Recon Instruments was a Canadian technology company that produced

smartglasses Smartglasses or smart glasses are eye or head-worn wearable computers. Many smartglasses include displays that add information alongside or to what the wearer sees. Alternatively, smartglasses are sometimes defined as glasses that are able to c ...

and wearable displays marketed by the company as "heads-up displays" for sports. (However, none of Recon's products contained a transparent display element delivering actual see-through capability and can thus be considered

heads-up displays A head-up display, or heads-up display, also known as a HUD () or head-up guidance system (HGS), is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints. The origin of the name stems from a ...

in the true meaning of the term.) Recon's products delivered live activity metrics,

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

maps, and notifications directly to the user's eye. Recon's first heads-up display offering was released commercially in October 2010, roughly a year and a half before Google introduced

Google Glass Google Glass, or simply Glass, is a discontinued brand of smart glasses developed by Google's X Development (formerly Google X), with a mission of producing a ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displays information to the wearer using a head-u ...

. Recon received investments from companies including

Motorola Solutions Motorola Solutions, Inc. is an American technology, communications, and security company, headquartered in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. It is the legal successor of Motorola, Inc., following the spinoff of the mobile phone division into Motorola ...

and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

. It also partnered with enterprise software vendors in order to make its latest smart eyewear device, the Jet, suitable for industrial applications. On June 17, 2015, Recon was acquired by

. Recon then described itself as "an Intel company." In June 2017, Intel announced that all remaining Recon Instruments products were going to be discontinued by the end of the year. According to a Bloomberg report in October 2017, Intel had in fact completely closed its Recon Instruments division already in early summer 2017.

History

The technology behind Recon Instruments' products was born in September 2006 from an integrated

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

project. That project was undertaken by co-founders Dan Eisenhardt, Hamid Abdollahi, Fraser Hall, and Darcy Hughes at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

, Robert H. Lee Sauder School of Business. Recon Instruments incorporated in January 2008, operating from small office and lab spaces rented from the University of British Columbia. In April 2010, the company moved to its current headquarters in the

Yaletown Yaletown is an area of Downtown Vancouver, Canada, bordered by False Creek and Robson and Homer Streets. Formerly a heavy industrial area dominated by warehouses and rail yards, since the Expo 86, 1986 World's Fair it has been transformed into on ...

area of

downtown Vancouver Downtown Vancouver is the central business district and the city centre list of neighbourhoods in Vancouver, neighbourhood of Vancouver, Canada, on the northwestern shore of the Burrard Peninsula in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. ...

. As of March 2015, Recon is still led by co-founders Dan Eisenhardt and Hamid Abdollahi.

Discovery and prototyping

Recon's co-founders originally looked into developing a HUD product for

swimmers Swimming is an individual or team racing sport that requires the use of one's entire body to move through water. The sport takes place in pools or open water (e.g., in a sea or lake). Competitive swimming is one of the most popular Olympic ...

. Eisenhardt, a competitive swimmer himself, believed a HUD would be a valuable replacement for the clock at the side of the pool. Eisenhardt and his fellow founders developed the idea while studying at the University of British Columbia. However, a patent already existed for swimming goggles with a heads-up display. Because of that patent and the challenges presented by the technology's small form factor and intended operating conditions, the team eventually chose to focus on a winter sports product. The co-founders subsequently turned this school project into their first retail product, which was distributed globally in October 2010.

Investors

Recon has received investments from both venture-capital firms and other technology companies. In January 2012, Recon received $10 million in

Series A funding A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in excha ...

from Vanedge Capital and

Kopin Corporation The Kopin Corporation () is a Westborough, Massachusetts-based electronics manufacturer, best known for its microdisplay devices and application specific optical solutions for defense, enterprise, medical and consumer mobile electronics. Microdi ...

. Vanedge Capital is a Canadian venture capital firm that specializes in "interactive entertainment and digital media businesses." Kopin Corporation is a U.S. firm known for microdisplays aimed at mobile electronics. In September 2013,

Intel Capital Intel Capital Corporation started off as the investment arm of Intel Corporation in 1991 and in January 2025, it spun off as a standalone investment fund. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies off ...

