Tag: Bluetooth LE

Categories
Wearables

Fineck Bluetooth wearable strangles stubborn neck pain

One take away from the wearable craze is that people are willing to put some sort of sensor or module pretty much anywhere on their body, provided it relays important information. There’s a wearable for almost every part of the body: earrings, bracelets, ankle bracelets and rings are some of the most popular options that track a variety of vitals like heart rate and sleep. One part of the body hasn’t gotten any love, and that’s the neck: the source of some of the most common, persistent occupational pain most experience day in and day out.

In this modern age, the team behind the Fineck doesn’t believe anyone has to go through their day suffering at all. Their titanium wearable is one of the first neck-focused devices, and comes in the form of a sleek rubber band outfitted with a Bluetooth LE sensor that recognizes neck posture over time. The companion app then relays the analyzed data back to an iOS device to gently remind users of their posture, suggest mini-exercises, or prompt users to play interactive games with the neck as the controller, all in the name of alleviating stubborn neck pain. Early birds can grab a Fineck necklace for $69 before it shoots up to $89, with an expected ship date of April 2015. The campaign is looking for $20,000 in funding.

The Fineck’s choice of placement is certainly novel, but the rest of it isn’t. The neck doesn’t require as much special attention as the product will lead most to believe. Maintaining proper posture is key, and giving it a nice stretch or two over the span of the day will be more than enough. A completely separate device isn’t necessary, and replicates features the more subdued Lumo Lift already boast. Should the Fineck evolve in its capabilities, it may merit a second look.

Categories
Connected Objects

Give your plants a voice with the Daisy app and sensor

It’s said that talking to plants will help them grow both faster and stronger, but what most gardeners would actually enjoy more than talking to their plants is having their plants talk to them. Unless someone is an expert, the process of caring for all types of different plants would be made so much easier if each said exactly what they needed at all times.

Although the Daisy sensor and app doesn’t actually give your plants a voice per se, it does the next best thing. By sticking the sensor into the plant’s soil, the combination temperature, light, and water sensor uses Bluetooth LE to send pertinent alerts to a user’s smartphone whenever a plant needs water or is generally stressed.

The app also catalogs all of the greenery in a user’s collection, providing technical information through easily accessibly wiki pages and allowing personalization with customizable names and pictures. The Daisy PRO is available for those with larger plants and trees in their care, and retails for $69. For everyone else, two standard Daisy sensors goes for $34 with an expected delivery in June 2015. The campaign is looking for $50,000.

The Daisy is an engaging way to interact with the responsibilities placed on gardeners or just average people taking care of some green in their home or apartment. While other products like the Daisy.si actually waters the plants itself, the Daisy app actually provides users with valuable information which may prove to be more beneficial in the long run.

Categories
Tech Accessories

Blooky promises to end password hassle with a key fob device

One password for all the sites we frequented used to be the norm. More importantly, it used to be easy. Nowadays, though, having one password for every Web site is akin to a digital death sentence. With more and more attempts at your digital life by hackers targeting large companies with troves of our data and being successful at it, it’s up to us to make sure our data is protected and secure. Password managers claim to be a good solution, but they rely on exactly one password to protect you, which has proven to be a bad idea.

Blooky is a wireless Bluetooth password key that can work with laptops, desktops, phones, and tablets to relieve you of password worry. All you have to do is pair Blooky with your device and login to your desired site. After your first time, the product will save your credentials. Every login after that will see Blooky authenticate itself to decrypt the passwords it has stored, making every login effortless. It’s easy to deactivate should it fall into the wrong hands, offering several ways to remotely disable it. The company is also offering a Bluetooth LE dongle for your device should it lack the capability. The campaign is looking for $250,000, and backers can expect their $100 Blooky on their doorsteps by August 2015.

The inventors behind Blooky claim their encryption is unbroken thus far, but no encryption is perfect. Someone who wants your data badly enough will eventually succeed. Blooky will no doubt be an asset to the casual user, but runs the risk of being more of a convenience than actual protection in the long run. Backers interested in security may also want to check out the EveryKey.

Categories
Wearables

CHEMION smart glasses make your face the LED billboard you never wanted it to be

The world is always fast trying to figure out what the next ridiculous trend will be because these ridiculous trends are guaranteed to bring in heaps of money. Technology is especially guilty of this as these trends are the veritable ebb and flow of the industry and as such, seldom do we see real and significant innovation.

CHEMION is a pair of LED glasses that can display text, images, and animations similar to how a scoreboard at a stadium and its large bulbs constantly change color to show pictures or scores. The product uses Bluetooth LE to interface with your iOS or Android smartphone so that you can customize what people around you see, and lasts about five hours on a pair of AA batteries. It looks a bit clunky, but that never stopped crazier products from seeing the day of light. One pair of Chemion glasses goes for $100 with an estimated ship date of February 2015. The campaign is looking for $10,000 to become the next big annoying thing you see everywhere.

