Earlier this week I visited Ben Levings at ArtScan3D, his workshop in Southampton. Ben is manufacturing the enclosure for the Haelo Hub, our Bluetooth gateway that connects Haelo wearables to the cloud. We've been collaborating on the Hub design together, and it's been one of the more rewarding partnerships we've had building Haelo.
What Is the Haelo Hub?
The Haelo ring is designed for individuals, but in some settings you can't rely on every wearer having a smartphone charged and nearby. A care home, for example, or a senior relative's house. If you've ever tried to set one up for a senior relative, you might have experienced this yourself (bless them)!
The Hub solves this. It's a compact device that acts as a Bluetooth Low Energy gateway, picking up signals from Haelo rings and wristbands, collecting health and safety data continuously, and relaying it to our cloud platform, all without needing a phone in the loop.
In a care home, a small network of Hubs can cover an entire building. For someone living independently at home a single Hub provides the same protection. If someone falls or if vital signs change suddenly, the system flags it immediately. No buttons to press, no apps to open.
How We Got Here
Ben has decades of experience in 3D scanning, modelling, and printing. The brief was to design a custom enclosure for the Hub in a clean, compact form factor. What set the collaboration apart was his willingness to go beyond the brief, including assembling and testing the full hardware fit end-to-end before shipping. That level of rigour is incredibly helpful when you're designing around thermal constraints and tight tolerances.
Visiting the workshop was a chance to refine the design in person. With hardware there are things that are much more easily resolved face to face, and being able to iterate on the CAD model together in real time probably saved weeks of back-and-forth.
It also helps that Ben's workspace is the kind of place that makes you want to build things: calipers everywhere, and a dozen iterations of the Hub case in various stages of assembly.
Why This Matters
The Haelo Hub is a key part of how Haelo works at scale. The ring handles detection. The Hub handles connectivity. Together, they give care staff real-time visibility into residents' wellbeing, and give families peace of mind that their loved ones are protected, even when they can't be there themselves.
We're currently preparing to deploy the full system in real-world pilots. Having the hardware come together alongside the software is a milestone, and working with people like Ben who genuinely care about what we're building makes it all the more worthwhile.
Haelo is building the first smart ring with real-time emergency detection.
