This in-ear fitness tracker can play music and track your body temperature

For professional athletes (and overly-zealous amateurs), measuring your core body temperature or CBT can offer useful information about workout performance and recovery from injury. Usually, though, tracking this bit of diagnostic data can be a bit tricky, relying on intrusive methods like ingestible pills. Bodytrak, a UK startup, has a neater solution: a wearable gadget that uses an in-ear thermometer to measure CBT as well as handling a range of other fitness-tracking tasks.

The gizmo, also named Bodytrak, can connect to your phone or smartwatch via Bluetooth to transmit data in real time. As well as CBT, it measures heart rate and oxygen consumption (VO2) and the usual metrics like speed, distance traveled, and cadence (for runners that means how often you take a step). And because this thing is in your ear the whole time, it’ll also be able to play music and be used for augmented audio — processing ambient sounds to improve “hearing and situational awareness.” To top that all off, it comes with Bodytrak’s own software platform for tracking and exporting health data.

All in all, it’s an ambitious package, but Bodytrak’s creators are confident that the technology is accurate and that it will find an eager audience. The device is already being tested with a number of UK sporting institutions, including “several Premiership football and rugby teams.” The biggest unknown at this point is price, which will be revealed before the Bodytrak goes on sale in summer this year.