Month: August 2016

Categories
Smart Home

VOME gives Siri a bunch of outlets around your home

It’s 2016 and the smart home “revolution” is well underway. Unfortunately, that revolution fizzled out as soon as it started. The problem isn’t a lack of devices — look anywhere online for connected home devices and discover a glut of dual-syllabled hubs and plugs for anything you may need — but rather a lack of standard tying them all together. This was the problem at the very beginning, and it continues to be a problem now.

Mark Van Der Spuy’s VOME home automation system tackles this problem by piggybacking off of iOS. Specifically, Siri and Apple’s foray into home automation with HomeKit. The VOME system itself is comprised of a 4-Way Control Unit that any dumb object can be plugged into, allowing anything from lamps to curtains to coffee machines to be controlled simply by issuing voice commands to Siri.

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Categories
Cell Phone Accessories Connected Objects

Avoid yodeling by keeping in touch with the BONX Grip instead

Many outdoor sports like biking, climbing, and rafting all have an inherent element of danger. And while effectively communicating helps groups of enthusiasts avoid disastrous situations, there’s been a glaring lack of easy-to-use communication systems for these outings.

Now there’s the BONX Grip, a rugged, hands-free Bluetooth earpiece designed to facilitate group chats in the name of increased safety while climbing cliffsides or shredding fresh mountain snow. The BONX Grip works in tandem with a companion app that sports a simple UI. With it, users can easily start a chat session, later using their voice alone to facilitate the voice chat. Large mute and volume buttons on the BONX Grip itself augment the earpiece’s functionality.

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Categories
Health and Wellness Robots/Drones

Pillo lets you rest easy about taking your pills

Forgetting to take one’s pills can lead to major health problems, especially when those medications are for life-threatening health issues including heart disease.

patent-claimedPillo is a connected pill-dispensing robot that recognizes individuals in the family and helps people of all ages to better manage their health. In addition to dispensing medication, it can answer users’ health and wellness questions and connect a person directly with healthcare professionals. Because Pillo has been designed to be intelligent, its functionalities grow as it learns about the user and his or her family.

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Categories
Connected Objects Television

Lightpack 2 lets your TV bask in the afterglow of ambient lighting

Ambient backlighting can add another level of immersion to one’s experience while watching a movie or playing a video game on the TV.

patent-claimedLightpack 2 is an HDMI pass through kit that provides ambient backlighting for TVs. It follows the Lightpack lighting system that the same manufacturer, Wooden Shark, successfully received funding for on Kickstarter in 2013. The big difference between the two products is that the earlier device was designed for computer monitors.

The new product has four HDMI inputs to connect all of one’s media devices, including game consoles, to the TV. Lightpack 2 controls an LED strip that contours to the back of a TV and can also include a Pixel accessory, a wireless LED-based lighting module that is placed on the wall or elsewhere. Lightpack 2 uses patented algorithms to process the input video signal. All that is required for setup are a power source and an HDMI connection. Lightpack 2 can also be used as an intelligent lighting system even when the TV is off. Mood lighting can be set with the companion Lightpack app for Android and iOS devices.

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Categories
Music

Isolate yourself in the ambience of reduced sound

Despite the best of intentions from earplug manufacturers, they’re doing it all wrong. Instead of products that block sound in a way that’s still enjoyable, they usually muffle sounds. While this might help with a significant other’s snoring (and then, not even by much), absorption like thi will result in distorted sound in the high and mid frequencies, and little to no reduction in bass frequencies. This imbalance is stressful and tiring.

patent-claimedAfter its first successful Kickstarter last year, Flare Audio set their eyes on what they say as an outdated piece of design. By replacing the traditional materials used for most earplugs (plastics, silicones, and foams) with a piece of aluminum or titanium, the company created the Isolate. The micro earplugs are tipped with a proprietary foam material that adjusts to a person’s ear canal for a snug fit, its metal core reaching deep within the canal. This allows the Isolate to block noise from entering the ears and attenuate all frequencies, essentially turning off the ears to direct noise.

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Categories
Technology

Hybrx hybrid PC combines Android functionality, PC productivity

Smartphones and tablets have stolen a lot of the thunder from PCs in recent years. But many consumers still feel the need to have a computer in addition to their mobile device, in large part because productivity functions including word processing are much easier to do on PCs. Convertibles offer a good hybrid solution, but can be a little costly.

