Hasta La Gadget!

After a turn as a provider of software for the Philips Hue ecosystem, startup Goldee is getting into the messy hardware game. The company’s first product is a smart light switch designed to be used with Hue, as well as with other connected bulb systems including LIFX and iLumi. It also works with regular bulbs, but in tandem with smart bulbs, it adds a number of smart features and so-called light scenes, which cherry pick colors from photographs to compose different lighting effects.

The Goldee Light Controller is up for pre-order via an independent crowdfunding campaign starting today, and it starts at $249 for the controller alone, with general retail price expected to be $349. Goldee is also offering up kits that include LIFX smart LEDs so you can have a complete set for a smartly lit home right out of the box.

Features that Goldee’s Light Controller offer include turning on lights automatically when outside light gets low, turning off lights when you leave and turning them back on again, and turning your light off when you get into bed, and turning it back on should you need to get up in the night again. It also follows in the footsteps of things like Nest in terms of delivering an extremely attractive piece of industrial design to grace your walls.

The Goldee device works using various sensors in tandem, and then sending that data to the startup for processing. All that info is used to predict when and how you need lighting.

“Goldee contains various sensors (proximity, ambient, sound volume, motion) that continuously gather information about the environment in your room,” says Goldee CEO Tomas Baran. “All of the information is processed in Goldee’s processor and in our cloud server, where the heavy computing power is used. Using special algorithms, Goldee then converts all that information into smart functions that respond to your lighting needs.”

You can also control Goldee via gestures thanks to the inclusion of gesture recognition tech from Microchip Technology, Inc. This solves one of the biggest problems of Hue and other connected systems: the fact that you have to use your smartphone, computer or tablet to turn lights on or off if you want the system to work correctly.

Each Goldee system serves an entire room, regardless of how many wall switches there are in that room. For maximum fun, you can get a Home Pack which contains four controllers (covering four rooms), as well as 12 LIFX bulbs for $2,099. That’s pretty pricy, but it’s remarkable compared to what it would’ve cost to install a whole home remote-controlled lighting system a few years ago. Baran says the one controller per room policy is in part to enhance the usefulness of the system.

“Having one Light Controller for several rooms would, to some extent, beat our purpose of creating a lighting system that brings more comfort to people’s lives,” he said. “Since it would not be very convenient having to run to the hallway when you want to set a light scene in your living room, for example.”

As for the partnership with LIFX, which is itself a crowdfunded hardware startup that has just begun shipping its product, Baran says that their interests simply aligned, as Goldee admired the device they’d built. “LIFX also liked what we have created, so there was a mutual interest for a collaboration,” he says.

Goldee hopes to ship its Smart Light Controller by summer 2014, and is seeking $100,000 over the next 25 days to make it happen. They’re also open to more traditional investment, though they’re looking more for strategic partners on that front than just financial support, Baran says. If the Goldee works and looks as good as it seems to, then this small startup could stake out an impressive early claim in the connected home space. Still, there’s a lot that needs to happen between now and next summer, so we’ll be watching to see how they rise to the challenge.

Toronto-based startup Bionym has launched an SDK for its forthcoming identity-authenticating wristband, Nymi. It said today that more than 6,000 developers have registered their interest in building software that hooks into the heartwave-sensing bangle. Thus far, it’s managed to pre-sell more than 7,000 of the $79 wristbands, which are due to ship in Spring 2014.

The Nymi wristband authenticates the wearer’s identity by matching the overall shape of their heartwave (captured via an electrocardiogram sensor). It sustains authentication, so long as the wristband remains in position, reducing the need for repeated authentications during the day.

When Bionym launched pre-orders for Nymi back in September, it was just days before Apple confirmed its new flagship iPhone, the 5s, would have a fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button. Apple adopting biometrics suggests the tech is finally set to heat up in the consumer electronics space, offering a more convenient alternative to passcodes/passwords – even if neither can promise bulletproof security.

