Author: Julia Herrick

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Evrst and Aspyn clear the air of bad stuff to breathe

Scrubbing, mopping and dusting your house can only do so much. There’s lots of bacteria that live in the air that are nearly impossible to eradicate. In addition, tons of gunk can build up in your HVAC systems which then turns them into spreaders of ickiness instead convenient home fixtures.

Introducing two products that work for you to clean your house: Evrst and Aspyn. Evrst is a standalone product that sits visibly in your house to kill germs. It plugs in and cleans up to 1,500 sq ft of space. Evrst uses a two-stage filtration system: the first to squash odors and the second to catch teeny tiny particles. To operate, use the touchscreen where you can power it on or off, change the fan speed, set a timer or choose auto mode. The filters are good for three to six years. Aspyn is the same type of product, but gets placed directly in your HVAC system, cleaning your house from the inside out. One Evrst will cost backers $449 while the Aspyn goes for $650. These products have a huge, ridiculous campaign goal of $370,000 on Kickstarter.

Despite these products’ distaste for traditional vowels, they do like a clean house, which is important. While the campaign explains how they work, it’s difficult to prove that they actually do work without some proof. These aren’t the only air purifiers of their kind. Others target more specific irritants like allergens, smoke and mold. However, most of these are quite expensive, reaching into thousands of dollars like the Amaircare Whole House Air Purifier. For what they claim to do, Aspyn and Evrst are a good price, but their huge campaign goal may hold them back.

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Health and Wellness Sensors/IoT

Darma smart seat cushion reminds you to take a stand

Back pain, poor posture and lots of lazing around are realities for many folks. Each one of these problems feeds into the other, so it’s hard to break the cycle of discomfort. Darma is a smart seat cushion that doubles as your posture coach. It monitors your sitting habits, posture, breath, and heart rate to give you helpful tips. If you’re slouching, Darma tells you to sit up straight through a smartphone alert. When your heart rate is high indicating stress, it suggests taking a walk to calm down. Similarly, if you’ve been sitting too long, Darma advises taking standing breaks.

Best of all, by collecting data about you specifically, it can give you customized stretches that will alleviate the pain present in different parts of your body. Designed with sleek black leather, it’s unobtrusive and will blend in well with your office chair. One will cost backers a $189 donation on Kickstarter.

Darma is an interesting new take on the type smartphone-powered health assistance we’ve seen a lot of recently. Most of these devices are wearables in the form of clip-ons or bracelets. While we’ve seen previous products aimed at improving posture, Darma blends into its surroundings. The constant alerts may prove to be annoying at first, like a nagging mother telling you to sit up straight. However, the long term health benefits will likely be worth the hassle. All in all, Darma is a great solution for the sedentary and actually one of the least obtrusive solutions to too much sitting.

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Luggage and Bags

Upcart lets you wheel your heavy stuff up the stairs with ease

Wheels and stairs are mortal enemies. Always have been, always will be. Many places conveniently come with ramps to accommodate those using wheelchairs or rolling suitcases, but there are still lots of stairs for rollers to contend with. While carting something upstairs, the constant jolting can damage your cargo. While going down, you run the risk of turning into stair-kill.

UpCart is, as its campaign says, up for anything! This cart is essentially, well, a cart, much like a delivery person would use. Stack up cargo for ease of transporting. However, instead of a pair of wheels, this fancy cart features six wheels. Each side has three in a tripod position. This way, the cart can glide up stairs easily. The campaign does a good job of showing the car in motion and how these wheels work together for a smoother ride. UpCart can hold up to 150 pounds and folds up for maximum portability. One will cost backers $75 or only $70 if they’re early enough. UpCart has a rather large Kickstarter campaign goal of $100,000.

UpCart is an innovative design, working towards fixing a common problem. While this is a great idea, it seems like it would be useful to those aforementioned delivery people, but not many others. The typical civilian doesn’t really use these types of carts much. The campaign also fails to mention how heavy the cart itself is, which definitely has an influence on its convenience. Also, it’s unclear how steady the cart is going downstairs and if these wheels do much if anything to steady a cargo-filled descent. All in all, UpCart is well-designed, but needs to market itself to businesses that deliver in order to find success.

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Food and Beverage Kids/Babies

Perfect Baby Bottle Maker brings the coffee pod concept to formula

For parents with newborn babies, quick and efficient bottle making is a must. Screaming babies are like a bomb that has gone off and a delicious, warm bottle is the only way to assuage them. However, making a formula bottle isn’t so easy to do quickly. Scooping, mixing and getting the temperature right can make for a lengthy preparation period while your baby screams and screams.

