Category: Connected Objects

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Connected Objects Food and Beverage

Behold, Starbucks junkies: the age of RoboJoe is nigh

Will machines eventually take on every job? Maybe. Toward that end, one campaign is tackling the soul-numbing line waiting of Starbucks lines.

The answer is RoboJoe. Well, at least that’s what the Johnson family is envisioning with their robotic barista prototype. The RoboJoe takes all that is good with a standard coffee shop and condenses it all in a 4X4X7 space in which cups of black gold are created using a proprietary brewing method. The result? A ‘coffee drink’ — a concoction containing all the caffeine of a standard coffee without the bitterness or the upset stomach that can occasionally mess up an afternoon all in 60 seconds.

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Connected Objects Imaging

Panoporter camera lets you see the whole room when video calling

Video calling is convenient because it allows people to easily see their kids and other loved ones while they are at work or traveling. It also makes work conference calls more productive because those doing it can not only hear their co-workers speak, but also see important charts and documents. But it’s hard to see the entire room with most cameras used for such calls.

patent-claimedPanoporter is a 360-degree 1080p HD camera for video calls that allows users to get a 360- or 180-degree view of the room it’s placed in, whether the device is on a table or mounted on a wall. It is controlled via an Android and iOS app. Unlike many 360-degree cameras, like CENTR,  that require multiple image sensors to stitch together a panoramic image, the patent-pending Panoporter uses just a single lens and there’s no trade-off in resolution.

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Connected Objects Music

The Mighty music player lets you enjoy Spotify without a smartphone

editors-choiceThe days of small, lightweight MP3 players — a la the iPod Shuffle — are gone. For active types everywhere, their demise was a huge loss only compounded by the rise of streaming music and the increasingly larger smartphones needed for it.

Mighty Audio’s Mighty streaming music player is the only device on the market that can locally play Spotify playlists without an Internet connection by downloading music before you go. The 1.5 square inch Mighty player connects with iOS or Android devices over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to transfer up to 4GB of Spotify Premium tunes for up to five hours of playback.

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Automotive Cell Phone Accessories Connected Objects

Bluejay mounts a campaign for a more connected drive

Smartphones are an indispensable part of daily life. Unfortunately, so much so that they’re often the cause of injurious or even fatal accidents. With so many innovative solutions to far less pressing issues all around, it’s a shame there aren’t better solutions for this one.

The Kiwi Company’s Bluejay smart mount combines high-grade materials with robust functionality for a more seamless phone and driving experience. Three different attachments secure the carbon fiber and high-grade aluminum body to the window, dash, or air vent while a phone safe magnet keeps smartphones sturdy on the road.

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Connected Objects Displays Maker/Development

Looking for a sign? Starling lets you connect one to the Internet

While some consumers are aware of advancements in LED TV technology, the same thing can’t necessarily be said for the use of LED lighting in signs. Signage just doesn’t usually tend to excite people in the same way that TVs do.

But that hasn’t stopped the makers of Starling from putting a creative spin on LED signs. Starling is an open source LED display that features a modular design and is Wi-Fi-enabled for easy connection to the Internet. The accompanying mobile-friendly Web application enables simple configuration and usage, allowing users to select the font appearing on the signs, as well as the scroll speed and other features. There’s also a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.

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Connected Objects Music

The Solo plays the guitar for you, lets you focus on burning the dessert

Live music is a great help to practicing singers and musicians wanting accompaniment or as entertainment at a dinner party or in a club. The problem really lies in getting people together consistently who want to play, especially on short notice.

The Solo is looking to resolve that difficulty. The product is a mahogany or ebony guitar attachment that transforms any guitar into a self-playing version of itself. To do this, retractable pegs push down on the strings of a guitar’s fretboard while a row of picks down by the guitar’s base strums them, essentially creating a modern digital equivalent of a player piano.

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Automotive Connected Objects Imaging

RecSmart social dash cam streams the good times as they roll

Dashboard cameras provide a pretty good way to capture what happens while driving a car –- especially if there is an accident and evidence is needed to provide proof of what happened.

RecSmart is a connected, social dash cam with built-in Wi-Fi and GPS that connects to the user’s smartphone and continuously records whatever happens during a drive and saves it onto the included 8-GB microSD card. It collects data including the vehicle’s position, speed and time –- all while shooting HD video and making it easy to share video and photos from the road with the user’s social networks.

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Connected Objects Furniture Video Games Virtual Reality

Immersit VR accessory rocks your world, starting with your couch

Virtual reality (VR) is one of the hottest new technologies, creating opportunities to make videogames and movies more immersive to consumers. But VR stops short of providing a full immersive experience because it focuses only on the head.

Immersit is a device that slips under any sofa, chair or bed with four legs and creates motion and vibrations in response to whatever is happening in a compatible movie or videogame. It supports up to 1,100 pounds and works in conjunction with an app for Android and iOS mobile devices. Its software initially supports the PlayStation 3 and 4, the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows and Linux. Immersit is also compatible with the Oculus VR headset and is expected to be compatible with the HTC Vive and new Oculus VR headsets.

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Connected Objects Winter Sports

CARV’s a digital ski coach that lives in your ear

For those who haven’t done so before, the prospect of careening down a mountain while wearing skis isn’t exactly the most inviting idea. Eventually, given enough training, it can be less of a careening and more of a controlled, effortless glide. It just takes a lot of time to get to that point. What’s more, most of that time is spent in the dark about how effectively recommended techniques are being performed, prolonging meaningful improvement.

It’s obvious to see how much room there is to better both the process of learning to ski and, later, excelling at it. As the first wearable of its kind, the CARV is a connected ski device that acts as a digital coach. It’s made up of a less than one-millimeter thick smart insert and a clip-on tracker that work in any ski boot. Together they measure motion and pressure distribution to relay meaningful feedback through a user’s headphones in real-time.

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Automotive Connected Objects

Radiomize helps drivers keep their eyes on the road

editors-choiceDistracted driving remains a major problem that causes many needless accidents. Dashboard mounts for smartphones don’t really resolve the issue because they still require drivers to take their eyes off the road to look at their devices. Heads-up displays, meanwhile, tend to be costly, typically focus only on driving-specific information, and have raised their own set of safety concerns.

patent-claimedRadiomize is a steering wheel touchpad cover that sends commands to smartphones via patented gesture control technology. In addition to taking control of smartphone functions, it reads aloud text and social messages, as well as news that would be of interest to the driver.

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