Apple’s entry may seem like bad timing for Nymi but the startup is hoping to convince people to wear its wristband to authenticate their identity across a range of devices and environments, and change how they experience them. So being shut-out of Apple’s walled garden is no great loss, it says.

“Apple has shown in the past they will open up an API if there’s a compelling case because they’re just going too much against the tide but we’re not depending on them to go that route,” says Bionym CEO and co-founder Karl Martin.

“Device unlocking is really the very simple demonstration of the capability we provide and certainly we can do that on pretty much any platform but iOS. Our thinking is much, much broader than that… Our interest is much more about how can we change your interaction either with your personal technology, in the home environment, or at events, or in recreation environments, things like that.”

What kind of apps are its developers working on building for Nymi? “The obvious ones that people are working on is simply unlocking various things, from doors to their personal devices. But the ones that are most interesting to us are the people that are thinking outside the box in terms of different environments and different appliances – that, how could they behave differently if they knew who you are?” says Martin.

“So there are the kind of silly ones that your coffee machine knows your settings vs your partner’s and is going to produce your coffee the way you want it.”

“It’s not just software,” he adds. “There’s a lot of people interested in making Arduino or other kinds of hardware modules that can talk to the Nymi. So imagine an Arduino module that wants to be one of those people that overshares and tweets whenever you’re in the room saying you came home and you’re here… It’s those kind of things that interest us, because we don’t just view ourselves as just about security.”

Bionym is also working on partnerships to expand the applications for the wristband – describing example scenarios such as visiting a themepark and getting “integrated benefits that will alter your experience”, because you’re wearing Nymi. Or using it for personalised retail experiences (which sounds like it’s competing with iBeacon).

Another example could be going into a restaurant or a bar and the Nymi passing info on your dietary restrictions or favourite drink. Other potential use-cases could be for premium hotels or airlines for frequent flyers. “Your identity matters and the world should confirm or your experience should improve because of who you are and your preferences,” adds president Andrew D’Souza.

“Those are the types of the experiences that we’re hoping to go and create. It’s not going to be on a mass scale but we hope over the course of the next year we’re going to see some really interesting use-cases in specific places that will start to get people’s imagination’s going over what the future of the world can look like.”

Martin said the startup is hopeful Nymi will launch with “about 10 killer apps”.

Here’s another twist on messaging aiming to make digital comms more fun. Toymail is a Wi-Fi connected toy that lets parents talk remotely to their kids via a smartphone app – with their message spoken in the toy’s tone of voice. Why can’t they just give their kids a cheap phone and call them up? Of course they can, but a phone probably isn’t going to be as cute looking or fun sounding as Toymail’s ‘Mailmen’ toys.

The idea is to inject a little cartoon fun into parent/child digital interactions, and give kids a chance to play with physical toys rather than being sucked into screens and phones so early. (While letting parents carry on their love affair with their smartphones.) There’s a choice of five different Mailmen characters, which have been designed to look like a cross between a mailbox and an animal.

Toymail is not the first cutesy connected object that can remotely convey messages. The now defunct Nabaztag rabbit springs to mind. Toymail’s Mailmen also have some spiritual overlap with The Little Printer – although where that gizmo churns out tiny little rolls of paper inked with messages, the Mailmen’s missives are pure audio.

Toymail does allow for conversations not just one-way broadcasts, though, since kids can hit a button on the back of their Mailman to reply to the last message received – with the kids’ reply delivered for playback in the app. Only people who have been approved via the app are able to connect to the Mailman, so random strangers aren’t going to be able to send messages.

And if you’ve run out of things to say yourself, there’s a Daily Toymailer service you can sign up for that will send a daily message to the toy, greeting your child by name and singing a song or sharing a factoid or quote.

One half of the Toymail’s creator team, entrepreneur and MIT alumna Gauri Nanda, came up with the cute yet fiendish Clocky: an alarm clock with wheels so it could scoot out of your reach and force you to crawl out of bed to shut it off.

