Author: Nicholas Echevarria

Categories
Smartwatches/Bands

The Sence illuminates the mystery behind your emotions

Having greater awareness of emotions and their effect on the body, as well as what can be done in order to emphasize more positive emotions, can help us do away with the triggers, habits, and situations that can exacerbate the bad ones.

The Sence wearable is aiming to help in this regard, with the capability of understanding when and where a user experiences 64 distinct emotions, physical exertion and recovery, vitality, and stress. It does by recognizing the minute variations between the heart’s contractions — called R-peak signals — with ECG tracking technology, something other wearables don’t do but that makes the Sence far more precise.

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Connected Objects

The Vue smart specs are the cure for the uncommon glasshole

editors-choice-300x96No one can deny that the idea of smart glasses is pretty cool. Unfortunately, their design is usually awkward, painfully obvious, and kind of creepy, making what is an interesting look anything but.

This is why the Vue everyday smart glasses are so intriguing. The team behind it crammed some of the more desired features of something like a Google Glass into a pair of frames that look, well, normal. In a pair of Vue glasses, users will find an impressive feature set. Working through Bluetooth with its companion smartphone app, the Vue’s bone conductive design allows for hands-free calling (in conjunction with its built-in mic), turn-by-turn navigation, and the option to listen to music no matter where — all with a few taps to its rim.

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Categories
Connected Objects Personal Transportation

The Immotor GO is the Tesla of e-scooters

editors-choice-300x96The first and last miles of every commute are usually the most annoying, making any solution for them worth looking at for those sick of them.

The Immotor GO is a new entrant into this segment, billed as a smart e-scooter — and smart it is. This folding, three-wheeled e-scooter sports a wide range of design perks and smart functionality that make it unlike much else on the market. Starting up top, users will find an intelligent display (with Bluetooth connection status, charging status, remaining distance, headlight status, total distance, and cruise control status), easy-to-use controls for acceleration and braking, a SIM-based integrated GPS module, a built-in Bluetooth speaker, and LED headlights — and that’s all just in its handlebars! 

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Connected Objects

Say Bonjour to easier mornings with this smart alarm clock

It seems like every day, a new idea for a smart assistant hits the crowdfunding circuit, and for good reason: The utility of having one in the home is only growing with their expanding abilities.

While the Bonjour Smart Alarm Clock is one of these, what sets it apart is its use of artificial intelligence to learn a user’s routines and habits, integrate itself with smart home devices, and be totally controlled using nothing but conversational language. The device is designed to be used in the bedroom to facilitate an easier morning routine. By simply asking it, users can get an update on the weather, traffic, and news, control products like Hue lights and Nest thermostats, and even play music through Spotify.

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Cell Phone Accessories

Selfie Feet lets your leg go toe to toe with selfie sticks

Depending on who you talk to, selfie sticks are as popular as ever or on their way out. The Quin Media Group has its feet firmly planted in the latter idea with its Selfie Feet.

Contary to its name, Selfie Feet is actually an elastic band with a magnetic button that wraps around a person’s foot. A similar button is then attached to the back of a smartphone and like that, the two can connect. The result does away with the need for selfie sticks or a person’s own hand, instead relying on the foot to get the best possible angles for the best possible selfies.

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Maker/Development Robots/Drones

Root programming robot helps STEM knowledge branch out

editors-choice-300x96With the world becoming increasingly modernized, the importance of having children engage in the principles of programming as early
as possible has skyrocketed. And while it’s easy to see the financial benefits of that exposure, what’s more important is the analytical and critical thinking it develops in those young minds. This is why the Root was created.

Root is a Roomba-looking robot that focuses on teaching both kids and adults valuable programming skills. The robot itself can attach itself and navigate walls or just wander about on the floor and is equipped with a variety sensors for coders to play with. The Root’s companion app has three levels. The first has a graphical interface that non-readers can use to learn basic concepts of events, sequences, loops, states, functions, priorities, timing, program stepping and debugging.

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Kids/Babies Robots/Drones

Behind its cute smile, the Plobot teaches tykes to program

The idea of teaching young children about the nuances of programming logic is quickly becoming more commonly accepted. Doing so benefits all types of skills, from visualization to problem solving, and help children confront the challenges of a rapidly developing world.

The Plobot is another in a long line of completely physical programming toys created to help children explore the world of progamming world in a very tactile way. Created by NYU robotics professor Rudi Cossovich and ex-Google engineer Sean Purser-Haskell, does away with syntax and computer screens while still educating children about algorithms, loops, conditionals, and more. Command cards are core to the Plobot experience, with each representing a block of code. Kids can tap or swipe them on Plobot’s head to string them together and create a program the robot follows, with the play card serving as an execute function.

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Categories
Lighting

Helium smart light uses machine learning to light up the home

Smart lights are undoubtedly cool. What’s not is the time spent digging through a light’s companion app for just the right setting, or having an assistant like Siri or Amazon’s Echo misunderstand a user’s command to turn one on or off. The Helium machine learning smart light is trying to get rid of the fuss for a smoother smart light experience.

Helium is three things in one: A machine learning connected light bulb, a night shift feature light, and a Wi-Fi extender. Its machine learning capabilities take into account time, location, weather, proximity and behavior to make it context aware. This results in lights turning on by themselves when entering a room, for example, and shifting to a bright white light during work hours for increased productivity or a warm white light right before bed for to better adhere to the body’s internal rhythms.

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Categories
Video Games

The Smach Z portable gaming PC is the chosen one

The dream of any hardcore game: A handheld gaming PC powerful enough to play AAA titles. With the Smach Z, that elusive dream has finally come true.

The lightweight portable device looks like a cross between a laptop and an old-school Sega Game Gear, but with all the functionality and power of a gaming PC. The Smach Z comes in two versions: A regular version and a Pro version. Both share an AMD Merlin Falcon CPU clocked at 2.1GHz, a Radeon R7 GOU clocked at 800MHz, a 6″ 1080p touch screen, an accelerometer, gyroscope, a Wi-Fi module and five hour battery life, but differ on RAM, internal memory, and the presence of a front-facing camera for Twitch streaming and a 4G LTE connection. (The regular version sports 4GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, while the PRO ups its to 8GB and 128GB.) All together, this unassuming device can play almost any game on Steam at high to medium settings, including the latest AAA titles.

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Categories
Robots/Drones

The Roboming’s sleek design can’t hide lack of functionality

The robot revolution is well underway, but it’s still a long way off from the stuff of science fiction books, TV and movies. For now, robots like the Roboming Fellow are filling the gap between the inevitable, more advanced creations — and does a fair job at doing so.

The Roboming Fellow is a small but sleekly designed robot built for companionship, light home security, and pets. Its calming blue LED light and pan/tilt capabilities almost give the device its own personality, so that a user’s voice commands are not only met with them being carried out but with a little nod and shake as well. Roboming can also scan and create a map of the home, useful for navigating to a user or for patrols when a user is gone.

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