Just for KicksWritten by Mike Sharsky An old marketing strategy says to hook ’em while they’re young. While Bluetooth wireless devices are already popular with Generation Tech, Corey Menscher’s Kickbee application takes wireless into the womb. Simply put, when a child kicks in utero, Kickbee posts a notice of the event to a Web site or mobile phone using Twitter. Mom wears a medical-grade spandex belt – used for supplemental support of a pregnant woman’s belly – that has been equipped with vibration sensors that detect prenatal kicks. These events are sent over a Bluetooth wireless link to a nearby computer, where a custom Java application sends the received signal on its way as a third-trimester tweet. (Menscher’s prototype used an Arduino microcontroller on the belt to process vibrations detected by the sensors, classify them as valid kicks and transmit the signals to a laptop via a SparkFun Electronics BlueSMIRF wireless module.) Menscher developed Kickbee while he was a graduate student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and his wife was pregnant.  “Ellen would call me from work to tell me that she was being kicked like crazy, or she would tell me how active the baby was during the day, and I would often feel a little sad for missing it,” says Menscher. “I was in a class where we explored using digital technology to sense, observe and interact with our physical bodies and behaviors. So I decided to create the Kickbee as my final project.”
Menscher plans to bring Kickbee to market, and future implementations may include a smartphone application. For the final commercial version of Kickbee, Menscher says, “I intend to utilize the Bluetooth protocol. Its low power requirements, solid signal, ease of use and ubiquity make it an obvious choice.” Mike Sharsky loves social networking but not Twitter’s 140-character limitation.
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