Categories
Chargers/Batteries

Plug’s beefy battery can power anything you need off the grid

Once a novel idea, our growing need for smartphone connectivity has spawned an endless supply of battery chargers. Many of these range from tiny keychain trinkets to more substantial slabs that offer two to three charges of smartphones boasting the biggest internal batteries.

To really stand out, though, you need to something big and different. ChargeTech knows this as the company has released a series of portable charging units including this charger charger that can keep a series of charging bricks topped off.Aafter hitting Indiegogo back in 2014 with what it claimed was the world’s smallest battery pack with an AC outlet, it’s with Plug, which houses a massive 48,000 mAh battery and two AC outlets as well as a USB-C port. How is capable of outputting  250 volts, which means it is robust enough to handle a desktop computer, a monitor, a television, a blender and many other electrical items one normally wouldn’t expect to use away from a wall.

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Connected Objects

MOTI is a little dome that can make you a lot better through habits

editors-choice-300x96The ‘there’s an app for that’ attitude of the modern, smartphone-wielding person makes it seem like the answer to any problem can be downloaded. And while that may be the case for some situations, the majority of people are overloaded with apps, push notifications and other distractions that have proven more easily ignored than anything else.

Smartphones and now wearables compound that problem, aiming to offer accountability and agency and failing to deliver. The team behind the MOTI smart companion for better habits is looking to change how people approach the things they should be doing for better health and happiness. Instead of creating just another reminder app, they’ve instead created a charming physical device that acts as a small, distinct and actionable environmental trigger, satisfying what the brain needs to form a habit: a trigger (check), a routine (by pressing in MOTIs satisfyingly-designed button) and a reward (R2-D2-style bloops and beeps).

Categories
Connected Objects Fitness

The Peloton stationery bike lets you compete globally, costs more than airfare

These days, simply having a spinning machine at home isn’t enough unless whoever’s riding it has the type of motivation needed to really see results. For everyone else, group classes at the local spinning club is the way to go, but the time needed to get there and back can sometimes be hard to find.

With the Peloton Bike, riders don’t need to leave their own home. The compact, carbon steel-framed home bike features a full HD touchscreen that streams challenging live and on-demand spinning classes. Beginners and advanced users alike will find exactly the classes they need throughout the week using the class scheduling feature. And with built-in sensors to monitor everything from heart rate to cadence, reviewing past performance and setting future goals are easy to do.

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Connected Objects Imaging

Unleashed unleashes full potential of your camera via remote control

Placing all the controls of an interchangeable lens camera (ILC) into the palm of a user’s hand can make it much easier to get that perfect photo.

Unleashed is a small Bluetooth module that attaches to an ILC and offers full wireless remote control of it. The device is used in conjunction with an app for Android and iOS mobile devices. The app lets users change all the important camera settings, including aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and exposure compensation. Unleashed automatically reconnects to the user’s smartphone using Bluetooth Low Energy, so there’s no need to reconfigure Wi-Fi settings each time it’s used.

Categories
Imaging Wearables

TimeCap helps you capture once-in-a-lifetime moments

One problem with cameras — no matter how good they are — is that it often takes too long to take a photo or start shooting video with one. The result is that many people often miss unexpected, but highly memorable moments that they would have loved to capture and share with others.

TimeCap is a wearable camera that attaches to one’s shirt or other garment and continuously records video. The device then streams the video footage through the user’s smartphone and stores it in the cloud. It also takes 5-megapixel still images. TimeCap turns on and off by holding the power button for three seconds. Other features include Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi support, as well as 32 GB of internal NAND flash memory, good for 24,000 photos or 4 hours of HD video.

The device works in conjunction with an Android and iOS app that lets users control recording, as well as various other features including social media sharing.

Categories
Smart Home

Make sense into your energy bill with the Sense smart home monitor

The thing about most smart home solutions is that they force those interested in one to buy a wide array of devices for each individual appliance or item to be tracked. But with Sense, only one is needed exactly where it counts.

The Sense home energy monitor is a small box that attaches to a home’s energy panel. It is programmed with algorithms designed to identify each appliances individual “voice,” or the electrical signature it produces when consuming energy. In this way, Sense can distinguish the washer from the refrigerator from the air conditioner — avoiding the hassle of having a separate device for each.

Categories
Connected Objects Music

Fi Station is a gorgeous wedge of sound editing goodness

Products created for making music can feel pretty technical, alienating all but the most hardcore music makers. They’re often expensive, too, and multiple are needed: a professional sound card to record, a Hi-Fi player to listen back to lossless audio and a separate box to playback HD video. And even then, most don’t interact with each other.

With over 15 years in the music industry, Fay Wong used his expertise to create the Fi Station, a single device that combines all of these needs into one product. For one, it’s beautifully designed, sporting a fully metal casing with rotary knobs that makes it rugged and durable yet still attractive. 

Categories
Connected Objects

Pixcil plus smartphone turns any surface into virtual whiteboard

editors-choiceInteractive whiteboards are convenient tools for people to use to draw and write on to communicate ideas with anybody else in the room at the same time as other people around the world. But they can be too expensive than the average person can afford.

Pixcil is an inexpensive digital pen that turns virtually any surface into a virtual whiteboard when used in conjunction with a smartphone. It captures writing and drawing in real time and stores the info in a secured database. From its accompanying app, users can invite people to view or write on the board, as well as make changes such as the color of the virtual pen being used to write.

Categories
Aquatics

The Bixpy Jet lets you move like Aquaman, won’t help fish communication

With the amount of innovation going on in the crowdfunding arena, the world of watersports has never been more exciting. Case in point: the Bixpy Jet, a portable, personal water propulsion device that, with the help of a wide variety of attachments, can be attached any type of kayak, SUPs or just simply held.

This level of versatility lets the Bixpy Jet propel watercraft to about seven miles per hour, allowing kayakers to reach places they otherwise couldn’t. Of particular note is the device’s submersible battery which completely transforms the experience of diving by helping propel swimmers to three miles per hour. In designing the Bixpy Jet, inventor Houman Nikmanesh thought it important that users not be forced to buy a new watercraft, which is why all its attachments were created.

Categories
Augmented Reality Connected Objects Displays Kids/Babies

Egger augmented reality projector is prep school for Pokemon Go

editors-choiceThe prevalence of smartphones and tablets is something that needs to be carefully managed around children lest they become too attached. It’s been proven that too much screen time can have an adverse on young, developing minds, something that prompted the team behind Egger to do something about it.

Their solution is a friendly, egg-shaped augmented reality projector designed with children in mind. The Egger can be used as an educational aid as much as it can be used as an entertainment device, with both subject to inputs from children and adults alike using the packed remoter control reminiscent of a Wiimote. It can play movies, TV shows, and music, with a sketchpad to really let the imagination loose, as well.