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Connected Objects Cycling

The BEAKOR bike system outfits your ride with a little of everything

Urban areas in the United States are experiencing an uptick in the amount of cyclists roaming the streets. While this is great for individual fitness and the environment, more bikes on the road means more accidents. This makes products like BEAKOR even more valuable.

Put simply, BEAKOR is the swiss army knife of cycling devices, combining a staggering array of functionality into one system. It consists of front and back equipment that interface with a companion iOS/Android smartphone application. Together, the system combines strong front and back illumination and turn signaling with features like live front and rear HD video recording and streaming, automated accident alert messages with GPS coordinates in the case of an accident, and metrics tracking.

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Uncategorized

The DOT lets your phone more easily connect the dots

There’s an issue inherent with the idea of a smartphone with apps: it constantly needs to be fiddled with in order to access the appropriate app at the right time. DOT tries to alleviate that problem.

DOT is a small, LED-equipped device that acts as a beacon. With it, users can use it to better contextualize an environment and program a smartphone or tablet to adjust accordingly. For instance, should someone be reading a book on a tablet, sitting down on the couch will prompt the nearby DOT to launch the app with book being read to the page they left off.

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Smartwatches/Bands

Lose the dorky Bluetooth headset with the Sgnl smart strap

At one point in time, it seemed like the smartwatch was all but dead in the water: most of them boasted sluggish performance and lack of truly must-have features that prevented them from becoming anything more than just a novelty. The deluge of them over the past recent years didn’t help matters, either.

Now, though, seems to be a sort of renaissance for the much-heralded smartwatch with the impending releases of products like the Apple Watch Series 2 and Samsung Gear S3 — at least if the renaissance means they’re finally becoming what they should have been in the first place. Alongside these fresh releases is the Sgnl, Innomdle Lab’s Bluetooth-enabled smart strap that functions by itself or as a companion to a smartwatch to let users conduct phone calls with just the tip of their finger.

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Camping

Always be cool with the Zero Breeze portable air conditioner

In certain places and situations, it’s usually not possible to enjoy the luxury of cooled air. And while portable air conditioners do exist, they’re usually very bulky and need to use ice or water when being operated.

The Zero Breeze remedies this problem by reducing the size of a portable air conditioner down to just 14 pounds and having it operated using either an outlet or a 40 mAH battery that can be charged in just three to five hours. It has a rotary compression system within that uses an environmentally-friendly coolant that can cool a 50 square foot space down to 44°, perfect for a small home, office, tent, RV, college dorm, or even the beach. (If indoors, a hose can be extended from the device outdoors to expel warm air.)

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Connected Objects

MOTI is a little dome that can make you a lot better through habits

editors-choice-300x96The ‘there’s an app for that’ attitude of the modern, smartphone-wielding person makes it seem like the answer to any problem can be downloaded. And while that may be the case for some situations, the majority of people are overloaded with apps, push notifications and other distractions that have proven more easily ignored than anything else.

Smartphones and now wearables compound that problem, aiming to offer accountability and agency and failing to deliver. The team behind the MOTI smart companion for better habits is looking to change how people approach the things they should be doing for better health and happiness. Instead of creating just another reminder app, they’ve instead created a charming physical device that acts as a small, distinct and actionable environmental trigger, satisfying what the brain needs to form a habit: a trigger (check), a routine (by pressing in MOTIs satisfyingly-designed button) and a reward (R2-D2-style bloops and beeps).

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Connected Objects Fitness

The Peloton stationery bike lets you compete globally, costs more than airfare

These days, simply having a spinning machine at home isn’t enough unless whoever’s riding it has the type of motivation needed to really see results. For everyone else, group classes at the local spinning club is the way to go, but the time needed to get there and back can sometimes be hard to find.

With the Peloton Bike, riders don’t need to leave their own home. The compact, carbon steel-framed home bike features a full HD touchscreen that streams challenging live and on-demand spinning classes. Beginners and advanced users alike will find exactly the classes they need throughout the week using the class scheduling feature. And with built-in sensors to monitor everything from heart rate to cadence, reviewing past performance and setting future goals are easy to do.

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Smart Home

Make sense into your energy bill with the Sense smart home monitor

The thing about most smart home solutions is that they force those interested in one to buy a wide array of devices for each individual appliance or item to be tracked. But with Sense, only one is needed exactly where it counts.

The Sense home energy monitor is a small box that attaches to a home’s energy panel. It is programmed with algorithms designed to identify each appliances individual “voice,” or the electrical signature it produces when consuming energy. In this way, Sense can distinguish the washer from the refrigerator from the air conditioner — avoiding the hassle of having a separate device for each.

Categories
Connected Objects Music

Fi Station is a gorgeous wedge of sound editing goodness

Products created for making music can feel pretty technical, alienating all but the most hardcore music makers. They’re often expensive, too, and multiple are needed: a professional sound card to record, a Hi-Fi player to listen back to lossless audio and a separate box to playback HD video. And even then, most don’t interact with each other.

With over 15 years in the music industry, Fay Wong used his expertise to create the Fi Station, a single device that combines all of these needs into one product. For one, it’s beautifully designed, sporting a fully metal casing with rotary knobs that makes it rugged and durable yet still attractive. 

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Aquatics

The Bixpy Jet lets you move like Aquaman, won’t help fish communication

With the amount of innovation going on in the crowdfunding arena, the world of watersports has never been more exciting. Case in point: the Bixpy Jet, a portable, personal water propulsion device that, with the help of a wide variety of attachments, can be attached any type of kayak, SUPs or just simply held.

This level of versatility lets the Bixpy Jet propel watercraft to about seven miles per hour, allowing kayakers to reach places they otherwise couldn’t. Of particular note is the device’s submersible battery which completely transforms the experience of diving by helping propel swimmers to three miles per hour. In designing the Bixpy Jet, inventor Houman Nikmanesh thought it important that users not be forced to buy a new watercraft, which is why all its attachments were created.

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Augmented Reality Connected Objects Displays Kids/Babies

Egger augmented reality projector is prep school for Pokemon Go

editors-choiceThe prevalence of smartphones and tablets is something that needs to be carefully managed around children lest they become too attached. It’s been proven that too much screen time can have an adverse on young, developing minds, something that prompted the team behind Egger to do something about it.

Their solution is a friendly, egg-shaped augmented reality projector designed with children in mind. The Egger can be used as an educational aid as much as it can be used as an entertainment device, with both subject to inputs from children and adults alike using the packed remoter control reminiscent of a Wiimote. It can play movies, TV shows, and music, with a sketchpad to really let the imagination loose, as well.