Author: Arthur Tufeau

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Connected Objects Cycling

SmartHalo keeps your bike on track and your eyes on the road

There’s no shortage of bike computers and mounts to have your smartphone take on a wide range of tasks while affixed to a bike’s handlebars. But both can be a bit overwhelming, or at least distracting, when trying to glean information at a glance.

Consisting of a ring of LEDs surrounding a central light, SmartHalo takes on a more symbol-driven approach to a range of bike-related tasks. By lighting up the different parts of its circular display’s edge, it can cue the rider to turn left, right or make a u-turn while a center dot turns on for a call notification. As soon as one starts pedaling, its companion app starts tracking a range of metrics, including time, distance, average speed and calories burned.

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Uncategorized

Bikiros bike safety device watches over kids in three ways

Learning to ride a bike is often a childhood rite of passage. And once kids get it, they’re usually good to go. But sometimes little ones lack the best judgement — or the tallest height — to avoid accidents.

Inspired by an accident that left the inventor temporarily paralyzed, Bikiros (“bye-KEY-ros) is a two-part bicycle add-on that can help young cyclists in a number of ways similar to how various smart car products can report on driver safety.

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News

Hasbro, Indiegogo team for game design contest

Companies such as Quirky and Edison Nation have shown that big-name brands are happy to tap into great ideas that come from the crowd. Now Indiegogo, which has run a number of partnership programs, has teamed up with toy giant Hasbro for a game design contest.

Participants fill out a form on the Hasbro site that provides information about the team and the game. Ideas will be judged on several criteria, including gameplay, story/theme, viability and “potential for fun-ness.” The winning individual or team will get $10,000 and a trip out to Hasbro HQ to meet with game designers. Once five finalists are selected, they’ll have the option to crowdfund their products on Indiegogo with Hasbro providing publicity support. However, the game designers are responsible for fulfilling their own rewards.

Game designers who think they’ve got a Clue in putting in the hard-Scrabble effort of creating the next game Monopoly will have to enter their submissions by September 30th with the winner announced on December 3rd, two days after the Indiegogo campaigns close.

Categories
Personal Transportation

URBY Board motion board takes on irregular terrain, uphill battles

The Segway got a lot of things wrong, but it also got a few things right. These included the development of more rugged models for navigating more challenging grounds. In the past few years, we’ve seen a whole host of two-wheeled gliding platform scooters or balance boards that cost a tenth of what Segways do but many of them can’t veer far from paved level surfaces.

The URBY Board seeks to up the ante on the kind of environments for these two-wheeled self-balancing wonders with a balance board that has a bit more horsepower and bigger wheels (10″ vs. the standard 6.5″) as well as LED-based turn signals. The campaign video shows it taking on grass, ramps, the rain, pushing shopping cards and pulling luggage.

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Smart Home

Nucli smart lock has two screens, covers all the bases

Since the debut of the Ring, nee Doorbot, on Kickstarter, crowdfunding platforms have hosted many smart locks for the home and other property.

Nucli comes to the table, or at least the door, with the Westinghouse brand and an endless array of options. It can work with iOS, Android and Windows. It can be activated by fingerprint, PIN pad (via its external touch screen), smartphone or laptop (but there’s no proximity-based unlocking yet). It supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Z-Wave protocols. And you can even use any MP3 file as a doorbell. Like other smart lock/doorbell combinations, owners can use its camera to see who is at the door and open it.

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Categories
Aquatics Sensors/IoT

OnCourse Goggles set swimmers straight on the open seas

It’s one thing to swim laps upon laps in a pool nicely appointed with lane ropes that provide visual cues to keep swimmers on the straight and relatively narrow, but those swimming in the open seas face a bigger challenge in not going off in one direction or another.

patent-claimedBy mixing together an electronic compass, accelerometer, processor, battery and the company’s software, OnCourse Goggles help keep swimmers moving in a straight line even in open waters by detecting water or wind forces. It uses this information to trigger LEDs inside the goggles to prompt simmers to veer left or right. The goggles are activated with the press of a button on their left side and charge via USB in about 45 minutes. And traithletes will be pleased to know that they have been approved for triathlete competitions. The company seeks $50,000 by September 18th. The goggles cost $200 and are expected to be delivered in February 2016.

The OnCourse Goggles look like they could be a helpful tool for moving forward — and even away from danger — for open water swimmers. Alas, without GPS, there’s no tracking of swim routes that the goggles can provide after the fact. Still, while they’re likely tough to justify for casual beach goers, they could make for a competitive advantage for serious aquatics competitors.

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Personal Transportation

Ginzvelo pedal/electric hybrid vehicle gets you around town

Crowdfunding sites have seen plenty of bikes and bike accessories, e-bikes and even folding bikes. But while two-wheelers are often great for navigating the urban jungle, their open air nature can make using them in poor weather impractical, dangerous or — at the very least — messy.

Ginzvelo (rhymes with “Pins fellow”) is an enclosed recumbent three-wheeler that can be powered via pedals or electric motor under which it can achieve speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. The vehicle provides a transparent bubble-like roof/windshield and the whole exterior lifts up on a rear hinge to allow entry and exit.  Peter Ginzburg, for whom the vehicle is presumably named, seeks $50,000 by September 24th. Still in the early stages, Ginzvelo is offering a few early birds the chance to pick up early units for $3,000 without the motor or $6,000 with it. The vehicles should arrive by November.

Ginzvelo is certainly a bit chunkier than a regular bike, but the one-person vehicle, which has a little bit of storage space, is much smaller than a car and can be parked in a wide array of settings. Its enclosure, which adds to its bulk, makes it a far more versatile vehicle than most e-bikes — faster and better-protected. Still, until mass production ramps up, it’s tough to say whether it will be more successful than the Segway or other electric bike alternatives.

 

Categories
Sleep Wearables

Oura ring puts a finger on how your sleep affects your day

Since the success of Fitbit, there’s been an endless parade of activity trackers offered through crowdfunding platforms and via traditional channels.

While many of these either treat sleep monitoring as a secondary feature or focus exclusively on the sleep experience, the Oura ring starts with sleep experience monitoring as a foundation for determining optimum activity levels. The ceramic scratch-resistant finger adornment gets an impressive three days of battery life from its tiny battery and charges in about an hour.

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Imaging Smart Home

Back to the Backers: Butterfleye never tires of watching without wires

There’s been an explosion of home security cameras in the past few years, but whether they are attached to some kind of monitoring service or rely on their own apps, they are less convenient to install than they could be. While many of them happily hop on to a Wi-Fi network, they can’t stray too far from an outlet.

Butterfleye combines a wide-angle lens with a big battery to keep it going up to a week without charging. It employs sophisticated sensors that go beyond simple motion detection to include sound detection; it can also differentiate between humans and pets. The company claims it has more improvements in the queue in terms of accurate identification that it plans to deliver via regular firmware updates. Going along with the prevailing model these days, the company offers some limited cloud storage of video the Butterfleye captures with more available for a monthly fee.

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Furniture

Greycork flat-packed furniture throws an Allen wrench in IKEA’s machine

The digital world is an endlessly fascinating place to spend time, but our physical forms must contend with places to sit and store stuff using conveyances known as furniture. And acquiring these items can often result in navigating items that are heavy, expensive or offer low-quality.

Seeking to put a cork in that frustrating process is Greycork, a Rhode Island-based company whose CEO learned his assembly chops working in a factory. The company extols the virtues of its sofa in its campaign video, noting its ash MDF construction, foam cushions, and tool-free (dis-)assembly that can be done within four minutes.

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