Categories
Lighting

Method Lights stick to the ceiling; illuminate your Picasso’s

Those who invest in an art collection know that the only way to display it is to use good lighting. Without the proper illumination, beautiful paintings and photographs can get lost on the wall.

Method Lights are one such way to light artwork. These lights feature control over dimming, temperature and timer. Best of all, these settings can be controlled with a  remote, making it easy to adjust from around the house. The battery runs for up to 200 hours. In addition, installation is easy, involving a peel and stick method to the ceiling. The product itself is white and features a single beam of light that goes as bright as 800 lumens.

The campaign calls this product the “perfect picture light”. While it’s certainly a good picture light, it doesn’t really stand out from other lights. Though its easy installation is a nice plus for those who don’t want to put holes in their walls. One goes for $125 for delivery in February, provided Method reaches its $2,000 Kickstarter goal.

Categories
Home Tools

Toilet strainer prevents kids from flushing jewelry

Kids have a tendency to destroy things like valuables and happiness. Okay, maybe not happiness, but certainly priceless family heirlooms.

iGuard is a solution to this problem, straining out items from the toilet. Ew. Okay, yes it sounds disgusting, but the creators claim it’s the only way to prevent clogged toilets. The small plastic mechanism hooks onto the side of the toilet bowl. There’s a round piece that goes into the toilet with holes in it to strain. This way, it’ll catch unwanted items from going down the pipes. The only question that remains is, what about those things that you want to go down? iGuard comes in a case that opens with tap of the foot so touch is unnecessary. One is going for $50 on Kickstarter with an estimated delivery of April 2015. iGuard is looking to raise $20,000.

Categories
Home Sensors/IoT

Ramos uses a Bluetooth beacon to coax your butt from the bed

Getting up in the morning for some is a delight and for others means terror. Getting up on the wrong side of the bed means a day full of disappointment. Sometimes the way we get up can determine the course of the day.

Ramos is an alarm clock that not only gets you out of bed, but does so the right way. The alarm consists of three parts, first the clock by the side of the bed, a Bluetooth sensor, and your smartphone. Upon waking up, the user must get out of bed and bring their smartphone close to the sensor. Distances can be customized, but most choose to put the sensor in the bathroom or kitchen next to the coffeepot. For heavy sleepers, Ramos requires a four digit code to really make them think.

The accompanying smartphone app allows for multiple alarms, snooze limits, multiple users, and more. A courtesy mode makes one initial beep, but then shuts up to consider letting others sleep. The user can also play their own music with or without a gradual loudness mode to make waking up a little more smooth. With a USB port, you can charge your smartphone so it can stay attached to the alarm and the alarm runs on battery when unplugged, so it can never be tricked.

Ramos has really thought of everything in terms of waking up. The movable sensor makes it easy to prepare for different kinds of days. Its various modes consider the comfort of bedfellows and family members. Best of all, it doesn’t wake you up with a greased pig-like chase around the room like some unconventional alarms do. For backers who want to get up in the morning without feeling like committing murders, try Ramos for a donation of $99 in either white or black for estimated delivery in May 2015. Ramos is hoping to raise $100,000 on Kickstarter.

Categories
Chargers/Batteries Tech Accessories

Hydrobee charger uses wind, rain, and muscle to juice up your devices

The demand for battery power on tablets and smartphones is simply never met. We use these devices day in and day out, taking advantage of all the cool apps and capabilities they have to offer. However, most find that their device only lasts half the day and dies at the worst moments.

Hydrobee never wants any smartphone to die ever again. This mini power plant harnesses solar, wind, hydro and mechanical energy to power any USB compatible device. Charge it up with a bike ride, day out in the sun or running water. Then, when the time comes, unplug and set off for the day. Hydrate will be there to charge your device with its stored energy.

We’ve seen all kinds of these devices on Backerjack. Batteries that charge from wind or sun, but it’s rare to see a product that takes almost any kind of energy it can get. Hydrobee’s versatility is what truly sets it apart from other products. Interested backers can grab their own $145 by May 2015. Hydrobee is looking to raise $32,000 on Kickstarter.

