One interesting element of Google I/O this year were the sensors laid out everywhere around Moscone tracking environmental data throughout the event. Those types of sensors are now all around us, including in our phones and in various smart home devices, and now a new Kickstarter project from ManyLabs wants to help kids get familiar with them very early on.

The project is called Sensors for Students, and it wants to build a sensor collection kit that includes a plate for an open-source Arduino board and Grove shield combo, along with one of a variety of parts for a number of different types of sensors, including accelerometers, electromagnetic field detectors, a color sensor, a plant watering kit (similar to one component of the Bitponics automated hydroponic garden), and many more.

The team behind ManyLabs consists of Peter Sand and Elliot Dicus, who formed the nonprofit with the ultimate intent of spreading low-cost hands-on tools for teaching science and math to the classroom. Sand has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT, and has focused his work and research on computer vision, robotics and education.

Sand and Dicus wanted to make it possible to get kids learning data literacy and experimenting with open source hardware early on in life. Their goals sound similar to those of Adafruit, the NY-based hardware company that’s also trying to make people more comfortable with concepts around electrical engineering and DIY maker culture, beginning early on in life.

ManyLabs isn’t just supplying hardware, though, it’s also very clearly marketing a curriculum, with lessons and content being offered alongside each type of kit available to backers, along with online resources that will be made available on a yearly subscription basis. There’s no soldering required in the kits that are on offer, so these are suitable for a range of ages and skill levels, and ManyLabs hopes to put them in the hands of backers as soon as August this year, with kits beginning at $40. The most expensive individual kit is $75, and while ManyLabs requires you to supply your own Arduino, it’s still very affordable, a key value add for educational markets.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

There’s plenty of buzz about the concept of making our cities “smarter” — that is, loading them up with sensors and data-driven services to improve efficiency and quality of life. Hell, even Google has taken to loading up its event venues with scores of sensors.

Most of the discussion out there deals with how local governments are working toward this lofty, nebulous goal, but a team called Acrobotics Industries is trying to put the onus on the citizens. To that end the team has kicked off a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign for a small sensor array called the Smart Citizen kit in hopes that people will start collecting and sharing their environmental data with the world.

“There’s a problem with the way current cities were built,” Acrobotic’s COO Francisco Zabala told me. “Beijing’s air quality is insanely bad — we think we have it bad in L.A. — and it’s not getting any better.

The heart (or brain, I guess) of the Smart Citizen project is an Arduino-powered kit that gets tucked away inside (or outside, if you’ve got the right kind of enclosure) of a user’s home to track local environmental variables — think temperature, humidity, air composition, ambient brightness, and sound levels. It’s arguably neat enough to keep tabs on the environmental conditions at your home while you’re not there, but the real value here is when a host of users set up their Smart Citizen sensors and fire up them up en masse.

It’s the team’s hope that Smart Citizen kits will sell widely enough that regular people will be able to get an accurate glance at environmental conditions with a finer sort of granularity than you’d get by firing up, say, the Weather Channel app. For what it’s worth, Zabala concedes that the Smart Citizen project is largely geared toward making people aware of climate change and global warming without getting too political or divisive about it.

“I believe that climate is changing for the worse, but our approach is more personal,” Zabala said. “By raising awareness we’re working toward a solution without banging on people’s heads.”

As it happens, a few of those Smart Citizen kits have already been fired up. A quick look at a demo version of the sensor-tracking website reveals that a handful of the little things are live in Zabala’s native Barcelona — the Smart Citizen team ran an earlier, more local crowdfunding campaign (Zabala called it a “proof of concept run”) that saw a number of users in Spain install and fire up their sensor arrays all around the city. Hovering over a bright blue spot displays the latest environmental data (users can define how often they want those updates to occur), while greyed out units haven’t been fired up lately.

Thanks to how the Smart Citizen kit is constructed, users will eventually be able to monitor more than just the environmental criteria this early kit supports. Zabala said that the Acrobotics team is currently working on swappable daughterboards that will allow the Smart Citizen kit to be used for soil and water testing, too — perfect for you city-dwelling gardeners. If you’re suddenly itching to monitor your surroundings more acutely, you’ll be able to lay claim to a fully constructed Smart Citizen for $155 — the more handy among you can save a little money by springing for the $105 unassembled kit instead.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Tracking oneself is all the rage, with quantified self devices like the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone Up, and Fitbit Flex enabling users to monitor and keep track of their physical activity over time. But what about tracking your mental concentration? A new device from a startup called Melon aims to help users monitor and improve their focus over time.