The company behind the CHEMION, KSEED, swear they have a game changer on their hands. The more you look, though, the less of that you see. It could be due to the fact that you only have tiny slits with which to see the world, or it could be due to the grand claims of aiming to help people with speech problems with a product that amounts to a novelty handed out at a club. The company claims to be selling a quasi-medical solution, but their advertising is pretty much devoid of that noble notion. There are much better ways to address problems like this (MotionSavvy comes to mind) but this just isn’t one of them.

Categories
Watches and Jewelry Wearables

Ear-O-Smart measures activity levels in an earring

Most wearables devices come as wristbands that can be pretty bulky. Companies are just now getting around to the fact that most people don’t want to wear these ungainly devices despite whatever benefits they may offer, and designs are starting to reflect that. In all of this, though, the market for women-worn wearables is practically non-existent.

BioSensive Technologies Inc. has noticed, and has designed the Ear-O-Smart, a connected earring aimed specifically at women. The earring is Bluetooth LE enabled and syncs with any iOS/Android phone to provide an activity tracker, heart rate monitor, and a calorie monitor to better inform users of their body states. The campaign is looking for $30,000 CAD (~$26,300 USD) to get the $149 CAD (~$130 USD) earrings out by June 2015.

This company has truly taken a chance in designing an accessory for women as the challenge, first and foremost, is a design one and not a technological one. In addition, that market is extremely saturated and most women enjoy a large selection of accessories at any one time, so asking for the repeated use of just one will be a long shot. The Ear-O-Smart attempts to address these points by being customizable, but even a few different looks may not be enough.

Categories
Input

Flow wireless controller streamlines your workflow with gesture, touch

In the physical world, our hands are the tools with which we feel and manipulate the world around us, having evolved over time to be regions of intense sensitivity and masterful precision. Our leap into the digital realm hasn’t been as smooth, though. While the keyboard and mouse combo has admirably pulled its weight over the years, the increasing complexity and changing functionality of the programs we use daily have plainly shown that another way of controlling is possible. With the Flow wireless controller, Senic shows that it’s thinking of a future where the digital can be as easily controlled as anything physical.

Flow is a stylish, aluminum puck-shaped device that offers gesture, touch, scroll, and haptic control all in a tiny package. With it, users will be able to access a larger ranger of precision not offered by traditional mouse inputs and the shortcuts that make work much easier. Programs like Spotify and Photoshop let users change what each input does, so what a pass of the hand will do in one will do something entirely different in the other, eliminating hunting after specific options in menus. It’s also freely programmable, so any program not currently supported can be addressed by the Flow community. Puzzlingly, Flow is Mac only for now, but the rest of the major platforms are in the works. The $99 Flow is expected to ship in July 2015. Flow is looking for $50,000 in funding.

New input technologies are always risky business as the companies pushing them are essentially asking people to incorporate foreign actions into their very established processes. Most of the time, though, these inputs are laughably difficult and don’t do much to make things easier. Flow seems to be very straightforward and easy to use. It works as a complement rather than a proposition to replace everything, and that’s a far lower bar to present to those who may be interested.

Categories
Connected Objects

Programmable laziness is just a tap away with Flic wireless smart button

Ownership of a smartphone gives users control over their environment that at one time in the past seemed unimaginable. That awesome level of control is unfortunately tempered by the need to have to fish it out of a purse or pocket for every little action. Voice control was touted as the answer, but has only proven to be mostly ineffective.

Programmable one-touch button solutions have offered users a tactile alternative, and Flic is another entry into the space for iOS and Android. It uses Bluetooth LE to do whatever a user would like, from placing a usual phone call, ordering a pizza, sharing a GPS location, taking pictures, or skipping a track. A full list of the possibilities would be impossible, but suffice it to say the Flic is incredibly versatile. Hold options along with single and double clicks increase each button’s functionality.

The product featurs a reusable sticky base and a 150-foot range from the smartphone, so buttons can be placed pretty much anywhere inside or outside the home to streamline normally cumbersome actions. Contrarily, most wireless buttons like the Gyzmo or Qblinks aren’t made to be placed in the home but rather be taken with you. A single Flic is $27, while six can be had for $99, and is expected to ship in March 2015. The campaign is looking for $80,000.