Categories
Cell Phone Accessories Displays

InkCase Plus E Ink display heard you needed a screen for your screen

Smartphones have spoiled today’s consumers with bright, gorgeously colorful screens. With each passing year, these screens grow bigger and become better at displaying the expanding variety of mobile content. The biggest downside to this is the horrid battery life most devices are cursed with and, as a result, people have to be picky with what they consume throughout the day.

Simply leaving a screen on to read takes a fair amount of battery power. To address this huge problem, a team at Oaxis has come up with the InkCase Plus, an E Ink screen that uses Bluetooth LE to communicate with Android devices. This union allows a wide variety of information to be accessed instantly without using what precious little battery power most devices have. Compatible apps can send notifications, navigation information, display e-books, or show fitness information.

The InkCase Plus is best used in conjunction with a leather FitCase. Doing so places the screen on the front of the case so that all this information can be accessed with a tap, even in the absence of a power source. While the InkCase Plus provides about 19 hours of reading time, the FitCase is currently only available for the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Note 3, making its pretty limited in practical use. Both products are being sold together for $139.

The InkCase Plus is a novel way of approaching the problem most smartphone manufacturers choose to ignore, even if what it is is another screen for your screen. Looking past that, E Ink integration makes a lot of apps so much more useful and suddenly makes glare less of a problem. Their biggest issue is the complete lack of support for the vibrant amount of Android hardware, but when isn’t that a problem with Android?

Categories
Automotive Connected Objects

Sync your ride up with the miaLinkup auto dongle

It’s surprising to think about how even the newest cars can’t boast the amount of technology seen in smartphones. Over the years, this has been reflected in the union between the two: cradles, connectors, and all kinds of other accessories have made the car a smartphone’s second home. Unfortunately, they also create clutter that ultimately ruins a car’s interior aesthetic and contributes to a more dangerous environment that requires driver attention at the wrong moments.

The team behind the miaLinkup ultra-long wireless module wants to get rid of this unnecessary mess by combining all of these features and more into one compact device. The device takes the form of a a dongle for the On-Board Diagnostic Port II, or the OBD, and utilizes Bluetooth 4.1 to offer complete control of a vehicle with a smartphone. With the miaLinkup installed, things like streaming music wirelessly, unlocking doors, or rolling up windows are all possible in vehicles previously lacking the technology. In addition, an onboard GPS can help lost drivers to their vehicle and prevents unauthorized movement, a tire pressure monitoring system helps avoid unfortunate blowouts, and real time usage and diagnostic reports help users save money over the long run.

The device needs a Bluetooth extender to function at ranges up to 2,500 feet or up to 1,000 feet with buildings in the way, but in either case, its versatility can’t be understated. To top it off, miaLinkup requires no monthly fee for this impressive set of functionality, so interested backers need only spend $199 for the device along with four tire sensors. Provided the campaign reaches its $50,000 goal, the product has an estimated delivery date of September 2015.

Currently, there are a plethora of OBD devices that provide things like GPS tracking or engine monitoring, but the combination of functionality in the miaLinkup is rare, especially considering its open API. A prior Indiegogo campaign, the Drivebot, is similar in that it offers diagnostics but without tire information, or Bluetooth streaming capabilities. The miaLinkup is fully featured, instantly providing value and technology to vehicles that may need one or the other.

 

Categories
Fitness Watches and Jewelry Wearables

Mira fitness tracker boosts ego, blasts laziness

Many fitness devices and trackers offer the same thing. They track activity and create graphs and charts to see progress. Few, however, really take on the motivation of a trainer in order to push users to do more.

Mira is the first wearable fitness device designed just for women. The tracker itself is small and black and either fits onto a stylish bracelet, clips onto clothing or fits in a pocket. With its accompanying smartphone app, it measures steps taken throughout the day along with other activities put in manually. In addition, it tracks food and water intake. Mira makes it easy to see activity and calories consumed per day all in one place.

