Made in Northern MI: On the Cusp of Something Big

By Adam Bartelmay (Wednesday, February 03, 2010 at 1:40 p.m.)

TRAVERSE CITY -- Ryan Wells and Joe Thiel may soon be taking the mobile phone experience up a few notches with some gadgets that could have a good chance of becoming "gotta have" items.

"Basically it's a Bluetooth and a ring," What Joe Thiel is describing is what he and his business partner are calling the "O.R.B." or Orbital Ring Bluetooth.

It converts from a ring on your finger to fit on your ear to act as a Bluetooth earpiece.

But that's not all it does, "You can actually voice into the ring and then it scrolls text back and forth from ring to ring...which we feel is the next generation of texting," said Thiel. Instead of using a tiny keyboard or worse, the number keys on a cell phone to hammer out text messages, you can talk and then your words are converted to text.

It's a device so ground-breaking that Thiel and Wells were recently given the top honor at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "A lot of major companies strive for that award and we actually did beat a lot of those major companies," said Thiel.

Wells and Thiel founded their company, Hybra Advance Technology, in 2008.

The O.R.B. was the result of an idea the two scrawled out one day on a napkin, but a lot of work went into getting to the current prototype stage of the process, "Breaking down what was missing in the Bluetooth market and the O.R.B. Was born. It was a long process to figure out all the functionality of it and then sourcing all of the technologies to make it happen," said Wells.

That's not the only product Wells and Thiel are working to bring to market.

They've also developed a sunglasses strap they call the "Soundband" that also works so you can keep your hands free to do other things, "So you have an MP-3 player and Bluetooth behind your ear totally oblivious...you can't see it," said Thiel.

The only thing left for Thiel and Wells to do is find a company to market their products and they're currently in negotiations with some big names to do just that.

It's a journey that's taken a lot of leg-work and airmiles, "The O.R.B. took us around the world. We've been to Sweden, Denmark...multiple times to Hong Kong and China, Korea, Taiwan and almost every state in the U.S," said Wells.

The hope is to bring the O.R.B. and the Soundband to market by December of this year...just in time for Christmas.

They're also in the process of opening a design center in Traverse City where they plan on inviting inventors of all types of things to come develop their creations.

http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/story.aspx?id=411124

Press Releases

ORB™ Wireless Earpiece Finger Ring Wins CES 2010 Top Honor (AbsolutelyNew, 11/18/09)

AbsolutelyNew Announces the ORB™ Wireless Earpiece Finger Ring (AbsolutelyNew, 7/23/09)

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