Hasta La Gadget!

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.

Light-up clothing is all the rage, and a company called Erogear is upping the ante with Fos, a Bluetooth-enabled solution for style-conscious athletes. The brainchild of engineer Anders Nelson, Fos is a lightweight, Velcro-lined fabric strip of lights with a nifty customizable display. What sets it apart from Erogear’s other wearable options is the fact that it’s controlled by your mobile phone. The LED grid can be programmed to double as your very own turn signal (useful for nocturnal bike-riding), advertise sponsors or even brag about how many calories you’ve burned while running. Coming it at around 32 grams (roughly the weight of a golf ball), this illuminated patch packs an LED matrix driver, 32-bit microprocessor, flash memory and a power supply in its 2mm profile. The Kickstarter campaign is offering a choice of three designs to backers: an 11 x 3 inch strip, an 11 x 5 inch version and a black leather belt for those times you feel like literally shining at the club. Though the demo package is currently Android-only, iOS and desktop versions are potentially on the horizon. A pledge of $125 will net you your very own Fos kit, and units are scheduled to start shipping in February of 2014, provided the campaign hits its $200,000 goal. To learn more, check out the video after the break or follow the source link to Kickstarter.

Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables

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Source: Erogear, Kickstarter

I’m a mediocre runner at best, and I’ve taken to blaming that on the dearth of idyllic running spots in my particular corner of New Jersey. For schlubs like me, the key to true fitness may lay in something like FitTrip, a Kickstarter project that vows to liven up the experience of working out indoors.

The concept is a simple one: FitTrip is an app for your iPad that attempts to simulate the experience of running down a trail in Utah or zipping along on a bike in the Rocky Mountains from the safety of a treadmill or stationary bike. Once you lash your tablet to the workout contraption of your choice and fire up the app, you’re given the option to choose from a slew of locales to immerse yourself in. From there, you’re treated to a video of your chosen course to take your mind off the intense physical discomfort you’re feeling — throw in a few electric fans to simulate the wind whipping your hair around and it’s almost like you’re enjoying the great outdoors indoors.

Sadly, FitTrip can’t actually control your workout equipment, so there’s no way to automatically ramp up the resistance to match the intensity of the setting you’ve chosen. The team has cooked up a pretty savvy solution though — the app is capable of connecting with a handful of popular heart rate monitors, so the harder you work out, the faster your heart beats, and the quicker the video plays. The end result (they hope) is an experience that manages to approximate the sensation of exercising in a gorgeous foreign locale, or at least distracts you from the drudgery of your surroundings.

The FitTrip app is still in beta so it’s hard to get a feel for just how immersive these videos can actually be, but at the very least they’ll be better than watching Judge Judy reruns on a 6-inch television screen mounted on an elliptical at your local gym. Access to all these trips comes at a price, though: after the Kickstarter campaign wraps up, curious consumers will have to pay $5.99/month to access FitTrip’s library of scenic videos. Naturally, early backers can lock up longer-term subscriptions at lower rates — $25 will nab you a six-month package, with deals getting sweeter the higher you climb up the backer spectrum. Fortunately, the FitTrip campaign has already blown past its $7,500 funding goal in under a week, which means backers should receive their doses of digital escapism in a few short months.

To the untrained eye the evolution of technology can appear to be a rather futile oscillation. We had laptops. Then we threw away their keyboards and worked only on a screen. Then we decided touchscreen typing on tablets was annoying, so brought back a physical keyboard and added supports to hold the screen at that trusty old laptop screen angle that made so much sense… All of which probably says a lot more about human nature than technology evolution but no matter. Meet Modus III: it’s a home for your iPad that promises to iron out tablet productivity niggles by giving your slate a laptop/desktop-esque workstation to live in.

Modus III is currently only a prototype. Its creators are looking to raise $95,000 on Kickstarter to make this laptop-recreating portable workstation a reality — a distant goal at this early stage in their campaign which runs for another 31 days. Aren’t there already plenty of keyboard cases for iPads? Yes, there are. But Modus III does include some additional features that make it stand out. Or rather stand up. Using Modus III, it is apparently possible to position the iPad screen in the following, possibly more ergonomically friendly configuration (if you’re concerned about your typing posture inducing neck-ache. You may, however, get arm-ache reaching up to tap the screen):

(Looking at that get-up it’s hard not to wonder what Steve Jobs might have said if he was still around to cast his eye over the Modus III.  Probably something like this.)

The Modus III workstation supports a 180 degree range screen viewing angle. Your iPad is housed in a custom, clip-in module that then clicks into place in the workstation, which includes a built in Bluetooth keyboard, iPhone/smartphone dock (so your phone can double as a miniature second screen), a space for your charger cables and presumably a few other bits and pieces like the rear stand bracket required to hoist the workstation into the above position.

Isn’t Modus III rather large? The case dimensions are: 1.2″ x 11.5″ x 15.75″. So yes, if you want a portable keyboard case to carry around with you, Modus III does look like a fair bit more luggage than if you just took your iPad and threw a Bluetooth keyboard into your bag. Or used one of the smaller, dedicated keyboard cases on the market. (Or — what the heck — just used a MacBook Air.) So really this looks like something that’s better suited to staying at home on the desk. But maybe that’s exactly the kind of workstation you’ve been looking for? The basic configuration is at least relatively little additional weight (2.4 lbs) to carry around if you do want to move it, being made of an aluminium frame and plastic casing.

