UnSteadyRing

By Gerard & Anya Ziemski // Halfmarble

At halfmarble, our focus has always been on intervention. When Young-Onset Parkinson's Disease (YOPD) makes my hands shake, we engineer tools like the SteadyHandTool to mechanically push back against the biology so I can keep soldering and building.

But intervention is only half the equation. To truly understand this disease, to evaluate if our Levodopa is actually working, and to reclaim our autonomy, we need continuous, objective measurement.

The Steady tools intervene. UnSteadyRing observes.

The consumer tech industry is currently trying to track Parkinson's with smartwatches. But the wrist acts as a mechanical shock absorber. It completely dampens the fine, independent "pill-rolling" digit kinematics that define our tremor.

The medical industry's alternative? Put a battery, a Bluetooth chip, and silicon inside a "smart ring." If you live with PD, you immediately spot the fatal flaws:

1. They alter natural kinematics.
2. They are expensive, locking patients out of their own data.
3. They induce "charging fatigue." Asking a patient with severe rigidity or dyskinesia to plug multiple rings into tiny chargers every night is a profound usability failure.

We threw out that playbook entirely.

The Reversed Topology Architecture

UnSteadyRing shifts 100% of the active power, processing, and cost away from the fingers and onto two wrist-worn hubs.

Ten Rings. Zero Batteries.

The rings are completely passive and chip-less. There is no silicon. There is nothing to charge. You put them on and forget them. Because they are passive, they cost pennies to manufacture, making true 10-digit tracking economically viable for anyone.

Two Hubs. RF Signal Excitation.

The two wrist hubs do the heavy lifting. They act as miniature radar stations, emitting low-power RF signals down the hand. The passive rings act as antennas, reflecting that signal back. By measuring shifts in the passive return signals, the hubs continuously track the independent positions of the rings with extreme precision.

Sensor Fusion: Beyond the Tremor

Parkinson's is not just a movement disorder; it is a systemic failure that heavily impacts the autonomic nervous system. Tracking a tremor without physiological context is like looking through a keyhole.

By fusing ground-truth finger kinematics with autonomic vitals, we map the entire biological footprint of a medication cycle in real-time.

The Glass Box Philosophy

Today's medical device market runs on the "Black Box" model. Corporations hoard your raw data, run it through hidden algorithms, and charge you a subscription to view a dumbed-down "health score."

UnSteadyRing is a Glass Box.

This is your biology. You own the data. We are building this to give patients, open-source developers, and clinical researchers direct access to the raw, unadulterated kinematic vectors and physiological waveforms.

Defensively Patented for the Community

If you know halfmarble, you know we believe in open hardware. So why did we just file four patents with the USPTO for this battery-free architecture?

Defensive patenting.

If we simply published this architecture online, a massive corporation could legally take it, patent a slightly modified version, and send us a Cease & Desist letter. They would lock this technology behind a $2,000 paywall.

We filed those patents to establish an impenetrable legal shield—our Freedom to Operate. We hold the keys, ensuring no one can ever lock the door on the PD community.

Join the Build

We have the physics modeled and the architecture legally secured. Now, we build the chassis.

We are not looking for Venture Capital. We are looking for:

• Hardware Hackers & RF/SDR Engineers to help refine the telemetry algorithms.
• Clinical Researchers who need access to a 10-digit Glass Box tracker.
• Non-dilutive Grant Partners (like the Michael J. Fox Foundation).

If you want to help us engineer the future of accessible movement disorder tracking, grab beta access below, or reach out to collaborate.

halfmarble — the science is the engine