The Perfect Baby Bottle Maker aims to solve this very problem. Picture a Keurig machine, but for a younger crowd. Powdered formula is held in sealed cups. When ready, place these cups in the capsule and hit start. Perfect Baby Bottle Maker will mix the formula for you right into the bottle and will do so at a perfect 98.6°F temperature. This machine gives you several size options and features a filter for the water to pass through to ensure clean water. In addition, each capsule’s formula is first passed through a UV light to eliminate the possibility of bacteria. One will cost parents $85 on Kickstarter. This product has a campaign goal of $15,000.

When looking at this product, one thinks that it’s an amazing solution for moms and dads. Parents who have their hands full, literally, with their baby will rejoice at the convenience of the Perfect Baby Bottle Maker. However, this isn’t the first of its kind. The Baby Brezza operates in a similar manner, but has a large chamber for formula and doesn’t use the individual capsules. While this is certainly more convenient, this model goes for about twice the price of the Perfect Baby Bottle Maker. All in all, this product is innovative, easy to use and fairly cost-effective for new parents.

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Food and Beverage Personal Transportation

Kreweser is one cooler that’s a wild ride

KreweserCoolers are heavy and can be a pain to lug around. Kreweser doesn’t only make the cooler more portable, it also lugs you around as well. As a combination cooler and electric trike, Kreweser lets you sit on the cooler and zip around at speeds up to 18mph. When the cooler is removed, the trike folds up for better storage. While a really cool, ha!, idea and great for pavement, Kreweser won’t really work on sand or rough terrain, where coolers are typically needed. One will cost backers a staggering $749 donation. Kreweser hopes to raise $90,000 on Kickstarter.

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Apparel

Collar Perfect portable steamer benefits wrinkled professionals

The Premise. Bulky irons are great for some clothes, but not all. Dress shirts, with their buttons, collars and pockets, are difficult to iron because there’s so much room for error. Most opt to send their shirts out for pressing. But those who aren’t able to pay for such a luxury are stuck with wrinkled shirts or melted buttons.

The Product. Collar Perfect is a small device about the size of a computer mouse. It is a essentially a mini iron in clamp form. It’s sized and shaped to make ironing touch ups much easier. Not only does it leave the bulky ironing board behind, but it’s also much more portable, making looking dapper on the go possible. All you need is a plug to use it. If you’d like to flat iron something, the clamp folds out flat as well.

The Pitch. Collar Perfect’s video features a man getting ready for a date and failing miserably. He burns his shirt with an iron and forgets his pants to a nice dinner. His annoyed date hands him the Collar Perfect. The rest of the campaign features helpful snippets of the Collar Perfect in use not only on shirts but also on skirt hems as well. Collar Perfect is looking to raise $40,000 on Kickstarter.

The Perks. A $20 donation will get backers the Collar Perfect at an early price. When those are gone, backers can get the Collar Perfect for only $25 with estimated delivery in April 2015. Reward tiers go all the way up to $5,000.

The Potential. Collar Perfect is, by all accounts, a great way to smarten up your clothes, especially if you’re out of the house. This is a useful product for men, as most women have been able to achieve the same results of mini-ironing using their hair straighteners. Collar Perfect’s one drawback is that it isn’t cordless. The creators would do well to consider using a battery with a USB charger. Still, this product definitely has a place with young professionals who just can’t seem to keep themselves put together.

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Connected Objects Fitness

Glyder is a smartphone-connected exercise product for the deskbound

The Premise. Sitting is as harmful to our health as smoking is. Or so they say. Either way, it’s difficult for office workers to get the exercise they need in order to stay healthy. Some have the chance to take a walk at lunchtime, but busier bees are chained to their desks all day.

The Product. Glyder is a fitness device that lives underneath your office desk. Resembling a digital scale, it has two pedals on either side where your feet go and comes in red, gray or black. The motion is similar to that of an elliptical machine. A large digital screen on top shows the calories you’ve burned, the strides you’ve taken and how close you are to your daily exercise goal. This data can be stored and set with an accompanying smartphone app. The app stores your workout history and also allows you to adjust the resistance of Glyder and compete with other Glyder users.

The Pitch. Glyder’s campaign video shows an office worker trying and failing to workout at the office. There’s also a funny part where the Glyder user makes less noise while exercising than her coworker sitting in a rocking chair. The rest of the campaign goes through Glyder’s various features along with helpful gifs of the pedal width being adjusted as well as the product in use. This under-the-table fitness device hopes to raise $75,000 on Kickstarter.

The Perks. Early gliders can enjoy the Glyder for $99 at a regular price of $139. The top tier of $10,000 offers backers a trip to China to tour Glyder’s factories. Estimated delivery is currently set for January 2015.

