Jan 05
Liquid Image is showing a wearable camera here at CES, the Liquid Image Ego LS, which has been unveiled as the first “wearable and mountable 4G LTE enabled camera.” The … Continue reading
Jan 05
Slow cookers are great because you can throw in your ingredients in the morning and by the time you get home from work dinner is done. But stuff happens, and sometimes you forget about that pot roast simmering away, and next thing you know you burn your meal and your house down. Enter the WeMo Smart Crock Pot to solve all your woes.
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Jan 05
Belkin’s connected home efforts are moving forward at a rapid clip, and its WeMo line has a number of new products on display at CES 2014 this year. There’s a connected lightbulb set similar to Philips Hue, a connected slow cooker for lazy cuisine, and the WeMo Maker, which allows enterprising users to make any existing DC appliance into a smart device.
The LED-based WeMo connected bulbs come in either a starter set with three for $129, or individually in single bulb packs for $39.99. They have 800 lumens, and are 60 watt equivalent with a warm white tone. They can be controlled each on their own, or in pre-assigned groups, and they are connected to a WeMo link, which is included in the starter pack and can manage up to 50 bulbs. You can turn them on and off over the web, run vacation programs, dim them and control from both iOS and Android via the WeMo app.
Unlike the Philips Hue, they don’t offer changeable colors, but they are cheaper per unit once you get set up with a starter kit, and they work with Belkin’s existing WeMo setup, which is a big seller for those already invested in the ecosystem.
The new WeMo crock-pot lets you turn the slow cooker on or off from anywhere, get reminders about the state of your meal, change the temperature remotely and either control things manually or use built-in calculators for time and temp. It retails for $99.99, which actually isn’t that far off from some nicer slow cookers on the market, and can be controlled from the WeMo app for iOS or Android too.
Finally, and most interesting of all, Belkin is making it possible to take legacy hardware and then turn that into a WeMo-enabled accessory. You can add Internet control to anything with a DC switch, the company says, and allows you to schedule those device or turn them on or off manually from anywhere you have a connection. It’s like a more sophisticated and integrated version of their smart outlet WeMo products, with additional features that let you watch and control a huge range of 5V DC-powered sensors. So if a moisture sensor connected to the maker notices that it’s rained, it’ll prevent your connected sprinkler system from going on as previously scheduled. The Maker can also be combined with IFTTT recipes for advanced intelligent programming.
All these new WeMo gadgets are expected to ship this upcoming spring, and new features will be added to the WeMo control app on iOS and Android starting in February via software updates.
Belkin clearly wants to own the fast-growing connected home space, and this new range of gadgets indicates it’s tackling the problem from a number of different angles at once.
Jan 05
Valve announced 12 partners to build third-party Steam Machines today, including Alienware and Origi
Posted in: Today's ChiliValve announced 12 partners to build third-party Steam Machines
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Jan 05
Looking for an Android desktop? Look no further than the Lenovo ThinkVision. Lenovo has built a gorgeous Android desktop, and it’s touch capable to boot. With a display the size … Continue reading
Jan 05
The WeMo system is usually hooked up to the lights in your house. Belkin is cutting out the middle man with its own LED light bulbs and starter kit for the home-automation system.
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Jan 05
For many networking nerds, the Linksys WRT router is one of the most recognizable pieces of technology. Now it’s getting a reboot.
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Jan 05
Belkin continues its pursuit of making home automation
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Jan 05
Linksys’ WRT54G is considered to be the best selling wireless router of all time. And its iconic black and blue design has become synonymous with such hardware—just look at the image used on this generic wireless router Wikipedia page. So it makes sense that for its next generation router, the new Linksys WRT1900AC, the company would revive that iconic design—albeit with a few aesthetic and technical upgrades.
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Jan 05
French Bluetooth company turned drone-maker Parrot has some new hardware for CES 2014, including two brand new smartphone-controlled bots. One is the rolling, jumping Sumo and the other is the MiniDrone, a super small version of its popular AR Drone that flies, rolls and hugs the ceiling and the walls.
The MiniDrone is remarkably small, coming in at about a tenth of the size of the full version, which makes it incredibly portable. You could actually slip one in your pocket without much issue if you really wanted to. To get that size advantage, it ditches the camera, but it adds to removable, large wheels that allow it to roll around the ground – or go acrobatic and run along the wall or the ceiling, too.
The Sumo is a two-wheeled ground-only unit that does have a camera, just like the big AR Drone, and has a foot built in that allows it to stop pretty much instantly, and to leap up in the air up to 80cm. It’s a bit more rugged in keeping with its rough-and-tumble lifestyle, too, and reminds me a bit of the Sphero 2B that company just unveiled.
There’s no firm ship date for either the MiniDrone or the Sumo, but they’re coming “soon” according to CEO Henri Seydoux, for a price that’s yet to be finalized. I asked Seydoux how these two designs came to be, and whether they were the result of user requests and feedback, and he said that in fact Parrot dreamt them up because “we like to have fun.”
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