, the venture capital arm of

, announced that it had invested in Recon. Details of the deal were not disclosed. However, the announcement described wearables as "an area of significant focus" for Intel Capital, and it said the investment would allow Recon to "accelerate product development, marketing and global sales, as well as gain access to Intel Capital's expertise in manufacturing, operations and technology." In April 2014,

announced an investment in Recon. Motorola Solutions describes itself as a provider of communications equipment for "government and enterprise customers." The terms of the deal were not made public. In July 2014, Motorola Solutions demonstrated a Recon product as a piece of kit for law enforcement personnel.

Intel acquisition

On June 17, 2015, Recon was acquired by

. The value of the deal was initially reported to be as high as

Can$ The Canadian dollar (currency symbol, symbol: $; ISO 4217, code: CAD; ) is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $. There is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviations Can$, CA$ and C$ are frequently used f ...

175 million. However, this sum was not confirmed by Recon Instrument's Dan Eisenhardt, and was later generally considered inaccurate. After the acquisition, Recon stayed in Vancouver and planned to make use of Intel's technological resources in order to "develop smart device platforms for a broader set of customers and market segments."

Closing of Recon Instruments in 2017

In June 2017, it became known that Intel intended to discontinue all remaining Recon Instruments products, i.e., Recon Jet and Recon Jet Pro. Around the same time, Recon Instruments ceased all activities on both social media and its own website. According to a Bloomberg report in October 2017, Intel had in fact completely closed its Recon Instruments division already in early summer 2017.

Hardware

Recon's first products were smart goggles and what the company marketed (incorrectly) as "

" aimed at the winter sports market. More recently, the company broadened its focus with the Jet, a smart eyewear device designed for activities like

cycling Cycling, also known as bicycling or biking, is the activity of riding a bicycle or other types of pedal-driven human-powered vehicles such as balance bikes, unicycles, tricycles, and quadricycles. Cycling is practised around the world fo ...

and

running Running is a method of terrestrial locomotion by which humans and other animals move quickly on foot. Running is a gait with an aerial phase in which all feet are above the ground (though there are exceptions). This is in contrast to walkin ...

Technology overview

All of Recon Instrument's products were essentially head-worn, self contained mobile devices equipped with

and environmental sensors. A near-eye display was provided in the form of a single non-translucent (solid) micro display situated below and to the side of one eye. This required the wearer to glance down and to the side in order to read the screen contents. Recon's head-worn displays were therefore peripheral head-mounted displays rather than

head-up display A head-up display, or heads-up display, also known as a HUD () or head-up guidance system (HGS), is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints. The origin of the name stems from a ...

s in the common meaning of the term; much less were they able to deliver an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...

experience due to their lack of see-through capabilities.

Transcend

Recon's first commercial product, the Transcend, was released in October 2010. It was designed for winter sports and featured a small

LCD screen A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not emi ...

embedded into a snow goggle frame by eyewear maker Zeal Optics, which is now a subsidiary of

Maui Jim Maui Jim is an American sunglasses manufacturer based in Peoria, Illinois. Founded in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 1980, the company designs, develops, and manufactures a wide variety of sunglasses marketed under the eponymous brand name. As of 2015, it ...

, Inc. The Transcend displayed data like

maps, temperature, speed, and altitude, and it allowed users to share that data. In 2011, the Transcend earned the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

's Best of Innovations award for Personal Electronics.

MOD and MOD Live

Recon's MOD and MOD Live heads-up displays were released in November 2011. Unlike the Transcend, the MOD and MOD Live were sold separately from snow goggles. Users could fit them into specially designed "Recon-Ready" goggles from eyewear makers including Uvex, Alpina, and Briko. Oakley also integrated the MOD Live into a specially designed snow goggle frame and marketed the resulting product as the Airwave. Both the MOD and MOD Live offered functionality similar to the Transcend's, but the MOD Live introduced the ability to connect to

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s via

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

. When connected to a user's smartphone, the MOD Live could display

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is ...

and

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

notifications.

Snow2

Introduced in November 2013, the Snow2 is Recon's latest standalone heads-up display. It features a faster processor than the MOD and MOD Live along with improved display brightness and contrast, longer battery life, 802.11a/b/g/n

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

connectivity, and Made for iPhone (MFi) certification. Like the MOD Live, the Snow2 can connect to smartphones in order to display call and SMS notifications. It also lets users connect to

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and track their friends using the GPS-enabled maps feature. The Snow2 heads-up display is designed to fit inside compatible eyewear from Oakley, Smith, Scott, Uvex, Alpina, Briko, and Zeal. Oakley has integrated the Snow2 into a snow goggle frame and markets the resulting product as the Airwave 1.5. Despite running an

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

-based operating system, the Airwave 1.5 is sold by Apple through both Apple retail stores and the online Apple Store.