Using electroencephalography (EEG), the Melon headband monitors brain activity and can detect how well users are concentrating, and giving them feedback on how to improve. It does this by monitoring tiny electrical charges let off by neurons firing in the brain.

With three electrodes placed against the forehead, it can track this brainwave activity, and it has filtering technologies to eliminate noise frequencies that come in. Thanks to the NeuroSky chip embedded in the device, the Melon headband boasts that it can measure neural activity with 96 percent accuracy.

The headband is launching on Kickstarter, with a fairly modest goal of reaching $100,000 in pledges before going forward with a full production run of the product. For $79, the first 100 backers to the project will get a discount on the device, which is expected to cost $99. For a little more ($129), backers will be able to pick a customized color of the “badge” on the headband, or get one in annodized aluminum with a custom engraving ($159).

Kickstarter backers will also get access to the Melon mobile app, which will be available on iOS and Android devices, as a way to track their concentration. The headband has Bluetooth built-in so that users can connect their phones to the device and keep track of their activity.

The app is designed to enable users to monitor their concentration through a variety of activities, whether that means tracking them at work or during yoga or whatever. There are also a game through which they can work on achieving longer periods of focus.

Users can take note of the type of activity that they’re taking part in, as a way to track their focus levels over time. It also provides a way to track environment, feelings, and other details which might effect your concentration. During the activity, the app will store trends about how different behaviors affect your focus, and can provide tips and tricks to improve. It also has push notifications to let you know if your focus is slipping.

While the team has built its own app, it’s also hoping to court developers to build software and mobile applications that hook into its hardware. It’ll have an SDK available and will allow developers to have access to the focus and raw EEG data, as well as algorithms for different mental states.

Melon was created by Arye Barnehama and Laura Michelle Berman, as well as their lead electrical engineer Janus Ternullo. The team has raised a small round of funding to get it through the prototype stage, but is now turning to Kickstarter to help fund production and get units shipped.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The boy geniuses of Formlabs, David Cranor, Maxim Lobovsky, and Natan Linder have posted a video detailing their Form One 3D printer, one of the most well-put-together 3D printing devices we’ve seen in a while. The Form One uses a form of stereolithography that prints the objects “upside down” by activating polymers with laser light. The resulting objects come out of a bath of plastic looking like Neo tumbling out of his oozing cocoon in The Matrix.

The team at Formlabs is testing the first 15 units and will begin shipping their devices to Kickstarter supporters over the next few weeks. They’ve also launched a support forum for beginning users, a must-have for such a nascent technology.

Beta users are testing the Form One as we speak and the team is gathering test data.

The company launched a successful Kickstarter campaign last August and they’ve been showing prototypes of the high-tech Form One for a few months now. It looks like the system is finally coming to fruition.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

To paraphrase Cracker, I would wager what the world needs now is another content management system like I need a hole in the head. However, I’m pleased to note that I will allow Ghost a pass.

Ghost is an open source publishing platform with Markdown compatibility and a real-time preview features as well as a very robust statistics-gathering system. It is on Kickstarter now and is fully funded. Funders will get early access to the platform which will be free. $16 gets you access to the service.

“I came up with Ghost due to the frustrations of trying to manage both small and large blogs with other platforms. They generally fall into two categories. Either complicated content management systems which can “do everything” – or overly simple social networks which are pretty much just for sharing photos of cats. Ghost is about bloggers, it’s about publishing, it’s about journalism, and it’s about promoting and enabling real writing for the web,” said the founder, John O’Nolan. O’Nolan worked as Deputy Head of the WordPress UI Group until he decided to strike off on his own.

“Ghost is different from competitors in that it’s open source, completely focused on publishing (not content management like Squarespace/WordPress), and non-profit. And it’s lead by a designer (me) as opposed to most open source projects, headed up by devs,” he said. O’Nolan has built websites for Microsoft, Nokia, and Virgin Atlantic. He is working with Hannah Wolfe, senior developer at Moo.com, and Rob Hawkes of Mozilla.

The product allows WordPress programmers to convert their code quickly and easily into Ghost’s native framework. The open source version of the software will launch in September 2013, a month after the launch of the Kickstarter version.