Perhaps the most unique thing about this product, however, is the tips and tricks it provides, called boosts. These boosts can range from advising users to drink water when they get up in the morning to saying that sweat is really “fat crying”. Anyone using Mira can ask for a boost when they need it. At the end of the day, you can look through how you did in order to determine what to do more or less of.

All in all, Mira is a great product for women, or men too for that matter. Mira should be careful, however, not to fall into the Bic Pen for Her trap, making their product a caricature of what women really need. The boosts are borderline at best, some reminiscent of what a mean girl would say with a sneer, like the above crying fat comment. Even so, the intent behind the product is definitely good. One package including tracker, bracelet and app will cost backers $149 with an estimated delivery of January 2015. Mira is looking to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter.

Categories
Camping

TableSnugg keeps tablecloths hanging on by a drawstring

Picnics can be a great deal of fun until it comes time to figure out how to put great food out on a table that isn’t so clean. While many people will choose to use a tablecloth, there are times when keeping it from blowing off the table and into the wind can be a pretty major challenge. TableSnugg is a tablecloth with a builtin drawstring that allows the user to tighten the table cloth around the edges of the table. There’s not a great deal of detail on what this product is made of, but it is washable and recyclable.

While this product is certainly convenient in some ways, in others it doesn’t make sense. Usually the tablecloth is held down by the food that it holds, isn’t it? For $375, backers get a picnic basket that includes one TableSnugg and assorted other items, provided the campaign can reach its $30,000 goal.

Categories
Cooking

CookStarta tucks prep food away, won’t start dinner for you though

There’s something about a home cooked meal that just usually tastes better than what one can get in a restaurant – especially when one is not doing their own cooking. But even those who enjoy cooking usually don’t enjoy cleaning up the mess. CookStarta is a multifunctional kitchen tool that assists with food preparation. The device tucks partway under one’s cutting board and can be used to scrape into and hold all the unusable pieces of veggies and meat that get trimmed in advance, or it can be used to easily transport finely chopped items into the pan or pot. The product is made of food-grade polypropylene, which is dishwasher safe and reusable. It appears that it would work with pretty much any standard cutting board.

This is one of those products that seems useful at first, until you realize that the same thing can be done with materials that are already in the kitchen. Other convenient kitchen tools that may be of interest to backers are GrillOven, Gneiss Spice, and Cuffitts. This campaign seeks to raise £8,500 (~$13,300 USD). Backers get one CookStarta for £7 (~$11 USD) with an expected delivery of March 2015.

Categories
Sports

Court Grabbers keep players from slip slidin’ away

There’s little that’s more annoying on a basketball court than when a tight score is making the game “up for grabs” and a dirty court is making getting traction a near impossibility. Anxious players lick their hands, rub the bottom of their shoes, and hope they don’t get sick later.

Court Grabbers restore traction to shoes in a quick, easy and safe way. Before the game or practice begins, the player laces the base strip onto their shoe once, applies traction gel to the traction pad, and slides it onto the base strip. It clicks in place and stays secure throughout the game or practice. Then whenever traction is needed, the player wipes the bottom of their shoe across the traction pad on the top of their other shoe, and dust, dirt and traction is restored to shoes. This means players have traction available at all times when on the court. When the traction pad gets dirty, just toss into the washer and dryer. It’s not clearly indicated how frequently the product should be washed for optimum game traction results. The product has been declared “permitted for play” by NCAA and NFHS, and is presently being used by players in 42 states and 11 countries.

This product’s appeal will be pretty much limited to its niche market of basketball enthusiasts, aspiring professionals and pro ball players. Backers looking for an easy way to tote all their sports gear might want to check out the Zondo Firefly Backpack campaign, and those looking for a way to monitor and improve their game might want to check out the LUUV campaign. For $15, backers get one product with an expected delivery of February 2015, if the campaign can raise $20,000.