How We Built Orbyt Ring: A Look Inside Our Earliest Engineering Milestones

With Orbyt, our mission has always been to blend cutting-edge health monitoring with everyday comfort. In this behind-the-scenes look, we walk you through how our smart ring evolved through multiple prototypes. Each prototype taught us new lessons - about battery placement, circuit design, and ergonomic fit - that led to a much sleeker, more practical wearable. Read on to discover how each engineering milestone brought us closer to the sleek Orbyt Ring you can wear on your finger today.

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Making a smart ring isn't just about miniaturizing hardware. It’s about negotiating trade-offs between power, size, aesthetics and daily comfort, all while keeping manufacturing practical. Before the Orbyt smart ring became the sleek, lightweight wearable it is today, it went through multiple design and engineering sprints - each pushing us closer to our vision of an everyday health companion. 

Here’s a look into the prototyping journey that helped shape Orbyt into what it is today.

Orbyt Ring v1 & v2 - Laying the Foundation

Creating a smart ring packed with sensors and electronics is no small feat. In our earliest prototypes, i.e., versions 1 and 2, we needed to include everything for advanced health tracking: microcontroller, sensors and a battery. To fit all these into a tiny ring form factor, we turned to a multi-layer printed circuit board. Our v1 design used a 6-layer PCB, which let us route many connections in a compact area, essentially stacking circuitry across different layers. In version 1, we attached a circular (coin-shaped) battery onto this board. The battery was easy to mount, but we quickly realized its capacity was inadequate for our needs; running the ECG electrodes, optical sensor, and related functions at the same time drained it too fast.

For version 2, we made a big change: we switched to a slim, rectangular rechargeable battery. This packed significantly more energy in roughly the same space. We then redesigned the PCB layout to match the new battery’s shape, which let us add improvements without increasing the ring’s overall size. With the extra battery capacity, we could upgrade to a more capable processor and a stronger wireless radio link, all while keeping the form factor unchanged. At this stage, we also sketched out how to package everything into the ring’s housing. The enclosure design had to accommodate:

• Circuit board and electronics: The multi-layer PCB contains the microcontroller, wireless chipset, and all supporting components.

• Battery: The power source.

• Health sensors: ECG electrodes (metal contact pads on the inside of the ring to detect your heart’s electrical signals), a small temperature sensor to read skin temperature, a PPG sensor to measure heart rate, SpO2 etc and an inertial sensor to track activity.

• Optical sensor window: A clear window on top of the PPG sensor for light to pass through.

Even after refining the design in v2, these first prototypes felt noticeably bulky. The ring measured roughly 14 mm wide and 4.8 mm thick. That’s bigger than a typical ring, and it made wearing the device all day a bit uncomfortable. It felt more like a concept than a consumer product, but it gave us the technical proof-of-concept we needed. We knew immediately that our next biggest challenge was slimming down the design without sacrificing functionality. The lessons from v1 and v2 set the stage for a complete rethink of the hardware layout in our next prototypes.

Orbyt Ring v3 & v4 - Refining the Fit and Feel

Armed with lessons from v1 and v2, our team tackled v3 with a focus on slimming the ring down. We rethought the PCB and component layout to reduce width and thickness. By carefully rearranging components, even layering parts differently, we cut the ring’s width from 14 mm down to about 10 mm, and its thickness from 4.8 mm to about 3.5 mm. That reduction made the ring look and feel much more like a normal band and significantly lighter on the finger. It was a big step forward. But working in such tight quarters introduced new challenges: the battery was now very thin, and some circuit elements ended up crowding each other. In places, the battery and circuit board even overlapped, which limited how many different ring sizes we could offer and made assembly trickier.

For version 4, we doubled down on this miniaturization. We further streamlined the electronics, splitting the circuit into smaller sections and trimming every extra millimeter from the shape. We also reshaped the housing to hug the finger more naturally, rounding off edges and smoothing surfaces. Perhaps most importantly, the v4 design successfully supported multiple sizes. Instead of one bulky prototype, we had a family of rings from small to large, all using the same compact electronics core. We 3D-printed mock-ups of six different sizes to check comfort and fit on real fingers, so we could be confident our slim design would work for anyone.

Throughout v3 and v4, we paid extra attention to key subsystems. One focus was the ECG electrodes: these metal contacts must pick up very faint electrical signals from your heartbeat. In the early versions we used relatively large contact pads to guarantee a strong signal. But large pads consumed space and could feel uncomfortable under the finger. We experimented with smaller electrodes, optimizing their size and placement  until we found the smallest pad size that still provided a clear reading. This allowed us to have high-quality ECG monitoring without bloating the ring. 

Another subsystem was charging. One of the trickiest design choices in smart wearables is the charging mechanism. We needed a user-friendly way to recharge without adding bulky coils or ports to the ring. We settled on a contact-based charging dock: spring-loaded metal pins in the dock mate with contacts on the ring. Here’s why:

• It offers faster charging with minimal heat generation.

• It doesn’t require coils or increase in the ring thickness.

• It integrates cleanly into a custom dock we designed for convenience and efficiency. You just drop the Orbyt Ring into the dock and it starts charging - simple, reliable, and without adding thickness to the ring itself.

By the end of v4, the results were impressive. We achieved a ring as narrow as 9 mm (in the slimmest size) and a consistent thickness of 3.5 mm; almost a 30% reduction in thickness compared to v1. The ring still contained a battery, a six-layer circuit, multiple sensors, and a wireless radio, but now in a package that was actually comfortable to wear. The ring itself had slimmed to just 9–10 mm in most places, while the top sensor window portion was about 11 mm wide. We tested each of the six sizes in real-world trials (even wearing prototypes for a day at a time) to check for any pressure points or fit issues. These v4 prototypes weren’t perfect, but they felt comfortable enough for all-day wear - our closest approach yet to the 24/7 wearable design we envisioned.

Balancing Form and Function

Each design sprint brought hard decisions. Shrinking the body meant rethinking sensor placement. Increasing battery capacity meant smarter power management strategies. Adding more sizes meant tighter constraints on mechanical tolerances.

What started as a 14mm ring at 4.8mm thick gradually slimmed down to versions between 9mm and 11mm in width and just 3.5mm in thickness - closer to something that felt like a true ring, not a medical gadget.

The progress from v1 to v4 wasn’t linear. It required backtracking, re-evaluating assumptions, and even reworking entire layouts when one component overheated or another failed calibration. It took multiple PCB revisions and enclosure redesigns to reach a point where comfort, durability, and sensor reliability could co-exist in harmony.

Why Iteration Matters in Wearable Tech

Behind every polished wearable lies a series of crappy prototypes and 3D-printed models; and Orbyt was no different. Packing more technology into a smaller space required creativity: placing the components, redesigning the enclosure, and even redefining how the ring charges. From adjusting trace layouts for better antenna performance to testing electrode materials for ECG accuracy, our iterative approach allowed us to fine-tune each element.

Looking back, our journey from the first chunky prototype to the sleeker v4 is a testament to focused engineering and problem-solving. It’s not easy to cram so much functionality into such a tiny device, but each lesson learned proved that our approach works. It’s easy to forget that “wearable” doesn’t just mean “tiny tech.” It means devices that are intuitive to use, comfortable to wear 24/7, and reliable in delivering meaningful health insights. That’s what we set out to build. And thanks to the many iterations that came before it, the Orbyt Ring is getting closer to embodying exactly that.