Categories
Sleep Travel

JetComfy props up your head through the long flight

Airplanes may be the places people spend the most time trying to sleep in a seated position. To make matters worse, passengers are usually jostled due to turbulence. This poses the double challenge of trying to achieve comfort while keeping the head steady when it tends to droop.

The JetComfy is the latest in a line of flight sleep aids — many of them fairly awkwardlooking — that seek to provide head comfort to the weary traveler. While many of these pillows steady the head by surrounding the neck, the JetComfy takes a unique approach by including a telescoping arm that attaches to the airline seat. This props up the memory foam pillow part of the device up to head level.

Categories
Input

Sensel Morph force-sensitive input pad pushes past keyboards and trackpads

The keyboard and trackpad are cornerstones of mobile productivity, but they take up a lot of room. We’ve already seen one crowdfunding approach to combining them but the combination isn’t necessarily greater than the sum of their parts.

The Sensel Morph is a Bluetooth touch input device that’s sensitive to pressure — so sensitive, in fact, that it can pick up the bristles of a paintbrush with its 20,000 embedded sensors. The company is taking advantage of its versatile surface by making available a series of magnetic overlays that have raised surfaces. Some of the first are a DJ control pad, a typing keyboard, a music keyboard, a drum pad and game controller.

Categories
Cell Phone Accessories

DreamMe has your smartphone display dancing on the ceiling

For many smartphone owners, the alarm clock has become yet another device that the versatile device has replaced alongside the camera, camcorder, music player, navigation device and even flashlight. After all, one generally has to charge it at night. Why not keep it at bedside? But there’s at least one alarm clock feature used by some that smartphones couldn’t answer — the ability to project the time on the ceiling.

DreamMe is a lens that’s designed to sit atop your smartphone’s screen at bedtime. When used with its companion app, it can outdo projection alarm clocks by projecting a range of things on the ceiling, including the time in different cities, weather, social media or other messages. DreamMe requires no batteries or other power to do its thing. The device can be manually focused by twisting its halves. DreamMe’s creator seeks $10, 872 by September 23rd. DreamMe can be topping your smartphone for €18 (about $20) with the devices slated to be shipped in December.

The DreamMe is a clever little accessory that will fill a gap for what has proven to be a resilient alarm clock feature Its versatility could be a bit of a drawback as a social media stream, for instance, might do more to keep one awake than keep one asleep. But of course that’s up to the owner.

 

Categories
Connected Objects Cycling

SmartHalo keeps your bike on track and your eyes on the road

There’s no shortage of bike computers and mounts to have your smartphone take on a wide range of tasks while affixed to a bike’s handlebars. But both can be a bit overwhelming, or at least distracting, when trying to glean information at a glance.

Consisting of a ring of LEDs surrounding a central light, SmartHalo takes on a more symbol-driven approach to a range of bike-related tasks. By lighting up the different parts of its circular display’s edge, it can cue the rider to turn left, right or make a u-turn while a center dot turns on for a call notification. As soon as one starts pedaling, its companion app starts tracking a range of metrics, including time, distance, average speed and calories burned.

Categories
Uncategorized

Bikiros bike safety device watches over kids in three ways

Learning to ride a bike is often a childhood rite of passage. And once kids get it, they’re usually good to go. But sometimes little ones lack the best judgement — or the tallest height — to avoid accidents.

Inspired by an accident that left the inventor temporarily paralyzed, Bikiros (“bye-KEY-ros) is a two-part bicycle add-on that can help young cyclists in a number of ways similar to how various smart car products can report on driver safety.

Categories
News

Hasbro, Indiegogo team for game design contest

Companies such as Quirky and Edison Nation have shown that big-name brands are happy to tap into great ideas that come from the crowd. Now Indiegogo, which has run a number of partnership programs, has teamed up with toy giant Hasbro for a game design contest.

Participants fill out a form on the Hasbro site that provides information about the team and the game. Ideas will be judged on several criteria, including gameplay, story/theme, viability and “potential for fun-ness.” The winning individual or team will get $10,000 and a trip out to Hasbro HQ to meet with game designers. Once five finalists are selected, they’ll have the option to crowdfund their products on Indiegogo with Hasbro providing publicity support. However, the game designers are responsible for fulfilling their own rewards.

