Category: Connected Objects

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Connected Objects

Oombrella senses the weather, won’t let umbrella loss rain on your parade

Umbrellas are handy to have when it’s raining, but many consumers wind up needing to replace them after leaving them behind in a taxi, on a train, in a restaurant or many other places.

Oombrella is a smart umbrella that alerts users about impending rain and also lets them know if they are about to leave it behind. The device collects real-time data including temperature, pressure, humidity and light. The electronic capsule at the end of it includes sensors that communicate with smartphones via Bluetooth Low Energy technology, allowing users to know if there is an incoming call or other notification.

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Connected Objects Lighting Music

Riflo connected LED lights up your abode with glorified notifications

We’re not quite at the point of questioning’s someone’s grasp of reality if their lights aren’t connected to the Internet. But while most would immediately point to the Philips Hue as the de facto connected light bulb for the technologically savvy dweller, the Riflo’s Indiegogo campaign presents an alternative.

While the Hue’s array of color options and scenes are all the rage, the Riflo programmable smart color LED expands on these features by adding a Wi-Fi connected speaker to the mix. This speaker can do things like audibly communicate information pertinent to the user (e.g. “You have a meeting in an hour,” “You have a new email.”) or stream music with or without a companion streaming app. Or, it’s Wink feature uses the colorful LED to silently communicate what needs to be known without a possibly annoying robo-voice droning on about it.

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Connected Objects Nutrition/Hydration

The WaterO purifies H2O at the touch of a button

Clean water is a luxury many people in the world don’t have. As time goes on and the world’s clean water supply becomes increasingly precious, more people join that statistic. This makes developing technologies that pursue the purification of water one of the biggest endeavours of the 21st century. But to move a mountain, one has to start with a few rocks: One of those rocks is WaterO.

The WaterO purifier uses the principle of reverse osmosis, a water treatment method that forces untreated water through a semi-permeable membrane to remove contaminants and impurities, to purify 99.9% of the water run through it. Its four filter system captures everything from nitrates, cyanide, and copper, resulting in a crisp glass of water everytime. Its sleek construction sits well on a kitchen countertop and requires no installation, plugging in for power instead.

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Connected Objects Kids/Babies Sensors/IoT

Butterfly Bluetooth thermometer lights up your life like a baby’s smile

Caring for a feverish child is a consuming process. Parents not only must keep a close watch on the child’s temperature using thermometers even during stressful times like in the middle of the night, but they also have to keep track of the all the measurements to better inform doctors of the child’s health.

Butterfly aims to make this easier to do. It’s comprised of a dime-sized temperature sensor, a base station, and a mobile iOS/Android app. The water-resistant temperature sensor can be stuck onto a child’s body to constantly gather temperature readings. These readings are sent to the base station and displayed on its small LED screen, and reflected in the three colored lights Butterfly uses to quickly inform parents at a glance. (A blue light is normal, a yellow light means elevated temperatures, and a red light means a fever.)

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Connected Objects Pets

KYON connected collar coalesces canine care

While keeping a dog is an extremely rewarding life decision, it’s also a time-consuming, sometimes draining endeavour. With so many aspects to constantly think about, many pet owners would quickly welcome a device into their lives that would help with it all.

The KYON smart collar is exactly that, a thin, lightweight collar equipped with a wide range of connectivity features that helps owners monitor the well-being of their little furry loved ones. KYON works using Bluetooth in conjunction with a base station or a companion smartphone app to do this, featuring embedded GPS technology and an altimeter to ensure owners know exactly where their pooch is at all time.

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Connected Objects Cooking Food and Beverage

A rising TempehSure means you have a fever for freshly baked protein

The biggest challenge for most vegetarians, vegans, or just anyone wanting to cut down on meat is trying to find a suitable replacement for animal-based protein. Tempeh is an unprocessed, fermented plant-based protein that has enjoyed status as a staple food in Indonesia for centuries, and for good reason: every four ounces of tempeh packs 18-20 grams of plant-based protein. In other words, a lot more than many other non-meat sources.

Tempeh isn’t exactly the easiest to make, though, making the TempehSure Protein Pod an attractive option for alternative eaters. The toaster oven-like device is a dual-stage incubator and pasteurizer that creates tempeh from soy or any other legume over the course of a 24-hour process. Users need only to prep the legumes, add the packed-in starter culture, place the mixture inside the TempehSure, and press one button to start the process of creating tasty tempeh.

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Connected Objects Imaging Maker/Development Sensors/IoT

Sweep eyes an opportunity for affordable LIDAR sensors

LIDAR sensor technology is being used in a growing number of products. For example, these sensors serve as the eyes of self-driving car, enabling them to detect other objects on the road. LIDAR scanners are sold on their own, but they tend to be too pricey for the average consumer, sometimes coming in at more than $1,000.

Sweep is an inexpensive scanning LIDAR sensor for consumer applications including high school robotics projects. digital art and drones. It can also be used to get the dimensions of a room much faster than it would take when using a tape measure. It can also be used to detect when somebody walks through a doorway or tries to touch something they shouldn’t. Sweep uses sensing technology that differs from most other LIDAR sensors on the market –- a technique that enables it to use lower power components to perform long-range measurements.

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Connected Objects Music

Aset and Pharaoh smart headphones turn Android on its ear

Wireless headphones provided a major boost to the headphone market. One reason why is that doing away with the cord made it much easier –- and safer — to use headphones while exercising.

patent-claimedThe patent-pending, over-the-ear Smart Listening Device (SLD) headphones take Bluetooth headphones one step further by adding the Android operating system, enabling users to download music and other media files directly to the headset. Other features include a built-in pedometer to track fitness accomplishments, USB connectivity, built-in GPS, and built-in internal microphones for phone calls and Skype conversations. Each set of headphones can play 8 hours after less than an hour of charging its lithium battery.

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Connected Objects Imaging

SnapCam360 captures immersive images while lying down on the job

The ability to shoot still photos and video in 360 degrees is a feature that’s become increasingly popular with people beyond professionals. That only increased after Facebook and YouTube started supporting 360-degree video at their websites last year.

SnapCam360 is a 360-degree camera resembling the HTC Re that can shoot in a circle and dome style just while resting with its back on any table or other surface. It can also be used to take panoramic stills and video with a single click and without any need for stitching software to combine images.

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Connected Objects Pets

RollyCat prevents roly-poly cats by keeping them active

Lack of stimulation is the main reason behind the physical and mental issues that arise in household cats, leaving many owners seeking solutions to keep their little furry friends out while they’re out for the day.

Appearing like the head of an old WowWee robot, the RollyCat is a smart toy robot that automatically plays with a cat when its owner is not around, tracking its fitness levels while it does. Three modes define the RollyCat’s operation: its automatic mode reverts the home into a primal space where the cat can spend hours chasing around it an ever-escaping RollyCat, a manual mode facilitated by its iOS or Android app lets owners get in on the phone, and its fitness tracking capabilities saves the length and quality of playtime for later so owners are better informed.

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