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If you saw my post earlier today about Klingg, you might think that a new Kickstarter project — Elroy — is similar. Both hold onto your clothing, both have something to do with earbuds. But that’s where the similarity stops. Elroy is a tiny Bluetooth device that’s meant to do away with long earbud cables by clipping onto a collar and using special “shorty cord earbuds” instead.
You don’t need to worry about the Elroy project being funded — it reached a US$30,000 funding goal in less than eight hours, and the founders are well on the way to their stretch goal of producing custom earbuds in the US. At the current time, the device will ship with high-quality shorty earbuds made in China.
The base unit that clips onto your clothing weighs just 12 grams and the earbuds add only 3.8 grams to the total. That base unit is tiny, measuring a scant 1.9 x 0.8 x 0.3 inches, and is recharged through a micro-USB port. Using multipoint, Elroy can be paired to seven different devices.
One really unique feature is magnetic activation. The earbuds will have a magnetic dock like that on the Klingg so that you can attach the earpieces to the Elroy base unit when they’re not in use. However, there’s a big difference. When a call comes in, you can pull one or both of the earbuds away from the dock and Elroy will answer the call. To hang up, you just place the earbud back onto the magnet.
Elroy’s founder, Rob Honeycutt, is no newcomer to mass production. He was the founder of custom bag manufacturer Timbuk2 before selling the business in 2005. There are still a couple of weeks to back Elroy if you want to get in on the action.
Elroy wants to hang with you originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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