【Hannah Harper Archives】

A smartwatch can Hannah Harper Archivesbe a really handy gadget, but oh, the battery life! Most only last a day, and charging -- typically with proprietary magnetic chargers -- can be a pain.

Well, there's a new smartwatch in town, and it's ready to make charging a complete non-concern.

SEE ALSO: Pet wearables are here to help you spy on your four-legged friends

The PowerWatch is a smartwatch that gets energy from body heat. It's launching on Indiegogo from the startup Matrix with a planned ship date of July 2017. Once it's on your wrist, your body heat powers the timekeeping and some neat other functions. The minimum donation to get a PowerWatch when it ships is $170.

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Besides using heat to power the device, the PowerWatch can use the biometric information to tell you how much power you're generating and how many calories you've burned in a day.

It works by utilizing Matrix's thermoelectric technology, which harvests the energy created in a temperature change to generate electricity.

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So, if the PowerWatch works as advertised, it will really, truly, never need to be charged. That is, as long as you're generating body heat.

According to Matrix, the PowerWatch also, "wirelessly syncs with your smartphone, automatically adjusts to the current time zone, and has changeable watch faces.... It stores up to a year’s worth of data. [And] when you take off the watch, it automatically goes into sleep mode, keeping all the data in memory; it turns on after a few seconds when you put it back on."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

CalTech buddies Akram Boukai and Douglas Tham developed this technology in Akram's basement in Ann Arbor. It's been five years since they've gotten this technology to work, and now that they're breaking out with their first commercial product, they're hoping the demand for their thermoelectric tech will expand.

There are many other contexts in which this sort of technology would be extremely useful, they explain. From manufacturing a whole new class of devices that never need to be charged (hearing aids, medical alert devices, etc.), to creating smart refrigerators (both personal and industrial), the two friends/business partners are hoping their creation will serve many markets.

As to why they got into the smartwatch game first, Akram told Mashable, "After talking to potential consumers we realized it was the most obvious market to tap into."

"We wanted to do something for consumers that increases battery life, but also works more intimately." He continues. With that, the PowerWatch has possibly the most apt tagline it could get: "powered by you."

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