Jet

Unlike the Snow2, the Jet combines a heads-up display with a Recon-designed sunglass frame and polarized lenses. The Jet is aimed at activities like

and

rather than winter sports. Recon has also partnered with

enterprise software Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than its individual users. Enterprise software is an integral part of a computer-based information ...

firms

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a s ...

and APX Labs with the aim of making Jet suitable for industrial applications in fields like

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

and oil-and-gas extraction.

, one of Recon's investors, has also demonstrated the Jet as

law-enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of the government or other social institutions who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by investigating, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms gove ...

equipment, as well. Built into the Jet are GPS connectivity as well as sensors to track metrics like speed, pace, distance, and elevation gain. Users can also connect third-party sensors via

ANT+ Ants are Eusociality, eusocial insects of the Family (biology), family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the Taxonomy (biology), order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from Vespoidea, vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cre ...

and smartphones via

. Like the MOD Live and Snow2, the Jet can display call and SMS notifications from user's smartphones. The Jet is powered by a 1 GHz processor with dual

ARM Cortex-A9 The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007. Features Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are: * ou ...

cores. Its processor, display, and camera sit on the right side of the frame, while the

battery Battery or batterie most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source * Battery indicator, a device whic ...

sits on the left, evening out weight distribution. The battery is designed to be interchangeable, as well.

Software

ReconOS

Recon devices run ReconOS, an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

based on

. ReconOS has a custom

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

designed for small displays. It shows live activity metrics and lets users share those metrics to social media. ReconOS also features GPS maps that display the locations of nearby friends and rotate depending on the user's head orientation. When a Recon device is paired with a smartphone, ReconOS can display call and SMS notifications, and it allows users to control the phone's music playback. ReconOS runs third-party applications, as well. Developers can write ReconOS apps using the Recon SDK.

Engage website

The Recon Engage website allows users to browse, display, and share activity metrics recorded with a Recon device. Users can also tag friends, share photos, download software updates and third-party applications for their Recon device, and see their activities mapped in an embedded

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...

pane.

Engage mobile app

Available for

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

, the Recon Engage

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

lets users view and share their activity metrics, and it also allows compatible Recon devices to connect to smartphones. Connecting a Recon device to a smartphone enables features like friend tracking, call and SMS notification display, and music playback controls.

Recon Uplink

The Recon Uplink

desktop application Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

lets users register their Recon device, update the device's software, and sync data from the device to an Engage account. When used with Jet, the Uplink application can download

photos A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. The process and prac ...

from the device to the user's computer.

Recon SDK

Aimed at developers, the Recon SDK includes the tools, documentation, and samples necessary to write third-party applications for Recon's Jet and Snow2 devices. The Recon SDK API augments the

API with extensions specific to Recon device hardware. Developers do not need to register or to pay a fee to access the Recon SDK.

App center

By visiting the app center on Recon's Engage website, users can download third-party apps for Recon's Jet and Snow2 products. Among the apps on offer are Refuel, a "smart nutrition" app that tells users when to eat and rehydrate during activities, and MyGoproRemote2, which makes it possible to control GoPro cameras using a Jet or Snow2.

Reception and criticism

The flagship product of Recon Instruments, Recon Jet, launched in 2015 to mixed reviews, with

Engadget Engadget ( ) is a technology news, reviews and analysis website offering daily coverage of gadgets, consumer electronics, video games, gaming hardware, apps, social media, streaming, AI, space, robotics, electric vehicles and other potentially ...

calling the goggles "expensive fitness glasses with potential to be better". Reviewers praised Recon Instruments for bringing the first fitness-oriented head-worn displays to market. Frequently voiced criticisms were the high price point, insufficient battery life, wearer distraction and limited field of view by the non-see-through (solid) micro display, unsatisfactory GPS lag and accuracy, complex user interface, and general software problems.

References

{{Intel Aircraft instruments Augmented reality Technology companies of Canada Companies based in Vancouver Electronics companies established in 2008 Companies related to wearable computers Intel acquisitions Electronics companies disestablished in 2017 Defunct companies of British Columbia 2015 mergers and acquisitions 2008 establishments in British Columbia 2017 disestablishments in British Columbia