I love LUCI: This lifelogging camera pin seriously impressed me at CES

The last thing I came across at this year’s CES was LUCI, an AI-powered wearable video camera created by OpenInterX for lifelogging and vlogging. Tucked away in a quiet corner of the convention center, LUCI felt like a hidden gem waiting to be uncovered.

It might be my favorite discovery at CES 2025 — and I nearly missed it.

Extended recording time

The LUCI Pin is a compact square pinnable wearable device with an ultra-wide 12MP camera that captures up to 4K video. Unlike other wearables with a built-in camera, like the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, LUCI can shoot video for an extended period of time. By comparison, Meta’s smart glasses can only record videos up to 3 minutes long. On the other hand, the LUCI Pin can record or livestream up to 4 hours of video, according to OpenInterX.

That limitation is only a function of the LUCI’s battery life. The LUCI can be plugged into any external battery pack and charged while being used for essentially unlimited streaming and recording time.

With this functionality, the LUCI Pin presents itself as a lifelogging device. Whether you’re a vlogger or want to track what you do in a typical day without keeping a written journal, that’s the audience that OpenInterX appears to be going after. As a parent, it’s easy to see the draw of the LUCI Pin. You want to both capture a special moment and enjoy it without having your face looking through a screen.

Processing power

According to OpenInterX founder Shawn Shen, many of the recording limitations in other camera products are essentially due to too much processing happening within the device, which causes the camera’s sensors to overheat. The LUCI Pin tackles this issue by processing it on your smartphone or an optional secondary add-on device called the LUCI Hub. The Hub is a square smartphone-sized computer that acts as a dedicated processor, storage, and display for the LUCI Pin. It can also snap to the back of your iPhone via MagSafe, so users don’t have to carry two separate devices.

AI-Powered footage organization

One cool feature demonstrated to me at CES is how the LUCI Hub or LUCI app on your smartphone can immediately sift through your footage and create stylized videos from your content. It’s easy to see how TikTok and Instagram Reels creators who would like to quickly upload some of their day before sitting down to edit a long-form video version would love this. 

Now, I did mention that there is AI functionality. AI-powered wearables, especially in pin form, have become a big thing over the past year or so, even though every single product that comes out seems to fail. 

However, the LUCI is different. There’s no silly AI assistant to ask questions that could have easily been Googled. Since its main functionality is as a lifelogging camera, the integrated AI features are only there to help creators utilize what they record.

LUCI Pin and LUCI Hub’s AI functionality
Credit: Mashable

For example, a quick text search for “dog” on your LUCI Hub or smartphone app will pull up all video shots with the LUCI Pin featuring a dog. OpenInterX showed how specific you could get by asking the LUCI Hub what they ate for breakfast yesterday. LUCI could share text describing the meal by simply using the video that the LUCI Pin shot the day before. In another demo, LUCI even reminded the user who they ate that breakfast with.

Privacy features

Privacy concerns always arise with wearable cameras. LUCI addresses this in two ways. First, a small light turns on to let everyone know the device is recording. Second, a physical cover built into the LUCI Pin slides directly in front of the camera lens to ensure nothing is being picked up.

OpenInterX tells me that the LUCI Pin will retail for $99 and that the first LUCI Pins should ship out in the next few months. The LUCI Hub add-on should launch sometime after the LUCI Pin, but there’s no confirmed timeframe yet.

If this wearable pin functions as well as it did during the demo, many people will love LUCI.