Toymail has taken to Kickstarter to try to raise $60,000 to get Toymail to market. At the time of writing, it’s approaching $10k raised, with 17 days left on the campaign.

And while each Mailman costs $50 to Kickstarter backers, and the iOS app is free (an Android app is planned), there is an ongoing cost associated with use of Toymail. Parents will need to buy virtual books of stamps to send messages to the toys. Each stamp is good for one message, and a book of 50 stamps costs $0.99 – or unlimited stamps are $2.99 per month.

Prefundia wants to help crowdfunding projects get backers before they launch their campaigns. The startup, for startup it is – launching out of U.S. accelerator Boomstartup this summer – has been operating in beta for the past three months, and has just released some early performance data as it opens its doors to the public.

Prefundia said 195 projects have used its platform since June to publicise their crowdfunding campaigns before launch, and it’s claiming that projects using this auxiliary on-ramp to generate pre-launch momentum have been successful 71 percent of the time.

Its site showcases forthcoming crowdfunding projects – offering hosting space for photos, videos and text info on a project in the works. There’s then an option for Prefundia users to sign up to be alerted when the project launches its funding campaign.

It’s a pretty simple idea. But if Prefundia can get decent traction, it could because a useful platform for makers to test their ideas – to see whether a minimalist wallet made of papier-mâché or a plug-in disco-ball for your iPhone is actually worth the time and effort required to try and siphon off some crowdfunds.

“People certainly do use the platform to test viability of projects,” says Prefundia co-founder Daniel Falabella. “Here‘s one we know is using it for that purpose. In fact, we’re developing a component for the creator dashboard which will compare a project’s stats to all others on Prefundia in order to benchmark and give a clearer indication of demand.”

A successful crowdfunding campaign takes a lot more than luck. A great idea, a well-presented project with the right level of detail, and judicious use of social media to promote your campaign are all key ingredients. Timing is also important. And lady luck inevitably plays a part, too. Getting this recipe right is never going to be an exact science.

According to recent data covered by my TC colleague Darrell Etherington, Kickstarter’s average success rate for crowdfunding projects is less than half (44 percent) of listed projects. Indiegogo doesn’t report an official success rate, so estimates vary – from around a third (34 percent), to a mere 9.3 percent if you factor in the projects delisted by the site for failing to raise $500 (albeit Indiegogo disputes both estimates).

Whatever the official success rates for the biggest crowdfunding platforms, there’s still clearly a large proportion of projects that flounder and sink without a trace. And a sizeable chunk of those are probably dead in the water because they deserve to be. For every good idea hitting the crowdfunding trail, there are many more mad-cap crazies running around cap in hand.

Prefundia’s 71 percent success rate may sound impressive, but its data sample is very small. Also, it’s not clear how much money the campaigns were seeking – obviously, as a rule of thumb, the smaller the funding target, the easier it is to achieve.

Prefundia does say that its users have raised $2.5 million since the launch of its platform. Doing a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation to generate a per-project average (assuming that all the projects using its platform went on to attempt a crowdfunding launch) that comes out at just over $18,000 raised per successful project (138 of the 195 total being successful) on average.  And while $18,000 may be all you need to get the ‘revolutionary’ ZipTie to market, tech projects typically need a lot more funds to fly. But of course that’s just a flat average.

Prefundia does single out one example, the gStick Mouse project, which used its platform to help relaunch its project after initially failing on Kickstarter. Second time around the gStick was able to raise $23,901 on the first day, and hit its $40,000 goal on day two. It ultimately garnered close to 4,000 backers and took in almost $130,500 in 16 days.

Early crowdfunding momentum tends to beget more success as projects that raise money quickly tend to attract more attention – both from the media and also from users, being as media attention can help a project bag a slot in the “most popular” categories of crowdfunding sites – which in turn gets it in front of more potential backers, owing to greater visibility on the homepage.

