Van Roye
An ongoing concept: a titanium cuff from Geneva with a push-to-talk voice assistant.
A concept by David Vinkenroye in Geneva.
The story
I wanted an AI wearable that doesn't listen all day, so I designed a titanium cuff that only hears you after you squeeze it. It's called Le Pinson, and Van Roye is the concept around it. The cuff records speech, and the language model and the voice run on the phone.
Push-to-talk is there for privacy. Nothing is recorded until the wearer squeezes, which also helps it follow Swiss rules on recording people. For the research I compared 11 wearable-AI products and form factors and drafted the hardware around a Nordic nRF54L15 chip in a sealed enclosure.
The microsite tells the story with scroll animation, and an Atelier page shows the finishes and exploded views. The product images were generated and rebranded with a script.
What was worked out
- A push-to-talk wearable assistant, with the model and the voice on the phone
- Hardware research benchmarking the main wearable-AI products
- A draft hardware design around a Nordic nRF54L15 chip
- A scroll-driven microsite with an Atelier page
- A scripted AI render pipeline
Key facts
- 11 wearable-AI products and form factors benchmarked in the research
Stack
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- GSAP ScrollTrigger
- Node.js scripts
- Vercel
Themes
Ask before acting
For actions like sending, paying, deleting or taking a photo, my apps wait for a tap from the user. When the AI changes something, you see the change and the reason for it, and where I can, there's an Undo button.
Built for Switzerland
Switzerland has four official languages, so my sites come in up to four of them. Some products connect to Swiss shops and trains, and hosting is in Switzerland or the EU by default.
Ideas in the works
77, Van Roye and Miradouro are concepts I'm still working on. So far each one has a brand and a plan.