The tablet clip-in system is modular, which means it can accommodate different slates. Modus III’s creators say they plan to add support for Android and Windows tablets in future. The launch workstation will be compatible with the iPad 2, 3 and 4. Backers can also choose an iPad 5 module at no extra cost. It will also accommodate all iPhones and micro USB Android phones.

The Modus III’s price-tag is currently $169 for early Kickstarter backers. If you want more fancy case materials to clad your slate, options include carbon fiber, wood burl and MSRP but fancier finishes push the price up — in some cases considerably.  You can even choose a custom pattern if you’re willing to stump up an eye-watering $999. But there is, as they say, no accounting for taste.

Let’s not kid ourselves: We don’t control the Internet, the Internet controls us. Any notions to the contrary are foolish at best, but a new Kickstarter project called Circle wants to help families fight back against the Internet’s omnipresence with hardware and software that allows individual control of devices connected to a local network.

Circle isn’t a router, like the Skydog, which was created by the Xerox PARC company PowerCloud Systems and is based on a similar concept. Instead, it’s a network device that can communicate with your router, and with all of your connected devices, offering up a filter between your existing gear and the unfiltered Internet, allowing you to set limitations for kids’ devices based on age, time, ad content and more. You can receive notifications about different types of Internet activity to your own device, too, and get reports about both “negative” and “positive” browsing, Circle claims.

In other words, Circle makes you the NSA PRISM program for your own household, but with a little bit of China’s Great Firewall thrown in the mix. You can schedule timed access to different categories of site, so that Facebook or YouTube time doesn’t get crazy, cut off access temporarily via Pause mode, turn off access once it’s time for bed, and even block ads entirely on devices that your kids use. All of this is managed via an app for iPhone.

Circle says their solution is better because it doesn’t require setting up user profiles or installing nanny software on every individual device, and because it works with your existing router, you don’t need to get an expensive replacement or change any network settings.

The team behind Circle includes Tiebing Zhang, a former network security engineer for the Department of Defense, and Honeywell Wi-Fi control systems engineer, as well as Jelani Memory, an entrepreneur with experience in design, sports, business development and much more besides. Circle definitely manages to look the part, thanks possibly to founder and Product Designer Sean Kelly, but whether it can back up those good looks with performance remains to be seen.

Circle is $150 to pre-order via Kickstarter pledge, with an anticipated delivery date of August, 2014. Nice to see a hardware startup give itself a reasonable amount of time to deliver. The startup is also looking for roughly $250,000 in total funds to make the project work, which will take the working prototype that currently exists and make it production-ready.

Post-Pebble‘s $10.2 million Kickstarter record, the smartwatch launches keep on coming. And coming. And coming. And coming. And probably coming next month, in Samsung’s ‘Galaxy Gear’ case.  The latest wrist-affixed contender to step up for a slice of smartwatch pie is called Omate TrueSmart, and is the creation of a New York based startup.

Omate Kickstarter campaigned launched yesterday — and has already blasted past the initial $100,000 funding target, with $144,000+ and counting. Not bad going for such a nascent yet crowded space.

So what’s the big deal about Omate? Notably it’s not just a smartphone accessory but includes a 3G radio so if you add a micro-SIM it can be a standalone mobile phone in its own right. Assuming you want to talk into your wrist. And even if you don’t it can function as a phone companion, using the on board Bluetooth 4.0 or Wi-Fi.

Omate also runs a relatively up-to-date version of Android, v4.2.2, skinned with a wrist-friendly UI of course, so that means four icons on the screen at once — although the platform is also open and hackable, according to its creators.

Running Android potentially means access to lots of apps — albeit, most are clearly going to need to be customised to fit its 1.54 inch screen (it’s up in the air whether Omate will have access to Google Play, at this point). The device will apparently come with a “full set of pre-qualified Android applications”, according to the listing, with no specific list as yet. Although “social media messaging” is mentioned in the listing and there’s a Facebook screenshot so that’s one heavy hint.

The Kickstarter campaign also mentions generic “sports apps”, and activity tracking is clearly a focus for Omate’s creators — likely so they can tap into the quantified health trend. The watch includes GPS — so would presumably be able to crunch basic activity data such as distance, pace etc. Add to that, it’s water-resistant (IP67) and dust-resistant so should take some rugged, outdoor use. 

Also on board: a 5MP camera so you can snap up-nostril shots of yourself running to share to your social networks, presumably (Skype videocalling apparently won’t be supported).

The watch is powered by a dual-core 1.3GHz chip. Memory is 512MB with 4GB of storage, expandable by microSD up to 32GB.  There’s no word on battery life if you’re actually using the watch but its 600 mAh cell is apparently good for up to 100 hours on standby. Eking decent battery life out of a wrist-mounted device remains a core challenge for smartwatches. The smartest smartwatch in the world is only going to be as useful as its useful battery life is long.

The Omate’s price tag is around the $199 mark, with all $179 early bird pledges gone and only a few remaining at the $189 level. Its makers rather ambitiously reckon they will be ready to ship the first batch to backers come October.