Categories
Connected Objects Sleep

Hush smart earplugs offer tranquil sounds, noise masking

After a long day’s work, most people want to just lay in bed while the silence and calm of the room around them take them off to slumberland. However, for many people around the world, this scene itself is a dream and almost impossible to experience. College students in hectic environments long for the same type of restorative sleep business travelers do, but unfortunately none of them get what they want. People in these situations usually opt for earplugs or noise canceling headphones, but most don’t work after a while or are just plain uncomfortable.

Hush manages to combine sound eliminating foam with noise masking sounds like white noise or a soothing waterfall, avoiding the use of noise canceling technology that can eventually become a problem itself. The earplugs have gone through much tweaking to ensure they are ergonomical, and side sleepers will especially enjoy the padded insides that make the product easy on the ear canals. One of its most important features is that it still keeps users informed as Hush connects to your iOS or Android smartphone and therefore to their most important contacts. With that, users can always have the option of catching some shuteye no matter where they are without sacrificing alertness. Unfortunately, it’ll be another rechargeable device that needs added to the roster.

From what it seems, the team behind Hush has a winner on their hands. Their attractive design and future potential as a study or therapeutic aide points to a bright future. Backers who plunk down $115 for it, though, need to be weary of potential shipping issues they bring up in their $100,000 campaign. If all goes well, they can expect it on their doorsteps by June 2015.

Categories
Smart Home

Tiny NUZii smart device micro-manages so you don’t have to

By no fault of their own, most of our homes are dumb. As a result, hoards of companies offer all-in-one solutions to take advantage of the opportunities that technology has to offer. Over the years, these smart home hubs have evolved from merely being control points for other connected objects to adding utility themselves. With all those additional features, though, their cost has gone up as well. The NUZii flips this idea on its head by offering a tiny smart device that not only helps automate the home, but also helps make the rest of a user’s life easier.

NUZii is small, really small. At four inches tall, the product is impressively packed with all sorts of functionality that will make most wonder how it’s all possible. The 2MP camera, air and humidity sensors, and Bluetooth connectivity all complement the device’s home automation functions, syncing up to other connected objects, learning the user’s habits, and setting custom profiles depending on the time of day. Apple TVs, Roku streaming boxes, VUE light bulbs, Jawbone activity trackers, and many other popular connected devices are all fair game.

NUZii can also connect to external storage with its two USB ports and, with the help of a Wi-Fi network, users will always have the ability to use that storage however they want from wherever they are with the help of an integrated download manager. NUZii is a triple threat in that it can also connect to your modem and offer VPN and Tor support to provide users with complete anonymity on the Internet, something that is becoming increasingly valuable as time goes on. The device clocks in at just $99, and provided the campaign reaches its $65,000 goal, backers will receive NUZii in June 2015.

NUZii isn’t the first of its kind nor is it the last, but it certainly makes a good impression. Similar products like the pēq, SherloQ, and the Neoji may execute some aspects of the NUZii much more successfully, but none offer its level of versatility, especially for its price or even size. The product’s app store stokes excitement as well, serving up the potential for vastly different uses than what the inventors have intended. Look for the NUZii to make a dent if properly funded.

Categories
Lighting Smart Home

BeON deterrent lighting system allows you to be on alert 24/7

Home security has seen a resurgence in the past few years thanks to how easy it has become to install and use smartphone and tablet-based systems. As such, the ubiquity of low-cost hardware and Bluetooth connectivity along with smart devices have made home monitoring a largely automated experience that relies on video and motion sensing to set off alarms. As effective as these approaches are, most companies have forgotten that deterrence is the first line of defense in protecting the home, an idea the BeON burglary deterrent system is based on.

The one thing common to every household is the humble lightbulb, maybe a little bit too humble. The BeON system takes lightbulbs to task injecting them with smarts that allow a combination of Bluetooth LE, microphone, sound processor, and rechargeable battery to protect your home. The BeON bulbs installs like standard bulbs and simulate a full home when users are gone by learning lighting habits over time. Constantly shifting lights give off the impression of an occupied, so burglars will think twice before trying to break in. Doorbells also activate the lights when users aren’t in, making it seem like someone is stirring within.

Its four-hour backup battery inside allow its lighting and security features to work through a power outage and that, along with its 20 year battery life, ensures a user’s peace of mind. The companion iOS and Android app will also let users enable Away mode, set lighting patterns, or teach BeON to hear their doorbell, all while still softly lighting a home with 60W of power. A three pack of BeON lightbulbs goes for $229 and is expected to ship in April 2015. The campaign is looking for $100,000 to make it happen.

A connected lightbulb isn’t anything new, but the BeON does far more than others like the AirBulb or even Philips Hue. Its modular nature will eventually allow users to add on functionality, which extends its utility. That said, it is pretty wasteful to randomly turn on lights but that won’t be a convincing point for those who treasure their security.