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Innovation is on a slow but steady rise in the Middle East. While most new startups in the region provide online solutions at core, few Arab entrepreneurs have decided to focus their innovation on hardware, spurring the interest of not only the local ecosystem, but also big players all across the world. Here are our pick of the top 5 hardware innovation coming from the heart of the Arab region:

Roadie Tuner
Country of Origin: Lebanon
Release Date: June 2014
Available in: USA
Shipped to: Everywhere
Price: $79

Roadie is an automatic tuner for any stringed instrument, such as a guitar. It uses the iPhone and a motorized accessory to tune the instrument. Roadie connects to the Roadie Application on the iPhone via low energy Bluetooth. The app receives the sound, processes it, and sends the right commands back to Roadie. Created by two Arab innovators, Roadie Tuner was incubated at Haxlr8r and will be ready to ship soon. It successfully raised $180,000 on Kickstarter, almost trip its goal, and won first place at the TechCrunch Beirut MeetUp last March, and the Audience Choice Award at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY.

1Sheeld
Country of Origin: Egypt
Release Date: May 2014
Available in: USA
Shipped to: Almost everywhere
Price: $50

1Sheeld from Integreight is a new easily configured shield for Arduino that lets you replace all other shields with your smartphone. Arduino is a popular open-source electronic board that can control just about any Do-It-Yourself hardware project. The shield acts as a wireless middle-man, piping data between Arduino and any Android smartphone via Bluetooth, thus allowing the usage of all Android smartphone’s capabilities such as LCD screen, accelerometer, GSM, Wi-Fi, GPS, etc. into your Arduino sketch. The 8-team behind 1Sheeld won the Audience Choice at Disrupt Europe. The project also went up on Kickstarter and raised $85,000, more than eight times its fundraising goal.

Pocket TV
Country of Origin: Dubai
Release Date: NA
Available in: USA 
Shipped to: Everywhere
Price: $50 - $140

The Pocket TV by Infintec is a thumb-sized micro-computer that connects to the HDMI port of any TV and converts it into an Android Smart TV. You can download apps from the Google Play Store to stream videos, play games, do Skype video-calls, or simply surf the web. It can also be used for doing presentations. Just plug it into a projector and see your presentation be played from the cloud or locally from the SD card. If you want a more traditional TV experience, you can buy an AirRemote which combines motion, click, and keyboard functions. The project raised $501,321 on Kickstarter, five times more than its goal.

Instabeat
Country of Origin: Lebanon
Release Date: Q2 2014
Available in: NA
Shipped to: NA
Price: $150

Instabeat is a head-up display unit that seamlessly monitors swimmer’s heart rate, calories, and number of laps. It mounts on the straps of any type of swimming goggles and uses LED lights to inform swimmers whether they are performing in fat burning, mid-range, or maximum zones. It also uploads stored data on a waterproof USB. Instabeat, previously known as Butterfleye, won first in the MIT Arab Business Plan Competition, and third place in the Stars of Science Competition. It raised $56,374 on Indeigogo, and secured a Series A round of investment from Wamda Capital and Jabbar Internet Group.

Mubser
Country of Origin: Egypt
Release Date: NA
Available in: NA
Shipped to: NA
Price:NA

Mubser is a wearable belt and headset that helps visually impaired individuals avoid obstacles. The system relies on RGB imaging and infrared depth data captured by a Microsoft Kinect to recognize objects in its way, which, when detected, prompts the belt to vibrate, thus alerting the wearing of an obstacle ahead. The system also recognizes some objects and names them to the wearer through the Bluetooth connected headset. Mubser is being incubated by AUC’s Venture Lab, and has won several awards so far, including first place at the Intel Business Challenge Egypt, first place for ICT Track at the I2P Brazil, among others. It is also a finalist at the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Region.