don’t want or need to buy multiple devices.

We saw some other motion capture devices at CES and some of them were also pretty neat. What makes Notch so much better, is the ability to use this with multiple people and multiple sizes. Other companies have their sensors built into the clothing and for a $3,000\outfit it is a little hard to swallow. Being able to buy one set and reuse it seemed like an important feature.

Person on the right moves and the phone displays the person on the left

The output on the device is very easy to use it shows a grey-scale person that you can replay or save,modify and manipulate with the software. All-in-all I think this is a great way for people to create content from their movements and ways for smaller organizations or groups of people to get data that would have been way out of their price range before. We look forward to seeing Notch make some great waves in the industry and make something for real people.