Hasta La Gadget!

For most of us, entering the house and turning on the lights involves a flick of a switch. Turning on another light is another switch, the fan, the air-con and so on. However with home automation starting to catch on, we wouldn’t be surprised if one day the majority of us lived in homes where our gestures could control more than one gadget from a single switch, and that’s what the Ube WiFi Smart Dimmer is hoping to accomplish. Making an appearance at SXSW, its creators have announced an upgraded version of its Smart Dimmer that will be able to control other smart devices at home.

As it stands, the Smart Dimmer does exactly as its name implies, which is adjust the lighting in your home by swiping on the touchpad. A single swipe turns your lights on/off, while using two fingers will adjust multiple lights. Now no longer content with merely adjusting the lighting in homes, the updated version of the Smart Dimmer will be able to control other smart devices, such as a smart water sprinkler simply by swiping the letter “W”, or enabling/disabling your home alarm by tracing the letter “A” on its surface. No word on when this updated version will be released, but for those interested in its current iteration can head on over to its Kickstarter page for the details.

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Everyone is talking about going green these days, from the small household all the way to mega large corporations. After all, being green is in, and our planet cannot really take on too much more pollution before it starts to collapse on itself, and we all know just how mother earth is capable of striking back with more than just a vengeance. Well, Demo 2012 People’s Choice winner Ube (pronounced as “yoo-bee”) has just launched something that will bring a smile to the face of environmentalists, being an Indiegogo campaign that hopes to raise support for its Wi-Fi connected Smart Dimmer.

The Smart Dimmer itself was specially designed to control household light circuits as it will function to replace a homeowner’s current light switch or dumb dimmer, hence paving the way or one to experience full control of the lights from the switch or directly from a smartphone app. The dimmer will hook up to the homeowner’s home Wi-Fi router, where it will then be controllable from a smartphone as it remains connected to the local home network or from any internet connection around the world. This means you can still freak your neighbors out when you are halfway around the globe, no?

Ube intends to introduce technology that was specially designed to control a new genre of electronic appcessories, all directly from a free smartphone app. The technology will obviate the need for expensive custom control systems, where it relies on IP communication protocols instead to control of a range of connected home electronics. Depending on your level of comfort, the Smart Dimmers will be priced anywhere from $49 to $69 on Indiegogo, and will feature a host of features that are lacking on other dimmers targeted for home use, such as the ability to communicate with each other so that lights can be controlled across a room or an entire house. You can even set lighting “scenes” such as “party”, “dinner”, “all-on” or “all-off”, and individual dimmers come with sub-metering to report energy usage for each light switch, letting you have greater control when monitoring your lighting bills.

Delivery is tipped for a June 2013 release, so it is time to prepare the missus that you want one of these bad boys!

Press Release
[ Wi-Fi connected Smart Dimmer copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]