Author: Nicholas Echevarria

Categories
Kids/Babies Smartwatches/Bands

Jumpy jumps beyond the tracker with a kids’ smartwatch

The new generation of toys is far different than anything previous generations have experienced. Sporting LCD screens and wireless connectivity, these toys offer connected environments where children can interact not only with the objects around them but with other children as opposed to staring into a pixelated abyss all day.

Jumpy is another one of those toys, coming in the form of a Android-based, Bluetooth-enabled smartwatch for children. With it, children can stay connected with their parents through Wi-Fi and send messages, play games with the device as a controller for tablet games and connected toys, and stay on top of events like waking up for school with the friendly dog avatar. An open SDK makes Jumpy an constantly evolving platform so new ideas will transform it into something new. A set of Jumpy can be had with a $99 backing, due to be shipped March 2015. The campaign is looking for $100,000 to make that happen.

Parents can keep on top of their children’s whereabouts with the included activity tracker but since the device lacks GPS connectivity, it won’t do much good should the child wander off too far. The absence of multi-lingual support and battery life claims make this a bit suspect, too. If a company is introducing a platform like this, they have to make it worth it and truly push kids to do more, like the Hybrid Play. If not, it’ll be another toy thrown to the side pretty quickly.

Categories
Cycling

Urbanshell surrounds backpacks to keep them dry, reflective

Riding a bike, scooter, or anything else for that matter in the rain is no fun at all. What’s worse is when you have a book bag on and must endure the psychological torture of knowing your precious cargo is getting completely soaked. Enter the Urbanshell, a waterproof book bag cover to keep your goodies dry that is also reflective to keep you visible at all times.

Urbanshell is extremely portable because it can fold in on itself for easy transportation. When unwrapped and in protecting mode, an ‘essentials’ pocket gives users easy access to necessary objects. It’s also durable, something that is appreciated when dealing with cyclists. It comes in three colors: fluorescent orange, pink, or lightning blue. The original orange color goes for £10 (~$16), while the newer colors go for £20 (~$32). Urbanshell is seeking £6,000 (~$9,600) to get the product in backer’s hands by March 2015.

Categories
Lifestyle

Packer’s a strap with a pack to wear your skateboard

Skateboards and boards of any kind can really be a useful tool to easily have transportation handy wherever you go. The biggest problem with them rears its head when you step off the board itself and are forced to carry it wherever you go, which can quickly become a chore. The Packer system eliminates this burden, and inevitably makes you look cool doing so.

The Packer system is comprised of the Packer itself, a bag that small enough to be unobtrusive but large enough to hold your essentials, and the Packer Risers. The Risers are special in that they are installed between the deck and trucks of a board to allow a strap to be connected, so that you can walk around with your board on your back as opposed to in your hands. You can order just the Risers and construct your own strap set-up for $19, or opt for the full set-up which will set you back $49. The company is looking for $30,000 to alleviate your skateboarding burdens by March 2015.

Categories
Smart Home

3P Plug activates your turn-ons, turn-offs with your voice

Home automation is all the rage, but not enough systems make it simple enough to incorporate these smart features into all of your lights and appliances, instead only working with a select few. What’s the point of smart home if only half of it is intelligent?

The 3P is a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 enabled Smart Plug looking to outfit everything in your home not covered by other systems with smarts. It serves as the connection between the outlet and the light or appliance itself, and allows users total control over its operation with voice or remote smartphone command. The included temperature and humidity sensors also keep tabs on temperature to empower users to save energy using the companion iOS/Android app’s scheduling features. A donation of $35 gets backers a Smart Plug and the Smart Beacon with embedded sensors. A successful $20,000 campaign will see the product delivered by March 2015.

Although the 3P Smart Plug boasts voice control, it doesn’t have a wide array of commands available to it. As such, these limitations seem glaring when compared to other solutions like the SAM or AngelBlocks, which have proven to be more fully featured and provide more utility. The 3P shouldn’t be overlooked, though. It’s fairly difficult to make everything smarter, and the 3P handles the outliers well. 

