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Health and Wellness Wearables

YONO lets you know core body temperature for pregnancy planning

Many omen seeking to optimize their chances of conceiving are well-acquainted with the idea of monitoring their core body temperature.Some of those solutions can be very costly. Underarm sensors can also be affected by ambient temperature and other external factors, say the makers of YONO, an in-ear thermometer that calculates core body temperature for pregnancy planning.

patent-claimedThe patent-pending YONO measures and records core body temperature while sleeping –- particularly basal body temperature, the body’s lowest temperature, which usually happens while sleeping in the early morning hours. Because YONO’s sensor gets placed inside either ear, it’s not impacted by external factors that could affect the temperature, its makers say. The data synchs with the user’s Android or iOS mobile device in the morning.

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Categories
Fishing Imaging

GoFish Cam captures undersea exploits with sharks and trout

Fishing is one of the few sports where the person participating in it can’t even see most of what’s happening right before and during the most crucial part of the action.

patent-claimedGoFish Cam is a patent-pending underwater action camera that was designed to solve that issue. The wireless, 1080p HD color video camera gets attached to the user’s fishing line and captures the action in conjunction with an app for Android and iOS mobile devices. If the line snaps, the camera was designed to slowly float to the top of the water because it has almost neutral buoyancy underwater,. The camera is also equipped with infrared lights for night vision, a 170-degree wide-angle lens and built-in microphone. GoFish Cam will ship in February 2016 at $169.99, but early Kickstarter backers can buy one at reduced pricing that starts at $115. Its makers set a Kickstarter goal of raising $55,000 by Sept. 1.

Fishermen have ever been shy about sharing their big catches That could drive significant interest for GoFish Cam for those who don’t want to jury rig their own solution. But capturing underwater video can require a fair amount of light, which could make it challenging for those adventures to compete with pristine GoPro video.

Categories
Podcasts

Backerjack Podcast #22: Cameras That Think and See in 3D

In Episode 22 of the Backerjack Podcast, Steve and Ross check out some of the latest products seeking funds and preorders, including:

  • Graava, a small smooth action cam that can pick out the most interesting parts of raw footage to create a mini-movie.
  • Bevel, an inexpensive smartphone add-on that allows the capture of 3D objects that can be rotated and viewed from different angles.

We also mentioned a few other products we wished we had time for: the TrekAce forearm navigation device and the Nourish nutrition drink countertop device. Also, check out Backerjack’s first hands-on reviews of the Pebble Time smartwatch, Remix Ultratablet and Jorno folding keyboard.

Download the episode or listen below, subscribe via iTunes or RSS, and subscribe to the Backerjack Daily Digest to make sure you catch all the gadgets we’re covering. Also check out Steve’s great work on Apple World Today!

 

 

Categories
Connected Objects Imaging

Tiny Graava action cam decides which scenes make the cut

With the formidable quality of video that can be captured by smartphones, there’s got to be something special offered by a camcorder to arouse interest. GoPro figured out that small size, ruggedness, a wide angle. It’s attracted a number of competitors, including Contour, Drift Innovation, Sony, C&A Marketing (using the Polaroid Cube brand) and, more recently, TomTom (yes, the GPS company) with a 4K camera called the Bandit.

Graava enters this crowded field with a small, polished gemstone-like camcorder that affixed to a range of bikes and apparel with the right mounts. Lacking an LCD as many of these products do, it has a grid of LEDs on its side that indicate the product’s status, and has an enclosed HDMI connector and microSD slot for expansion It can also be charged wirelessly using the Qi standard. What sets Graava apart is that it has the ability to analyze the video it captures and pick out the most interesting parts depending on how long the resulting video is. And when it’s not capturing extreme surfing, it can be used to capture the gentle sounds of a napping infant as a baby monitor.

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Categories
Features Television

Back Pedaled: Matchstick TV dongle goes up in flames but doesn’t burn backers

Some crowdfunded gadgets are famous for shaping the market while others are infamous for never making it to market. Sadly, this often leaves backers in the lurch. In Back Pedaled, we’ll look back on these projects and what went wrong. If you’ve been burned by a gadget project that’s incurred significant delays or didn’t make it to market, get in touch.

