These Hearrings Will Whisper Sweet Nothings in Your Ear

Jewelry is great for two reasons: it allows you to express yourself when you wear it, and it lets you express yourself when you give it as a gift. It’s not much of a leap to assume that everyone reading this has purchased jewelry as a gift at least once. But you probably just bought something from a store made of shiny metal and a rock that only has value because society has decided it does. It’s far more meaningful to make beautiful jewelry as a gift, and these “Hearrings” are the perfect example.

The Hearrings were created by Amitabh Shrivastava as a wearable gift. Each earring is electronic, and whispers a message to the wearer every time they put one on. Shrivastava’s first version of the Hearrings were built using the same kind of IC (Integrated Circuit) that you’d find in a voice greeting message card. That IC seemed ideal at first, because new messages can be recorded by simply attaching a microphone directly to the IC. It also has very good battery life. Unfortunately, the audio quality was quite poor, so Shrivastava had to find another solution.

The second version that Shrivastava came up with is built on a custom PCB. On it is a Microchip SAM D21 microcontroller running a UF2 bootloader. New audio recordings can be added to the Hearrings by simply plugging them into a computer with a USB cable. They’ll show up as a flash drive, and the audio files can just be copied over. The opposite side of the Hearrings are clad in copper with a waveform etched into them. The result is a pair of earrings that look classy, were designed and built with love, and can play nice audio recordings that are meaningful to the recipient.