Categories
Cycling Fitness

Rollerblade inventor returns with Rowbike, marrying cycling with rowing

Physiologists agree that the top three exercises a person can engage in are swimming, skiing, and rowing. Unfortunately, all three of those exercises need some sort of special environment or a machine capable of replicating its benefits. In the case of rowing, the machinery to workout with exists. Unfortunately, it’s a stationary exercise and therefore not nearly as fulfilling as being out on the water itself. The inventor of the rollerblade, Scott Olson, had this exact same thought while working out one day and it led him to create the Rowbike.

The Rowbike is a combination rowing machine and bicycle. The product is designed with total body fitness in mind, engaging all parts of your body to get you zipping along. The rowing motions employed to move along have zero impact on the knees as well, so the Rowbike is a great choice for people who may have previously injured them or who may just be a little older. Provided the campaign reaches its $55,000 goal, the $1,750 Rowbike is slated for an April 2015 delivery.

The idea of providing total body fitness with a bicycle can also be seen with the Dual Drive Total Fitness Bike. Instead of full body rowing motions, though, the Dual Drive combines hand pedals with standard foot pedals. By doing so, it still allows a user the option to use either while the Rowbike doesn’t. The Rowbike seems unsteady at slow speeds and ungainly even at high speeds, so being stuck rowing everywhere severely limits its use and makes it somewhat dangerous unless used on long straightaways that don’t require much handling.

Categories
Connected Objects Cycling

COBI connected bike system stylishly declutters handlebar gadgets

Most riders who take their biking seriously pony up the cash for all sorts of mounts and lights to make their trips more manageable, but their handlebars end up being anything but. To put it simply, handlebars are extremely cluttered and the more functionality a rider wants, the worse it becomes.

iCradle, Inc.’s COBI connected biking system is taking what cyclists want in their ride and combining it all into an unobtrusive, wireless system. On its own, COBI gives riders an automatic flashlight, turn signal, and a proximity start-up that senses a cyclist’s iPhone or Android device and reacts accordingly. The COBI’s main draw is its handlebar dock. When a smartphone is inserted, COBI instantly adds over 100 intelligent features to any standard or electronic bike, all controlled with a handy thumb controller that allows focus to stay on the road ahead. A lot of these features, like intelligent navigation, the ability to call friends, a fitness tracker, Spotify integration, and a smart theft alarm, all make use of their large, colorful screens, and their high-powered internals —all while being charged with a 6000mAh battery pack for standard bikes or an e-bike’s hub.

COBI is extremely modular, allowing riders the freedom to pick and choose which components they’d like to add or remove from their systems, handy when more are created in the future. The company has created four separate types of designs to accommodate different types of riders: racer, city, urban, and mountain. They mainly differ in aesthetic, though. A complete kit for standard bikes goes for $255, while an e-bike gets a small discount being that they come with compatible controllers at $199. iCradle, Inc. is looking to ship the product in June 2015 provided they reach their $100,000 goal.

The COBI connected system is extremely polished and full-featured, traits sure to attract a large number of supporters and adopters. With add-ons to protect from tough terrain and inclement weather, the thought behind the design and implementation of the product is obvious. Combine with the Helmetor to get maximum efficiency out of any bike.

Categories
Maker/Development

Tiny Mono provides development platform potential

Sometimes, our smart devices are a little too smart for what we want to do and a little too rigid for the intrepid among us. This makes merely tinkering with the different platforms in our lives pretty much impossible. Innovations like Arduino boards and Raspberry Pis lets buffs realize their ideas, but they can easily get out of hand and end up with nothing but a jumble of wires.

The one difficult thing when it comes to creation is testing out the idea, but the Mono makes it easy to do just that. The tiny device comes equipped with a 2.2″ TFT touch display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and a temperature sensor. Mono is a gadget as much as it is a development platform. As such, it’s completely open source, so it can act as an interface for other, custom ideas, or act on its own. By downloading tailored apps from the MonoKiosk app store, Mono can act as a one-touch light for Phillips Hue connected bulbs, or can display weather forecasts, for example. A single, fully loaded Mono goes for kr710 (~$119), and is expected in May 2015. The campaign is looking for kr500,000 (~$83,300) in funding.

In and of themselves, the applications touted by the Mono seem fairly tame, but its potential is really in how makers end up utilizing it. An expansion connector on the device’s back allows for increased utility such as connected power, a 3.5mm carries multiple digital and analog signals, and an SD card slot really gets the mind going when it comes to how much programming and data a single 32GB card can hold. All this tech in the hands of the right person can result in comparable, more innovative products than those on the market now, all at a fraction of the cost.