Game designers who think they’ve got a Clue in putting in the hard-Scrabble effort of creating the next game Monopoly will have to enter their submissions by September 30th with the winner announced on December 3rd, two days after the Indiegogo campaigns close.

Categories
Personal Transportation

URBY Board motion board takes on irregular terrain, uphill battles

The Segway got a lot of things wrong, but it also got a few things right. These included the development of more rugged models for navigating more challenging grounds. In the past few years, we’ve seen a whole host of two-wheeled gliding platform scooters or balance boards that cost a tenth of what Segways do but many of them can’t veer far from paved level surfaces.

The URBY Board seeks to up the ante on the kind of environments for these two-wheeled self-balancing wonders with a balance board that has a bit more horsepower and bigger wheels (10″ vs. the standard 6.5″) as well as LED-based turn signals. The campaign video shows it taking on grass, ramps, the rain, pushing shopping cards and pulling luggage.

Categories
Smart Home

Nucli smart lock has two screens, covers all the bases

Since the debut of the Ring, nee Doorbot, on Kickstarter, crowdfunding platforms have hosted many smart locks for the home and other property.

Nucli comes to the table, or at least the door, with the Westinghouse brand and an endless array of options. It can work with iOS, Android and Windows. It can be activated by fingerprint, PIN pad (via its external touch screen), smartphone or laptop (but there’s no proximity-based unlocking yet). It supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Z-Wave protocols. And you can even use any MP3 file as a doorbell. Like other smart lock/doorbell combinations, owners can use its camera to see who is at the door and open it.

Categories
Aquatics Sensors/IoT

OnCourse Goggles set swimmers straight on the open seas

It’s one thing to swim laps upon laps in a pool nicely appointed with lane ropes that provide visual cues to keep swimmers on the straight and relatively narrow, but those swimming in the open seas face a bigger challenge in not going off in one direction or another.

patent-claimedBy mixing together an electronic compass, accelerometer, processor, battery and the company’s software, OnCourse Goggles help keep swimmers moving in a straight line even in open waters by detecting water or wind forces. It uses this information to trigger LEDs inside the goggles to prompt simmers to veer left or right. The goggles are activated with the press of a button on their left side and charge via USB in about 45 minutes. And traithletes will be pleased to know that they have been approved for triathlete competitions. The company seeks $50,000 by September 18th. The goggles cost $200 and are expected to be delivered in February 2016.

The OnCourse Goggles look like they could be a helpful tool for moving forward — and even away from danger — for open water swimmers. Alas, without GPS, there’s no tracking of swim routes that the goggles can provide after the fact. Still, while they’re likely tough to justify for casual beach goers, they could make for a competitive advantage for serious aquatics competitors.

Categories
Personal Transportation

Ginzvelo pedal/electric hybrid vehicle gets you around town

Crowdfunding sites have seen plenty of bikes and bike accessories, e-bikes and even folding bikes. But while two-wheelers are often great for navigating the urban jungle, their open air nature can make using them in poor weather impractical, dangerous or — at the very least — messy.

Ginzvelo (rhymes with “Pins fellow”) is an enclosed recumbent three-wheeler that can be powered via pedals or electric motor under which it can achieve speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. The vehicle provides a transparent bubble-like roof/windshield and the whole exterior lifts up on a rear hinge to allow entry and exit.  Peter Ginzburg, for whom the vehicle is presumably named, seeks $50,000 by September 24th. Still in the early stages, Ginzvelo is offering a few early birds the chance to pick up early units for $3,000 without the motor or $6,000 with it. The vehicles should arrive by November.

Ginzvelo is certainly a bit chunkier than a regular bike, but the one-person vehicle, which has a little bit of storage space, is much smaller than a car and can be parked in a wide array of settings. Its enclosure, which adds to its bulk, makes it a far more versatile vehicle than most e-bikes — faster and better-protected. Still, until mass production ramps up, it’s tough to say whether it will be more successful than the Segway or other electric bike alternatives.