Month: April 2016

Categories
Health and Wellness Technology

Nervana earbuds makes any tune feel-good music

As the old saying goes, music can soothe the savage beast. Certainly, at the very least, the right music can relax listeners and make them happy.

Nervana takes that concept a step further. It’s a nerve stimulator with patent-pending earbuds that syncs to music and releases natural chemicals in the human body that generate pleasure. Nervana generates a gentle electrical signal that is transmitted to the surface of the left earbud on what looks like a standard earbud assembly.

When the left earbud is placed in the left ear and the Nervana generator is turned on, the electrical signal beats to whatever music is being experienced by the user, whether supplied to the generator through a user’s phone or through the environment, such as in a concert hall.  The electrical signal stimulates the body’s vagus nerve, which could result in the release of neurotransmitters, the body’s natural feel-good messengers.

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Categories
Kids/Babies Maker/Development Robots/Drones

Codeybot drives a programmable wedge right into your adoring heart

The past ten years or so have seen a huge push towards STEM subjects in the United States to shore up the youth for a future society dominated by computer programming and robotics. But no matter how important the programming skills are, children w care about the future implications of learning them unless it’s fun to learn first.

Enter the Codeybot, another crowdfunded little robot designed to engage children in the fundamentals of coding from the creators of the Makeblock. What’s immediately noticeable is how its LED panel and extremely appealing, wedge-shaped single-wheel design serve to grasp the usually fleeting attention spans of children. To maintain it, children program Codeybot with an iPad app using the mBlocky language. (Sorry Android users.)

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Categories
Smart Home

The Ezcontrol hub speaks your smart home’s language

With most dwellings boasting a wide variety of devices and home fixtures that communicate in different ways, outfitting a home with connectivity can be a messy affair. Since the dawn of the IoT movement, smart hubs have sprung up offering to standardize the hassle — some more successfully than others.

One that seems to have the right idea is Ezcontrol. While it isn’t an entirely new idea, its dedication to a simple premise — a smart hub that communicates using Wi-Fi, infrared, and RF waves — makes it a low-cost, straightforward solution. Being that most items in the home communicate with one of those three standards, everything from the connected fridge to the air conditioner to the garage door can all be controlled using a single companion app preloaded with compatibility with over 5,000 devices.

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Categories
Health and Wellness Wearables

Backbone supports you in the quest for better posture

It’s incredible to think that for every 15° of forward neck tilt, as much as 10-20 pounds of pressure is placed on the spine, neck, and back. This is not only a detriment to posture and overall well being, but puts people one step closer to looking like Quasimodo — a fate no one wants.

With bad posture so commonplace, it’s no surprise more and more crowdfunding campaigns are addressing the issue head on. The latest to do so is the Backbone, a pair of connected shoulder straps that not physically supports better posture but also reminds users to straighten up through notifications and vibrations.

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Categories
Sports Toys

FOOOTY is a folding ball that’s a real kick

As people get older, the opportunities for play get fewer and farther in between. It’s a shame, too, because along with exercise and diet, engaging in unstructured or structured play has shown to be highly beneficial for health.

For that reason, inventor Jean-Pierre Raes labored in making something that would allow spontaneous play anywhere. The result was the FOOOTY system, a system of flat construction elements that come together using an easy-click system to create a variety of balls. The finished ball is rugged and waterproof, able to take kicks without going flat — perfect for that impromptu game of hackey sack.

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Categories
Personal Transportation

CycleBoard carves out a middle ground in e-scooters

Usually, the more time passes in the crowdfunding world, the smaller the e-scooter offerings become. It makes sense: it’s hard to turn down the temptation to back an e-scooter that’s both smaller and lighter than previous incarnations, even if they’re not as accessible to more people due to that very same reason. Instead of blindly chasing a smaller, lighter, slimmer design, founder Phillip LaBonty went the other way with CycleBoard. The result is a three-wheeled electric scooter with far more appeal to many more types of people.

The most obvious thing about the CycleBoard is its construction: it uses aircraft-grade aluminum, features three shock absorbing tires — two up front and one in the back — and 8.5-inch swappable riding decks. Together, these elements come together to make the 42lb. scooter a much sturdier, confidence-inducing ride for everyone in the family. What makes it really stand out is how it’s controlled with a collapsible handle combining balance and steering into one.

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Categories
Connected Objects

Oombrella senses the weather, won’t let umbrella loss rain on your parade

Umbrellas are handy to have when it’s raining, but many consumers wind up needing to replace them after leaving them behind in a taxi, on a train, in a restaurant or many other places.

Oombrella is a smart umbrella that alerts users about impending rain and also lets them know if they are about to leave it behind. The device collects real-time data including temperature, pressure, humidity and light. The electronic capsule at the end of it includes sensors that communicate with smartphones via Bluetooth Low Energy technology, allowing users to know if there is an incoming call or other notification.

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Categories
Cell Phone Accessories

Connex provides a cable as its calling card

Conventional data cables are often either too long or too short to reach the devices they are being connected to. Another frequent issue with cables is that they tend to get tangled up –- especially when there is more than one of them.

Connex is a flat universal data cable that’s been pressed into the shape of a credit card. It’s made of durable synthetic silicone that allows it to stretch up to 18 inches and then collapse again when needed. Connex ships in June at $15 for a Micro USB version and $19 for an Apple Lightning connection version. But early bird Kickstarter backers can get them for pledges starting at $9 or $13, respectively. Its makers hope to raise $5,000 by April 18.

This is an enormously handy accessory to have for a wide range of devices. But a version that can stretch more than 18 inches would be even handier for some consumers. Users of devices that don’t use Lightning and Micro USB, including older Apple devices, are out of luck, so more compatibility options would be nice also.

 

Categories
Augmented Reality

Telepathy Walker eyewear lets you follow walking directions, possibly dreams

Navigation on smartphones provides enormous convenience to consumers. But the navigation on those devices -– just like on standalone GPS devices — tends to be designed specifically for driving rather than getting somewhere on foot. The screens on those devices can also be very hard to see while walking when it’s sunny out.

patent-claimedTelepathy Walker is small, Google Glass-like eyewear that’s been specifically designed to provide walking directions. It features a bright screen with patented display technology that enables it to be seen even in bright sunlight. It’s also been designed, unlike other smartglasses, so that the user can see both the screen and the world around them clearly at the same time.

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Categories
Music Technology

Loopa looping microphone lets you beatbox or harmonize with yourself

While beatboxing is an amazing skill, it takes years to really perfect due to the difficulty involved in creating complex rhythms. Likewise, singing a capella is beautiful expression of vocal skill but performing harmonies on your own is impossible (unless you have some particular skills, that is). The Loopa gives amateurs in both the chance to practice while letting already talented performers shine.

Questionably labelled the world’s first, the Loopa is a high-quality microphone with integrated looping technology. It sports the options to record, playback and overdub existing sounds along with undoing and redoing sounds, with an ARM Cortex M4 processing handling all the technical work inside. With it, beatboxers, singers, and musicians can use single button recording to build up layers of sound until a catchy beat is made. About $172 gets interested backers a chance to spittle the illest beats until their hearts are content. Loopa is slated to ship July 2016 should its Kickstarter campaign raise about $52,000 by April 23rd, 2016.

Put plainly, Loopa looks like A lot of fun. Putting everything together in one familiar interface, it makes beatboxing or singing much more approachable for newbies while giving already talented performers another tool to express themselves as opposed to a product like the Ditto Mic Looper.