Categories
Tools

Boss lets you record voice with the tape measure of your choice

For all those who use a tape measure, the Tape Boss will prove a godsend. The digital recorder attaches to any tape measure and has the capacity to record three separate recordings, from instructions to measurements. Having all the detailed information a button press away is superior to trying to remember everything or writing everything, especially because information is so easily forgotten and it takes so much time to actually get everything of importance down.

Contractors, homeowners, plumbers, and everyone else who use a tape measure will be able to cut down on labor time with this handy device, and over time that number will rise dramatically. A protective rubber coating prevents major damage to the the Tape Boss, and a single battery cycle will last 1,500 recordings. More technology could potentially go into this device, like some sort of smartphone import/export feature but as it exists, it gets the job done. A Tape Boss goes for $50 CAD (~$44 USD) and is expected in April 2015. The campaign is looking for $15,000 (~$13,200 USD) to start production.

Categories
Television Wearables

Google Glass-like Narwhal clips on to your glasses, works in the shower

High-tech wearables that can be worn over the eyes hold a special place in pop culture canon, and have largely stayed there over the years. Most attempts at a functional piece of technology that could be worn comfortably while still providing lots of compelling content easily have all pretty much crashed and burned. Why would merQ think they have solved these problems?

Their product is the Narwhal Clip-On, a wearable device that attaches to any pair of glasses and instantly upgrades them from merely pieces of glass to a capable digital accessory by adding a digital display and a compartment in which streaming sticks like the Chromecast or the Roku can be inserted. Listen to your favorite content with the retractable Bluetooth headphone, and control it with the trackpad mouse on the rear. The display is also waterproof so your showers can become the theater you always wanted it to be. The future’s cost of entry is $299 CAD (~$260 USD) and backers can start using it June 2015. MerQ’s campaign is aiming for a $85,000CAD (~$74,200) goal.

If the behemoth that is Google tried and spectacularly failed with Glass, I don’t see how the Narwhal really sets itself apart. It adds more computer elements to an interface that doesn’t need it and frankly shouldn’t have it, and it shows: the Narwhal is incredibly ungainly and bulky. Even if the company is looking to streamline it, their reliance on streaming sticks will limit it. High-tech glasses are ultimately limited by technology, and we just don’t have what we need yet to make a compelling, Star Trek-esque version quite yet. Let’s not jump the gun.

Categories
Television

SkreensTV offers pictures-in-picture, turns big TV into many little ones

There’s so much content in the world to consume, but no matter how much there is, there will always just be just one screen in front of us to do it on. Even the largest screens, those 60-inch flat-screen television present across the United States, are guilty of being able to only support one input. It may support it beautifully, but truth be told it’s a horrible waste of screen real estate.

Until SkreensTV came along, there wasn’t much that could be done besides a lousy picture-in-picture interface. What SkreensTV offers is the ability to connect up to five different sources of content, whether it be an cable box, a game console, or an Apple TV, and have them all displayed simultaneously without any degradation in picture or sound. Although there will be one primary audio stream represented, other audio sources can be streamed through Wi-Fi, into smartphones and tablets, and out through headphones.

Everyone has different needs when it comes to content and would use all that space differently. Customizable layouts can be created with the use of the SkreensTV iOS/Android companion app based on user preference, easily confugurable whenever needed. So sports fans can load up three games, their fantasy football website, and ESPN all on one screen, or a games enthusiast can play a game while having tips displayed alongside a Skype call and a Twitch stream, all at 1080P. The 4GB version of SkreensTV can be had for $399 and, provided the campaign reaches its $200,000 goal, will ship the product out by December 2015.

The SkreensTV idea is outstanding, but in practice will probably not see as much use as it claims unless a family is that heavily connected and already have a ridiculously large TV to trult take advantage of it. The sports and gaming market are definite buys, but only if their marketing works out for them. Although sports fans are more mainstream and can be catered to, gamers are usually more tech-savvy and can achieve this same effect at probably a fraction of the cost. In any case, the platform will have an app store with an SDK which will no doubt evolve it in interesting ways.