Recon Instruments

Recon Instruments
Information
Industry	Wearable technology, smart eyewear
Founded	2008
Founder	Dan Eisenhardt, Hamid Abdollahi, Fraser Hall, Darcy Hughes
Headquarters	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Notable Personnel	Dan Eisenhardt (CEO), Li Chen (first employee)
Products	Transcend goggles (with Zeal Optics), MOD, MOD Live, Snow2, Recon Jet, Recon Jet Pro
Parent	Intel (2015-2017)

Recon Instruments was a Canadian wearable technology company in Vancouver, British Columbia, that built small heads-up displays (HUDs) into ski goggles and sports sunglasses. It was founded in 2008 by four people who had met as students at the University of British Columbia (UBC): Dan Eisenhardt, Hamid Abdollahi, Fraser Hall and Darcy Hughes. Its products put a tiny display at the edge of one eye's view and showed live data such as speed, altitude and distance, later adding smartphone notifications, maps and a camera.

The company's line ran from the Transcend GPS goggles made with Zeal Optics (2010) through the MOD and MOD Live goggle modules (2011), the Snow2 (2013) and the Recon Jet smart sunglasses, which began shipping in 2015. Intel bought Recon in June 2015. Two years later Intel discontinued the remaining Recon products and, according to Bloomberg's reporting, closed the roughly 100-person unit in the summer of 2017.

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Founding, founders, product dates, prices and specs, funding, the 2015 Intel acquisition and the 2017 shutdown checked against every cited source. About review dates.

History

Founding

The idea started as a class project at UBC. According to BetaKit, the four founders were MBA students in a technology entrepreneurship course; they first designed a display for swimming goggles, then dropped it because of an existing patent and turned to skiing and snowboarding. IEEE Spectrum describes the company as founded in 2008 from a business-engineering class project, and the company gave 2008 as its founding year in its own 2015 press releases. In 2011 Eisenhardt was chief executive, Abdollahi chief technology officer, Hall chairman and Hughes chief marketing officer.

The first employee was Li Chen, an engineer hired by Abdollahi to help build the prototype; a coworker credited Chen with writing the entire operating system for the first product. Recon later moved from a small office at UBC to a warehouse space in downtown Vancouver. By November 2011 the company had 45 employees on two floors in Vancouver's Yaletown district, and the paper described the company's "overnight" success as four years in the making.

Ski and snowboard goggles (2010-2014)

Recon's first product was the Recon-Zeal Transcend, a pair of Zeal Optics ski goggles with Recon's optics and electronics built in. It began shipping in October 2010 at 399 US dollars (Transcend SPX, polarized lens) or 499 US dollars (Transcend SPPX, polarized and photochromic lens). A micro LCD appeared to float about six feet ahead of the wearer and showed speed, latitude and longitude, altitude, vertical and total distance, a stopwatch, a run counter, temperature and time; recorded runs could be uploaded over USB to Recon's software.

In late 2011 Recon introduced the MOD and MOD Live, display modules that fit "Recon-ready" goggles from Zeal, Briko, Alpina and Uvex. The MOD showed GPS-derived data and jump statistics such as airtime, distance and height, and came with a wireless wrist remote. The MOD Live added a Bluetooth link to an Android smartphone for in-goggle navigation, tracking of friends, call control, music playback and remote control of a video camera. Oakley built the MOD Live into its Airwave goggles, which went on sale on 31 October 2012 for about 600 US dollars through Oakley, Apple stores, Sunglass Hut and Recon's own site. Engadget described the right-eye display as looking like a 14-inch screen about five feet away.

The Snow2 went on sale in November 2013 for 399 US dollars, or bundled with Uvex goggles. It used a 1 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU, 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB of flash storage and a 428 x 240 display, and ran a customized version of Android. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, ANT+ and GPS were built in, along with an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, altimeter and thermometer, and its 1,200 mAh battery was rated for more than six hours. Oakley sold an Airwave 1.5 version with the Snow2 for 649 US dollars, paired with an iPhone app. When Intel Capital invested in September 2013, Recon said it had shipped more than 50,000 heads-up displays worldwide.

Funding

Recon raised venture money from both financial and corporate investors. Kopin Corporation, a display maker that had supplied Recon for several years, joined the Series A round.

Date	Investor	Details
January 2012	Vanedge Capital (lead), Kopin Corporation	10 million US dollar Series A
September 2013	Intel Capital	Amount not disclosed at the time; Bicycle Retailer later put Intel's investment at 4 million dollars
April 2014	Motorola Solutions Venture Capital	Terms not disclosed; Bicycle Retailer later reported 7 million dollars

With the Motorola Solutions deal, Eisenhardt said Recon would take its smart glasses platform into industrial and public safety markets.