Google’s Chromecast, a small, inexpensive gadget that connected to the HDMI connector found in most TVs, popularized a new approach to getting content from mobile devices to the big screen. The Chromecast was not the first streaming stick, but form factor inspired products like the Amazon Fire TV Stick and the Microsoft Wireless Device Adapter. Its success has attracted a broad array of content services to use the Google Cast technology it uses.

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Camping Connected Objects Cycling Running

TrekAce points you in the right direction, keeps your hands free

Handheld navigation devices, which include smartphones these days, have been around for a long time. But one of their disadvantages is that they have to be held in the hand, or at least mounted to something. That can be a hassle when one wants to use their hands to hold walking poles, binoculars, bike handles and other staples of outdoor activity.

TrekAce takes another approach to navigating. The water-resistant starfish-like object wraps itself around one’s forearm. A touch screen provides the usual bits of GPS-related info. But what really sets TrekAce apart is how it can use its appendages to indicate which direction one should turn. Vibrations in its different extensions can communicate going straight ahead, 90-degree and 45-degree turns and reversing. A combination can indicate moving between multiple angles. For example, if the “straight ahead” and 45-degree signals buzz, that means to take a 22-degree turn.

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Categories
Cell Phone Accessories

Bevel works with your iPhone to capture 3D objects in true 3D

For decades, much of what movie and TV companies have referred to as 3D has really been stereoscopy, the illusion that parts of an image are at different levels of depth in front of your eyes. We’ve even seen a few products that can turn the iPhone into a 3D viewer. But true 3D images can be rotated in space and seen from multiple angles.  We’ve even seen a crowdfunded gadget to turn an iPhone or two into a stereoscopic image capture devices.

But Bevel is different. The iPhone add-on combines invisible lasers and the iPhone’s camera to create true 3D images of everything from adorable desserts to creepy floating heads that can be rotated once captured. That’s not too surprising given that the Bevel was developed by 3D scanning company Matter and Form. Captured 3D images can even be printed on a 3D printer although the campaign doesn’t show any examples of how that turns out.

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Categories
Smart Home

JUCEBOX juices up the disconnected IoT experience

When couples have issues communicating, they go to a relationship counselor. When all the Internet of Things products in a home require 17 different apps to operate because they don’t communicate with each other, who do they go to?

If creator Urlich Frerk has his way, they will go to JUCEBOX, a universal device communicator capable of translating between the four main communication langagues used to code the IoT products. This allows those invested in the increasingly fragmented IoT ecosystem to take comfort knowing anything they have bought or will buy are all usable together with JUCEBOX, future-proofing homes for the foreseeable future.

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Categories
Chargers/Batteries

Batteriser promises to give your batteries up to eight lives

Remember batteries? They used to show up in things like pagers, digital cameras, voice recorders, flashlights and other things that smartphones replaced.  They’re still used in many toys, remote controls and relatively high-tech products such as cordless mice and keyboards as well as smart door locks. And when they run out of juice, they have to be replaced.

Rechargeables are one way to cut down on their consumption. But rechargeables aren’t recommend for all devices and recharging them can be inconvenient. This tends to lead to a lot of waste that could be cut significantly if batteries lasted longer, the goal of Batteriser. According to the campaign, we tap only about 20 percent of an alkaline battery’s energy before it gives up the ghost. The invention is an ultra-thin sleeve that greatly extends the life of the battery with a tiny amount of circuitry that regulates the battery’s voltage. One demonstration shows a flashlight maintaining its output for hours with Batteriser on its batteries while its brightness goes down significantly without it.

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Categories
Food and Beverage

Opal makes easily chewed crushed ice for when you chill out

Ice: the ingredients don’t vary much and neither does the recipe. It can be made into perfect spheres at home. However, those who frequent some of the finer concession sands may encounter  a form of crushed ice that’s easy on the teeth and soaks up the flavor of that which it cools.

That ice, as it turns out, is called “nugget ice” or “pellet ice” and a company called Scotsman claims to have invented it in 1981. Scotsman does make a home nugget ice maker, but it stands nearly three feet tall; most of the company’s focus is on large industrial systems. Enter the Opal, a countertop nugget ice maker that has the look of a modern stainless steel appliance and is almost a tenth of the price of the competition. Opal’s proposition is pretty straightforward. Pour in water and wait. The product makes up to a pound of ice per hour, which is faster than most freezers. its clear, LED-lit receptacle can store up to 3 lbs.

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