Chip Chick
Can’t quite find earphones in your own personal Goldilocks zone? OwnPhones wants to help you out with a set of 3D printed earphones that promise to be tailor-made to fit not just your ears, but your lifestyle.
The company wants you to lend them your ears—videos of them, anyway. Using their app, which is available for iOS and in development for Android, someone else can take a quick video of your ears based on the app’s guidelines. The videos will be sent to OwnPhones’ servers, where the videos will be converted into a 3D model and used as the basis for a 3D printed set of earphones that should fit you perfectly.
Past that, there are plenty of extras you can tack on. OwnErgonomics asks you to create an activity profile—OwnPhones will tweak the materials used and the design to best fit whatever you’re doing while you listen to your tunes. You can also add a host of smart features. Environmental Soundscaping allows you to specify the level of background noise you want to filter through, while Real World Notifications will intelligently detect sounds like doorbells, airport announcements, and alarms, lowering the volume on your music accordingly. OwnStatus LED is a light on your earphones that can be set to red, amber, or green, depending on how busy you are.
If you want a more upscale set of earphones, you can select gold or silver as materials—otherwise, plastic will do for those looking for sport earphones. The earphones themselves will be wireless, thanks to Bluetooth 4.0 compatibility.
Anyone who’s ever had earphones pop out on them (so, anyone who’s ever worn earphones) should probably be intrigued. We don’t know how much these will cost yet, but we should find out soon. OwnPhones is launching a Kickstarter next month to fund the production of your earphones, so that should give us an idea of retail price and some early bird specials that you can get in on.
