Tag: connected

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Connected Objects Smart Home

Dorr drives into the crowded connected garage door space

The Premise. Automated garage doors sure are useful, but not when you spend the beginning of every drive wondering whether or not it was left open. This usually happens when you’re already pretty far from your home, forcing most to waste time returning just to make sure. 

The Product. Dorr is an extremely straightforward product from Buelgo that comes in the form of a sensor that attaches to your garage door. In exchange for its new permanent home, it determines whether or not said door is open using its built-in accelerometer. Most importantly, Dorr uses your own wi-fi network to communicate with your smartphone to let you know if you need to open or close your garage door from wherever you are. Password protect Dorr with 128-AES level encryption to prevent unauthorized access, or just the chubby fingers of a little one. 

The Pitch. The campaign is as straightworward as the product itself, with the featured 43 second video introducing the inventor and showing off Dorr in all its authoritarian garage door glory. As with the doors it opens, backers won’t have to have to wait too long if they spring for one: Dorr has a February 2015 delivery date. 

The Perks. Buelgo is offering single worthwhile perk in the form of a Dorr unit for $75 — unless you really, really want a T-shirt that tells the world about your backer status for $25. 

The Potential. Smartphone-enabled garage door openers have been a thing for quite some time. Many companies currently offer their very own take on the product that frankly have far more functionality than Dorr. Products from companies like Open-Me, Craftsman, Garageio, BTmate, and Liftmaster offer features like shared access between more than one user and responsive design that detects when you’re near. Dorr is extremely basic compared to some of these more sophisticated solutions and really offers nothing new to the space. Its price isn’t even all that attractive considering that BTmate in particular can be had for as little as $30. Smartphone-enabled garage doors may not be a huge industry right now, and products like Dorr certainly aren’t going to make it much bigger.

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Connected Objects Maker/Development Video

Slice looks to stay a cut above other living room media players

The Premise. Internet streaming devices such as Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV offer convenient streaming of movies and music on demand to your living room. Some streaming devices can play back media on a hard drive, but they’re not optimized for large personal libraries of video files and other media.

The Product. Slice is a hard drive-based media player designed to be snappy and easy to use. It’s a minimally designed black box outfitted with an array of usual ports along with a customizable LED ring that changes color depending on its current action. This adds a unique aesthetic twist to an otherwise unassuming design. It also ships with a custom-made RF remote, giving you the flexibility to be anywhere in your home and still command Slice.

The Pitch. The team behind Slice, Five Ninjas, does a great job concisely explaining such a versatile product. The campaign features a general overview video and a video walkthrough of Slice’s interface. Easy-to-digest lists and diagrams explain the nuances of the product, and there’s a pretty robust FAQ section that actually answers many common questions. Stretch goals have included Wi-Fi, an app to control the LEDs, a bigger hard drive, a thinner design with an extra USB port, and color options.

The Perks. Slice comes in two flavors. A diskless version is expected to ship in November 2014 with a contribution of £129 . A fully loaded version requires a contribution of £169 and should ship in December.

The Potential. The market has voted in favor of less expensive media streamers that deliver movies from services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Indeed Five Ninjas’ Web site laments the loss of the original Apple TV, which stored movies on a hard drive. Western Digital has probably had the most success with its hard drive-focused living room media player since then — including one that had a built-in hard drive —  but that hasn’t seen an update for a while. One of the the product’s biggest draws besides its simplicity is its openness. Since it’s built atop a Raspberry Pi and uses the XMBC software, Slice is open and hackable, allowing more creative technical individuals to do pretty much whatever they’d like that’s within the device’s capabilities. Slice will have the most appeal to those who have large collections of movies that lack copy protection or who like a bit of a light show with their home video entertainment.

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Connected Objects Maker/Development Toys

Droidles join with each other to attack your robot soft spot

The Premise. Kids get tired of even the most engrossing toys, forcing parents to spend money on video games, smartphone applications, or even more toys to keep them entertained. Most of these options become expensive quickly and lack the tactile benefits attached to interacting with real-world objects.

The Product. Droidles are small, spry little robot toys with tons of personality and charm for both kids and adults. Each Droidle has its own social media page detailing the evolving exploits of its everyday life. Each robot learns on its own through interaction with the environment around it, whatever behaviors you choose to program it with using the free companion iOS/Android app, or even other Droidles. Absolutely no programming language is needed to make a Droidle sing, dance around, follow other Droidles, or simply wander around.

For those among us who are more technologically inclined, the 100% open platform allows for much creative freedom in creating behaviors for these playthings that will ultimately be shareable on the the company’s Web site. The fun doesn’t stop there, though:

The Pitch. Hurley Research is eager to push Droidles to the masses to take advantage of the rich amount of information each will be able to sponge up from the world around them. To convince would-be backers, its pitch video talks up Droidles’ openness as a platform, versatility as a robot, and sheer uniqueness as one of the first internet connected toys along with a detailed list of all the Droidles’ components so you know exactly what you’re getting. $50,000 is the magic number for Droidles to go into production and continuing growing as a platform.

The Perks. Owing to their penchant for swarm intelligence, Droidles are meant to be used in crowds and the campaign’s perks reflect that. You can grab one Droidle for $89

The Potential. Most other robotic toys are either solely focused on entertainment or education. Droidles, on the other hand, manages to bridge that gap by encouraging active participation, a novel form of engagement, and plenty of imagination from all age ranges. Its open platform is compelling for all kinds of tinkerers as well, opening up many doors to experiment with computer intelligence on a much larger scale. Provided Droidles can charm its way into the many homes it will need to be in, we may very well have one of the first Internet of Things phenomenon on our hands.