The Potential. As with any office workout tool, there’s always the risk of looking unprofessional as your legs mysteriously gyrate under your desk. We’ve seen several of these types of products at Backerjack like Tao and Cubii, both of which stress at-desk workouts. Like Cubii, Glyder emphasizes that elliptical motion, but does so in a sleeker manner at a fraction of the cost. While it’s unclear how beneficial a Glyder workout really is, the price and lure of activity at the office may be irresistible for antsy executives.

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Camping

Chair-Pak lets you take a load off and sit on it

chair-pakCamping, hiking and general wilderness-wandering is done by carrying around the least amount of stuff as possible. This usually means making some sacrifices. Chair-Pak is a combination backpack and chair that means you won’t have to sit on the ground. The chair folds out and the pack is then located on the back of the chair. With a stable looking seat and lightweight metal, this seems like a great way to tote around a chair and cargo at the same time. One will cost backers $95 with estimated delivery in March 2015. Chair-Pak hopes to raise $39,000 on Kickstarter.

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Pets

Pawly shows that the cats will play when the owner’s away

The Premise. Pets are like children for most cat or dog owners. Leaving them to go to work can be heartbreaking and some pets don’t do well on their own all day. Some opt to keep the radio on all day just so their pets don’t feel alone.

The Product. Pawly is an interactive toy for pets to play with. It connects to the owner’s iPhone or Android and allows them to have fun with their pet remotely. With the app, they can control the movement of Pawly, shoot out treats and even take photos or videos. Pawly itself has four all-terrain wheels and is about the size of a laptop. It’s covered by an orange rubber shield to ensure its durability through rough play.

The Pitch. This campaign video tugs at the heartstrings of pet owners watching, showing cat and dog owners leaving their home in the morning. Never fear! They get to play with them from their office desks. If you want to see a rundown of features as well as the bone that tracks the fundraising status, check out the rest of the campaign. Pawly is looking to raise $80,000 on indiegogo.

The Perks. Watch out backers, your pet can be treat-blasted at with this Canadian product for $399 USD if you’re early enough or $449 USD if you’re on the slower side. Reward tiers climb up to $10,000.

The Potential. Remote pet care is nothing new. We’ve seen a ton of products on Backerjack that handle this very same thing like PetPal and Kittyo. Neither of them move like Pawly, but have more practical functions like feeding the pet while you’re away. In addition, Kittyo comes with a laser for cats to chase around. Also, both have speakers so that they can talk to their pet as well as videotape them. Pawly’s mobility is cool, however it has limited function compared to these other two products. In addition, the price is somewhat obscene for a glorified pet watcher. For those who are really concerned about their pets’ burgeoning loneliness, a paid sitter might be a cheaper option.

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Health and Wellness Sensors/IoT

Fever Smart lets you monitor your kids for lobal warming

The Premise. When your child is sick, it’s important to monitor their temperature constantly. Fever spikes in the night can go unnoticed by parents who don’t want to keep waking their children up to take their temperature. It can be dangerous to miss this important information in regards to your child’s health.

The Product. Fever Smart is an easy and effective way to monitor your child’s health. The sensor sits under your child’s armpit and is attached with a sticky patch. It keeps track of your child’s temperature and sends alerts via Wi-fi to the accompanying smartphone app. Currently, Fever Smart is only compatible with Apple and even works with the new iOS 8. Any information gathered is automatically uploaded to Apple’s iCloud so the information is accessible for multiple users anywhere. The sensor runs on battery and Fever Smart is FDA-approved.

The Pitch. Fever Smart’s campaign video features its many chief operators discussing their product. Their main motivation for Fever Smart was the health and safety of children. The campaign promises that upon reaching 150% of their $40,000 goal, that the creators will work on making Fever Smart Android compatible as well.

The Perks. Early birds can enjoy this smart fever monitor for $99 or at a regular price of $129. For those who just can’t wait, $179 will get them the app and product a month earlier than the rest in December 2014. Estimated delivery for the regular tiers is set for January 2015.

The Potential. Fever Smart has several things going for it. One, it continuously monitors fever in times of sickness. Two, it’s non-invasive. And three, it uploads information to the iCloud so it’s readily available. This isn’t the only smart fever monitoring device out there, however. The Kinsa Smart Thermometer also hooks up to smartphones to deliver comprehensive data, but Kinsa only allows for one-at-a-time temperature readings. As for Fever Smart, the only question is how comfortable those sensors are, especially for kids who tend to be finicky about having things attached to their bodies. Still, this product is a cool, innovative product for helicopter moms who want to make sure their kids are okay.