Categories
Automotive Connected Objects

Caruma captures your drive, watches your car when parked

The rise of dash cams to record potential incidents drives home how important ti is to protect cars and the people who drive them. Most of the connected car products today do a good job of capturing statistics about mileage and short stops, but there’s a lot behind the numbers.

Caruma is a connected car add-on that uses cellular, GPS and camera technologies to capture a car’s status whether it’s being driven or parked.  It mounts to either the windshield or dashboard. Like dash cams, it can record the road ahead, but also what’s going on inside the car. More significantly for anyone who has ever returned to find their car scraped, dented or towed, it can alert the owner via smartphone any time the cameras or its sensors detect any funny business such as another car backing into it or a tow truck approaching. An Indiegogo special price of $299 (a $100 discount off the expected retail price) will net backers a Caruma in April 2016. Caruma hopes to raise $100,000 in its flexible funding Indiegogo campaign by July 15th.

Caruma is very similar to LyfeLens, which is still accepting preorders. It has the same disc-based shape, two HD cameras, 4G hotspot feature, and remote alerts that allow the owner to peek into the car or its surroundings while away. It also shares the problem of staying charged and monitoring while the vehicle’s ignition for an extended time when the vehicle is turned off. One of Caruma’s nice additions is a panic button for emergencies. LyfeLens, however, is offering preorders at $199.

Categories
Podcasts

The Backerjack Podcast, Episode 11: Neptune’s suite, a dash cam’s beat, and stress retreat

In Episode 11 of The Backerjack Podcast, Steve and Ross check out three of the latest products seeking funds and preorders.

  • Neptune Suite, a family of computing products that rely on having all the computing intelligence in the smartwatch. It’s the most audacious mobile tech product mashup since the Dragonfly Futurefon.
  • LyfeLens, a connected dash cam that monitor your car even when it’s parked and serve as a mobile hotspot
  • Emvio, a stress-manaagement watch that relies on measuring heart rate variability.

Download  the episode or listen below, subscribe via iTunes or RSS, and follow Backerjack on Twitter and Facebook.

Categories
Automotive Connected Objects Imaging Sensors/IoT

LyfeLens dash cam keeps watch over your car, steers incident video to phones

Dash cams are slowly becoming more popular in the U.S. as a way to record evidence of what may have happened should there be a collision involving the front of the car while driving. But automobiles are vulnerable from all their sides even when they’re parked.

LyfeLens strives to create greater accountability to those who would harm your vehicle. The aerodynamic car sentinel can record  video using its windshield-facing or interior-facing camera, track the car’s location via GPS, and alert a smartphone when it detects a break-in. It can record video on a microSD card or send it up to the cloud and on to a smartphone. During less urgent times, it can take advantage of its 4G cellular connection to create a mobile hotspot in the car. LyfeLens costs $199 and is expected to ship in fall 2015.

Anyone who has ever experienced a hit-and-run would appreciate the value of having LylfeLens on the job. Clearly, though, the biggest technical challenge is keeping it powered while it passively monitors its surroundings, records video and  serves up Internet access. The company claims the product has a high-capacity internal battery that can power a few days of active and standby use, but is looking into methods such as wired installation and solar.