Month: June 2016

Categories
Apparel Connected Objects

Gravity (and dignity) mean nothing with MoonWalker boots

For corporation-owning billionaires, the limits of space are slowly being proving to be anything but. For everyone else, though, the idea of experiencing outer space rests on whichever billionaire decides it’ll make enough money for them.

The team at Moonshine Crea wants to people in an astronaut’s shoes — literally. The company claims its 20:17 MoonWalker boots are able to replicate the feeling of zero gravity using a set of N45 magnets in the soles. Apparently, they generate a substantial enough repellant force to make people feel like they’re floating on the surface of the moon.

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Categories
Health and Wellness Smartwatches/Bands

Track your feelings and tap to pay all with Zenta, the smart emotion-tracking wearable

patent-claimedTowards the end of every presidency, before and after photos of the president in question make the rounds and show the toll eight years of high-level stress takes on the body, a sobering reminder of its prevalence in daily life. Left unmanaged, stress can wreak havoc on a person’s long-term health and well-being, but unfortunately isn’t generally handled well in modern society.

The Zenta follows a long line of crowdfunded, mindfulness-centered wearable focused on stress management and emotional well-being, but does so in a far more holistic way. For starters, it’s ceramic and leather construction makes it a fashion accessory anyone could wear comfortably. Inside, Zenta houses a wide range of technology: A Bluetooth radio for connectivity, microphone, temperature sensor, biometric optical sensor, 3-axis accelerometer, and a vibration motor along with multiple capacitive proximity sensors. All together, this allows Zenta to focus on effective management of smartphone notifications, activity tracking, and sleep monitoring.

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Categories
Cooking

Brian measuring jug deciphers the ancient language of “recipes”

It’s the cold, hard truth: You either know how to cook or you don’t. For those in the latter camp, that realization is a tough pill to swallow, especially because it’s hard to make anything edible to swallow it with.

patent-claimedThe biggest problem with most non-cooks is their ignorance of ratios and measurements. Cooking is a science, after all, and the right proportion of ingredients makes all the difference. La Fabrique à Innovations helps kitchen kiddies take all the guesswork out of this particular piddle with Brian, a three-liter mixing bowl with a built-in slot for colorful recipe rulers. Each recipe ruler not only lists the ingredients necessary for a recipe but also the amount of each ingredient needed, making the process of cooking no more difficult than pouring water in a cup. .

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Categories
Connected Objects Pets

GoBones remedy bored pooches and sorry owners

Ask any dog owner: Having to leave their pooch behind to go to work every morning is a heartbreaking moment. Making it worse is knowing their furry friend have to endure being alone for hours at a time, forcing them to entertain themselves. What if there was a way to alleviate that guilt while giving dogs the stimulation they require?

patent-claimedThe rugged GoBone, a connected dog toy, is the perfect solution. Owners simply pour some treats inside as motivation and tap it afterwards. This prompts it to autonomously play with their dogs for up to eight hours at a time, going to sleep when it detects it being played with and re-engaging when it’s not. The patent-pending software within adapts the GoBone’s play based on breed, weight, age, and other variables to ensure constant variety.

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Categories
Personal Transportation

The SnikkyBike is a motorized penny farthing for your thoughts

For many, the big city is no place to ride a bicycle. While there are daredevils that relish the danger of risky drivers, potholed streets, and oblivious pedestrians, there are many who just can’t deal all those obstacles. For them, there aren’t very many solutions outside of waiting for a city to implement more bike-friendly policies — something that can take a long time.

The Snikpatent-claimedkyBike positions itself as the perfect hybrid, offering the agility of a kick scooter with the sturdiness and stability of a bike. It’s vintage, penny farthing-like shape allows for these benefits: Its large front wheel offers durability and tight turning circles and its small, motorized rear wheel allows it to go 20mph for about 20-25 miles per charge efficient personal transportation. Adding to the SnikkyBike’s focus on safety is how it requires its riders to stand on foldable footboards, forcing them to stay alert to the environment and also giving them the ability to get off quickly and effortlessly should they need to.

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Categories
Automotive Connected Objects

IScout lets drivers scout out the road ahead safely

Heads-up displays (HUDs) are becoming increasingly popular devices because they allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road while getting navigation and other useful information about their cars and the road ahead.

patent-claimedIScout is a standalone, patent-pending HUD that provides information including car speed, fuel level and GPS navigation as a floating virtual image in front of the vehicle. It works in conjunction with an Android and iOS mobile device app, enabling iScout to also display incoming calls, messages, reminders and social media content.

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Categories
Cell Phone Accessories

The Glowme smartphone case makes every notification a light show

The rise of the smartphone has been accompanied by the many useful — and not so useful — accessories. Whatever their value, people still scoop them all up, prompting half-hearted inventors and passionate pursuers of innovation to create new add-ons in the chase for profits.

An accessory that lands itself firmly in the former category is the Glowme, a silicon smartphone case outfitted with an RGB LED strip housing 20 individual lights. Using the Glowme app, these lights can be customized to light up in whatever way a user wants, from an incoming call, an upcoming turn while driving, or even the music being played. It can also be used as an RGB flashlight or a multi-LED flash for photos, all while using “minimal” battery life. 

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Categories
Fitness Music Wearables

Turn your Motion to Music and break a real sweat

The reasons why games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Dance Revolution were so popular was because of how they rewarded real-life movement and coordination in a satisfying way. Ultimately, it made for an incredibly addicting gameplay experience. Unfortunately, being talented in these games doesn’t mean anything in the real world, the most common criticism they receive. And while these games are incredibly fun, that criticism is kind of valid.

Judging by his product, it seems like Matteo Ercolano was once bitten and burned by his love for these type of rhythmic gaming experiences. Instead of moving on, though, he sought to combine that gameplay with a real benefit. Settling on exercise, he created Motion to Music. Its Bluetooth-equipped wrist/arm/ankle band works together with a mobile iOS/Android app to match body gestures to the on-screen prompts given. And like the aforementioned rhythm games, the better someone does, the higher their score and happier their fans; poor performances garner jeers and boos instead.

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Categories
Wearables

Pilot smart earpiece soars with easy language translation

editors-choiceOne main challenge while traveling abroad is the ability to understand people speaking in different languages. Directions and other important information can easily be lost in translation.

Pilot is a smart earpiece that provides real-time language translation. It enables wearers to speak different languages, but still clearly understand each other because the language heard through the earpiece is each wearer’s own language. If someone does not have an earpiece, they can still use the smartphone app to translate. A nice extra feature is that the app can be used as a loudspeaker when in conference mode. Initial languages being supported are English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Additional languages will follow.

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Categories
Connected Objects

Remo lets you connects your air conditioner to the internet no sweat

Anybody who owns a home knows that one of the costliest expenses is running an air conditioner, especially during the hottest months of the year.

Remo is a universal smart controller that transforms any window-mounted or through-the-wall air conditioner into a smart AC. Users can remotely turn it on via a smartphone, pre-set different temperatures for different times of the day, or set the unit to automatically turn off based on the motion sensor. Remo ships in August at future pricing of $119. But Kickstarter backers can get one with a pledge as low as $49 for super early birds. Its makers are out to raise $50,000 by June 22.

Remo joins several similar products have already done much the same thing, including tado. For now, Remo supports any AC with a remote control, its makers say. But support for ACs without remotes is planned for Remo units that ship after December.