Hybrx is a sub-$100 Remix OS 2.0 laptop made by Azpen Innovation that uses an Allwinner A64 Cortex A53 64-bit quad core processor running the Android Lollipop 5.1 operating system. The slim laptop has an 11.6-inch screen with a 1,366 x 768 HD LCD display. It’s been optimized to run multiple programs and files at the same time without slowing down the laptop. In addition to promising high energy efficiency, it also offers system boot-up within seconds, according to Azpen. Hybrx also supports H.265/H.264 4K video decoding with 4K HDMI output. Hybrx starts shipping in September at about $140 for a 1-GB RAM version with 16 GB of flash memory and about $180 for a 2-GB RAM version with 32 GB of flash. Azpen hopes to raise $75,000 by Aug. 4.

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Categories
Food and Beverage

The Hypercool lets your brews chill in only a minute

The heat of the summer season means beaches, barbeques and lots of brews, something the crowdfunding world has always been cognizant of with projects like the Coolest Cooler and the Kreweser. But while these offerings meant easier ways to transport food and beverages along with extra features like USB chargers and wheels, none address the age old problem of warm drinks, aka the bane of a get-together.

patent-claimedThe HYPERCOOL portable cooler address this problem using the magic of physics. It can be filled up with water, frozen overnight, and then be used to rapidly cool cans or tall boys of one’s favorite beverage. How? Using an external motor that spins the can over that bed of ice. The friction cools the beverage in just 60 seconds; wait 30 more seconds and it’ll be ice cold.

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Categories
Connected Objects Luggage and Bags

The Modobag carry-on won’t ride into the sunset

The last time Backerjack covered the Modobag, a numerous luggage-turned-transportation projects had already failed before the team behind the Modobag LLC went out to attempt raising $160,000 in 2015. Unfortunately, that Kickstarter ended up being a dud, raising just $21,000 of its original goal.

Modobag LLC is back at it again with its Modobag rideable carry-on luggage, this time opting to focus its crowdfunding efforts on a flexible Indiegogo campaign instead. Despite the lukewarm reception the last time around, the product is receiving a much warmer welcome this time. That’s not surprising: At its core, the Modobag is a compelling offering, which is why it’s still pretty much the same bag the team offered last year. It still combines a roomy 2000 cubic inches of interior space with a motor within that can achieve a top speed of eight miles hours per hour with a range of about six miles. (This isn’t Fast and Furious, folks.)

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Categories
Connected Objects Imaging

Find Dory (in Ultra HD) with the Octospot 4K diving camera

editors-choiceWhile action cameras like the GoPro are more popular than ever, none of them address the particular challenges divers experience. Factors like pressure, temperature, and quality require equipment that balance toughness with quality.
The ideal diving camera is versatile, durable, easy-to-use, and able to generate high-quality stills and video. The Octospot does all of this and more. The cylindrical device is made of anodized aluminum and polycarbonate for a sturdy design that doesn’t require an external casing like other action cameras. This allows divers to get to a max depth of 656 feet without any adverse effect on the product. While they dive, the Octospot constantly monitors depth, temperature, and pressure data, displaying it all on the device’s 0.5″ OLED display for quick reference or overlaying that information later over the 12 MP stills and 4K-caliber video divers can review and easily share using the Octospot iOS/Android app. 

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Categories
Connected Objects Sleep

This smart pillow has you covered from A to Zeeq

Both the quality and amount of sleep people get are directly correlated with their quality of life. Despite that common knowledge, most Americans report not getting sufficient sleep because they engage in the bad habit of snoozing their alarms, or they suffer from snoring. Snoozing an alarm starts a new sleep cycle that can’t be completed, and snoring shaves two to four hours of restorative sleep each night.

Inventor Warren Bell and Miguel Marrero are approaching the problem of sleep with their Zeeq smart pillow. This smart pillow works with a companion app used to activate the pillow every night. Before going, users set an alarm and answers some optional questions about their day on the app itself. Zeeq’s eight internal speakers can stream music from services like Apple Music and Spotify (that only the person can hear — not their partner) to help guide them to slumberland. While they’re sleeping, Zeeq gently vibrates when its built-in microphone detects snoring to encourage a change in position, all while analyzing sleep patterns throughout the night with its three-axis gyroscope.

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