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Connected Objects Health and Wellness

Impress dentists with the Kolibree smart toothbrush

The Premise. As the Internet of Things continues to grow and expand, it seems like no object or appliance is safe from connectivity. Now this trend is spreading into the bathroom with personal care products designed to give users helpful feedback and data.

The Product. The Kolibree is an electric toothbrush equipped with an accelerometer, gyrometer, and magnetometer in order to tell its users how well they are brushing their teeth. This data can be sent to any iOS or Android device for tracking, brushing history, and advice on how to brush better. From there, the Kolibree is being designed to enhance the brushing experience with social sharing, dentist interaction, and games designed to keep brushing effective while also making it fun.

The Pitch. The Kolibree team show off their latest prototypes of the app and the device itself, complete with dentist approval. While a smart toothbrush may sound excessive to some, the campaign materials do a good job of explaining how a connected brush can be the next big advancement in oral hygiene. Kolibree needs $70,000 to get certified and begin mass production of the brushes, as well as get the developer kits in the hands of those that can push the most out of this tiny device.

The Perks. A Kolibree with a replacement brush head will be available in October to backers who pledge at least $99. Those who want more brush heads and a choice in color will opt for the $149 tier, and developers can get early SDK access before the device launches for $199. The startup is reaching out to the professional crowd, too. Dentists can get some extra software with their Kolibree for $299, and patients who want to interact with the Kolibree and their dentist can beta test the interactive features for $399. Finally, creative brushers can design their own Kolibree for $1,200.

The Potential. In contrast to the Grush designed for children, the Kolibree is a more sophisticated device, made for users of all ages while still gamifying dental hygiene to keep children interested. The social aspects might be too much information for some, but being able to directly upload brushing statistics to dentists will finally give patients something to point to when grilled about their habits. In any case, Kolibree should prepare to brush up on competing with the big boys of brushing.

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Connected Objects

MEG lets your iPad monitor a miniature greenhouse

The Premise. For all that humanity has learned about growing and harvesting plants, botany still tends to be something of an inexact science for the average person. Instead of attributing a plant’s success to whether or not one has a green thumb, one company wants to offer a more precise method of understanding plants.

The Product. The Micro Experimental Growing system, or MEG for short, is an indoor greenhouse that looks like a tricked-out gaming PC, but is really a connected, totally customizable platform for growing almost any plants. Connecting to tablets and mobile devices, this Arduino-based device can control temperature, humidity, ventilation, light intensity and cycles, and even soil pH levels. The device will be completely open-source and only requires about as much power as a modern television. Additionally, it includes a social platform allowing users to share their data when they understand the right settings to make a plant flourish.

The Pitch. Italian developer Yradia is excited to geek out about MEG in its video and it’s easy to see why. In addition to looking sleek and very modern, MEG looks simple to use once it’s running. The campaign photos explain the different components of MEG, how the social aspect will work, and covers the daunting, customizable reward tiers. Yradia wants to raise £98,000 to develop the online aspects and get started with manufacturing. It has also set up a stretch goal at £350,000 to begin a beta testing program, having users grow three plants under a variety of conditions to compare results.

The Perks. Though the individual pieces and peripherals are available at lower tiers for those who already have a botanical setup, a complete MEG kit isn’t available until the £2,800 tier, at which point the device arrives disassembled. For those who are better working with plants than they are technology, a fully assembled unit is available for £3500. The components will ship in September, the pre-assembled units follow in October, and the DIY kit after that in November.

The Potential. There is a ton of potential here for home growers, botany enthusiasts, and especially for scientists. By being able to perfectly control and replicate the variables involved in growing a plant, laboratories on different continents can contribute to the same experiment. It is likely more involved than the average hobbyist will want to take part in, but anybody who wants to grow the best plants will need a MEG, or something like it, before long.

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Lighting Smart Home

Brightup smart lighting adds context to lighting control

The Premise. The electric light revolutionized everything. Since then there have been several upgrades from a hardware perspective in terms of bulbs or light output, but not much in the way of operation. While several companies are allowing people to control their lights with their mobile devices, one company wants to put the mobile device in charge and make the whole process automatic.

The Product. The brightup smart lighting system avoids the smart home lighting automation equipment that has been promised for decades but has rarely seen adoption. Instead of installing a complicated network for the home’s outlets, brightup has a set of outlet caps that can be plugged in the home. Then, lamps or other lighting systems can be plugged in, and interface with the home’s central unit. The central unit detects the smartphone on which the brightup app is installed, and turns on the lights to greet users. Settings for dimmer switches that detect TVs or travel mode which gives off the illusion of someone in an empty home are also available.

The Pitch. The designers of brightup use their video to make a lot of vague statements about technology, but once the concept of brightup’s functions start, it’s easy to see the appeal. The campaign’s pictures show off the technology and the internal components, as well as feature several seemingly unrelated blocks of computer programming. To meet its goals of keeping prices low and complete the plastic tooling, brightup needs 130,000, or just over $175,000.

The Perks. The brightup starter kit costs €159 (under $220) with approximately an additional $20 shipping cost outside of the European Union. The starter kit comes with 1 central unit and 1 device (a plug or in-wall dimmer). 2 additional units come in the featured bundle for an additional €40, or the entire house can be connected at the €449 (~$615) level with 1 central unit and 10 devices. Higher tiers are meant to be shared among multiple people and come with up to five central units.

The Potential.  Having a home’s light completely set up on the brightup system seems like a great idea, but the price point is a little steep to start with. The system does little to conserve power like competitors unless residents forget to turn lights off when they leave, and the security mode would only work in rooms where brightup plugs were installed. It’s a neat idea, and certainly an innovation where one is sorely needed, but it’s questionable whether or not brightup’s unique features are worth the additional cost. Currently, the technology is not compatible with U.S. electrical systems.