It’s that virtuous circle of kicking a funding campaign off with a big bang which ripples out and generates even more bucks that Prefundia is aiming to engineer. ”Kickstarter’s ‘popular’ algorithm heavily favors projects that gain traction very quickly (see Kickstarter’s ‘popular’ algorithm hacked here), so projects that build a lot of momentum before they launch and then drop it all into their crowdfunding campaign on the first day do much better than those who don’t,” adds Falabella.

Prefundia is free for forthcoming crowdfunding projects to list on, and isn’t currently taking any cut of successful projects, so there’s no reason not to give it a go – apart from the time required to upload a few media assets, etc.

“Monetization plans are on hold until the first quarter of 2014 but will include partnerships with manufacturing brokers, marketing firms, crowdfunding sites, etc – relationships and deals are already tested and inked,” says Falabella.

He names LaunchRock, which offers services for startups such as landing pages where beta users can sign up, as Prefundia’s main competitor but argues Prefundia stands out on merit of its focus being exclusively on pre-launch for crowdfunding projects.

He also argues it has a lower barrier to entry, because there’s no need to buy a new domain to add a project to Prefundia, and claims the platform can drive more traffic to a crowdfunding page “by consolidating all pre-launch pages into a single platform and encouraging cross-pollination”. 

Time will tell on the latter point, since it’s not clear how much traffic Prefundia is pulling in to its own platform as yet. It’s also going to need to keep ramping its traffic up to be able to keep generating the big bangs it promises as more projects land on its own pages. At which point, it may be time for a pre-pre-funding startup to step in.

Or for all the crazy crowdfunding projects to realise they are drunk and go home.

Boombotix, a startup based out of SF building rugged speakers for active lifestyle use, today launched a new Kickstarter campaign, this time for a new technology it’s building to complement it hardware products. The Boombotix Sync tech manages to synchronize audio from multiple mobile devices over 4G and Wi-Fi, allowing those to output to Bluetooth speakers and have the playback match for surround sound results.

The tech was developed in response to user input – many asked the Mission-bases startup for a way to sync up a number of units for output to multiple endpoints at once. That’s not something that’s possible over Bluetooth, and I’ve seen other Kickstarter projects attempt and fail to make it happen with a custom-coded solution. But Boombotix saw another possible way: Building a protocol that allows multiple apps on multiple devices to playback audio simultaneously, so that more than one speaker can join in on the action. It works a bit like FM radio, Boombotix VP of Product Management Chris McKelroy says, so that more than one user can tune in at once and here the same feed played back at the same time.

It’s not a perfect solution (they’re building in TrueWireless for two speaker, single device connections), but it’s one that will help users reach “critical mass” according to McKleroy, which means a whole team going out for a mountain bike race, or a group of kayakers, for instance, can all bring their speakers and listen along to the same stuff at the same time, as you can see briefly in the video. McKelroy says it’s amazing witnessing huge groups of people riding by, with “Boombots in perfect sync pumping 90+ db.” Also, you can flashmob with this pretty perfectly, if that’s what you’re into.

McKelroy says that this tech is going to be kept proprietary to Boombotix products in the short term, rather than being made an open protocol, for instance.

“we’re planning on keeping this proprietary, focused on creating the best experience for our users as we continue to improve the speed and scale of our syncing technology,” he said. “The next hurdle we face is aligning with key content providers in the music space, to increase the availability of content and enhance the user experience further.”

And this is just the first step in terms of networking hardware. Boombotix is keenly aware that users want to use one device to broadcast to many speakers at once. “A fully networked device ecosystem is paramount to our goals,” he says, and suggests watching for more hardware developments from the startup to help make this a reality in the coming months. For now, the Kickstarter project for the music sync app is seeking $15,000 to help finish development, with Boombot speakers available to backers starting at the $55 pledge level.