Recon Jet

Recon opened pre-orders for the Recon Jet, a pair of sports sunglasses with the display built in, on 26 June 2013. The "Pilot Edition" cost 499.95 US dollars until 21 July and 599.95 dollars afterward, with shipping then planned for December 2013. Retired professional cyclist George Hincapie appeared in the launch material. Recon listed a 1 GHz dual-core processor, Wi-Fi, ANT+, Bluetooth, GPS, an HD camera and an optical touchpad with gesture controls.

The Jet shipped to consumers in April 2015, well over a year after the original December 2013 target. In its review, Engadget listed the retail price as 699 US dollars and the hardware as a 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of storage, a 2.1-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi and an infrared sensor that detected when the wearer glanced at the display, which sat low in the right eye's peripheral view. The reviewer criticized slow GPS lock, sluggish software, a sync tool that lost workout data and weak camera output, and suggested waiting for a second generation. DC Rainmaker's first-month report flagged short battery life and a blind spot created by the display pod while cycling.

Recon also pitched the Jet to businesses. In March 2015 it announced that the glasses would run APX Labs' Skylight enterprise software, and later that month that it was integrating the Jet with SAP's augmented reality mobile apps; both deals targeted manufacturing, field service and oil and gas work.

Intel acquisition

Intel announced on 17 June 2015 that it had acquired Recon; Bicycle Retailer reported that the deal closed the day before. Intel did not disclose terms and said the purchase was "small and not financially material to Intel". Techvibes reported a price of 175 million dollars, while VentureBeat said its sources put the figure lower. Recon had a 75-person team at the time. Josh Walden, the Intel senior vice president who led the New Technology Group, said Recon would keep selling its products under the Recon brand. Walden said the deal gave Intel "a talented, experienced wearable computing team that will help us expand the market for head mounted display products and technologies."

Under Intel, Recon moved further into enterprise eyewear. At the Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit in May 2017, Intel presented the Recon Jet Pro for rugged work sites, an ANSI Z87.1-rated version, and the AiR Suite software (AiR Hub, AiR Designer and AiR Flow) for task flows and remote expert calls. Mouser Electronics began stocking the Jet Pro that month; it had a field-swappable battery rated for two to five hours and was ANSI Z87.1+ and IEC IP65 compliant.

Discontinuation and closure

In June 2017 Intel cancelled several Recon Jet products together with its Edison, Joule and Galileo developer boards. Bicycle Retailer reported that Intel would stop taking orders for the Recon Jet on 29 September 2017, as part of a wider retreat from wearables. In October 2017 Bloomberg reported that Intel had already shut the Recon unit, which had about 100 employees, earlier that summer, and that Intel planned to fulfill existing contracts.

After Recon, several founders started or backed other Vancouver companies. BetaKit lists Eisenhardt's Form Athletica, Hughes's SKIO Music, Abdollahi's Novarc Technologies and Ignite Ventures, and Rhino Ventures, which Hall and Eisenhardt started in 2015.

Products

Product	Release	Form	Notes
Recon-Zeal Transcend	October 2010	Ski goggles with built-in HUD (made with Zeal Optics)	399 or 499 US dollars; GPS speed, altitude and distance data
MOD	2011	HUD module for Recon-ready goggles	GPS data and jump statistics; wrist remote
MOD Live	2011	HUD module for Recon-ready goggles	Adds Bluetooth link to Android phones; used in Oakley Airwave (2012)
Snow2	November 2013	HUD module for goggles	399 US dollars; Android-based; 428 x 240 display; Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, ANT+, GPS
Recon Jet	April 2015 (pre-orders from June 2013)	Sunglasses with built-in HUD	699 US dollars; camera, GPS, ANT+, Wi-Fi; aimed at cyclists and runners
Recon Jet Pro	2017 (Intel)	Enterprise smart glasses	Swappable battery; ANSI Z87.1+ and IP65 rated; discontinued in 2017

XR work

Recon's devices were monocular head-worn displays. A small display sat in the lower right of the wearer's view, and the wearer glanced at it to read data. IEEE Spectrum described the goggles as augmenting a skier's reality with a microdisplay that appeared about 1.5 meters ahead, fed by a gyroscope, compass, GPS receiver and processor. VentureBeat called Recon a successful Google Glass competitor in 2015 and noted that Recon had shipped 50,000 of its snow units by September 2013, when Google Glass had shipped only a few thousand. UploadVR described the products as "a Google Glass-like add-on for eye wear like sports and safety goggles".

See also

• Head-up display
• Smart glasses
• Google Glass
• Everysight
• Intel