The real value of the platform isn’t quite ready to demo but thus far it looks quite promising. The Markdown compatibility is obviously important as is the multi-user features that O’Nolan is building in. Furthermore, any new publishing platform is worth a second look – or a $16 investment – especially when it looks so darn beautiful.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.

One of the hottest areas of tech right now is the Internet of Things, wherein everyday objects communicate with each other. As doorknobs and clothing learn to communicate, we can only hope that they will protect their language better than the humans who have seen English reduced to abbreviated gibberish in the face of texting and Twitter. If Kickstarter campaigns are any indication, though, objects have a lot to say without speaking at all.

Whacked: Lively. As kids age into teenagers, parents often face the dilemma of balancing supervision and independence, a fine line that their children may increasingly find themselves karmically walking as those parents age. Placing security cameras around the home of an independent elderly parent seems too intrusive while relying on an emergency alert may provide critical indications too little too late. Lively strikes a great middle ground. In the tradition of Kickstarter-funded connected sensors such as Twine and Ninja Blocks, Lively makes use of vaguely cat ear-shaped sensors that serve as proxies for the fulfillment of routines when creatively deployed. These can indicate activities, such as eating meals, taking of medications and going outside. It’s sensors for seniors.

Lively isn’t just a one-way communique either. The offbeat part of the offering is a weekly printed LivelyGram that includes photos and updates from preselected loved ones. It’s somewhat like what was tried by the Presto printer, but without the local hardware (well, at least bulky, ink-consuming local hardware). Like the seniors it seeks to support, Lively is independent, relying on an integrated cellular signal like the original Kindle instead of a home network connection.

Lively raised less than $14,000 of its $100,000 goal, but little was ever at stake as the company had secured millions of dollars in funding prior to the Kickstarter campaign, which includes the confident phrase, “When we launch Lively…” And when they do, the basic set will go to $149 with a $20 per month fee, which includes a twice-monthly delivery of LivelyGrams.

Whacked: Good Night Lamp The backers of Good Night Lamp would likely argue that a house is not a home without a house that is an Internet-enabled light source. Consisting of a basic set level of a bigger and smaller lamp, the lamp lets distant friends and relatives send subtle signals to each other; up to four little lamps can be connected to a master big lamp. Turning on the big house light turns on the smaller ones. It’s a bit like having your own personal blinking red phone like the kind that connects Commissioner Gordon to Batman or Presidents Obama and Putin without the threat of the Joker or nuclear apocalypse.

The Good Night Lamp had a large funding target of £360,000, of which only about £40,000 was collected, but the team refused to go gently into that good night. Publicity from the campaign led to much exposure for the team, which found an alternate route to production. Preorders at eponymous Good Night Lamp Shop began in February for £99 and are expected to start shipping in September.

Whacked: TeleSound Not the most directly connected of Internet objects, TeleSound sought to be a small speaker closely resembling the speaker end of a classic desk phone handset connected via Bluetooth to an iPhone. Those with the appropriate companion app would be able to send sonic emoji to remote TeleSound devices via the recipient’s smartphone, promulgating the renaissance in flatulence simulations that we all miss from the golden age of fart apps.

Unlike Lively or the Good Night Lamp, the TeleSound team packed it in after reaching less than $15,000 of its $100,000 goal. Rewards for non-backers apparently included a free guilt trip as TeleSound’s website sounds off, “[I]f you wanted TeleSound to happen, you should have backed the project. If enough of you and your friends did, we would have been able to make it.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Innovation FTW! The Stinky Gaming Footboard reached its Kickstarter goal. The novel gaming controller is headed to production.

I have a Stinky under my desk right now. Much to my surprise, the controller earned a place in my life. I reviewed the unit several weeks ago and doubted it was more than a novelty. But it’s still there and I’m starting to really enjoy using it.

The controller gets your foot into the gaming action. It’s a large, four-way controller. It’s not complicated. I have mine set to throw a grenade when I press forward and to crouch when pressing down. There are left and right commands as well if you’re more coordinated than me.

The Montreal, Canada-based company was looking for $75,000 on Kickstarter. They just hit that goal with $79,562 pledged. Over 440 units were pre-ordered.

Kickstarter is the perfect venue for an item like the Stinky. Before online crowdfunding went mainstream in 2012, a startup would have to raise crazy cash to fill a warehouse with their items with the hope they will sell. At best the startup would ink a deal with Best Buy or RadioShack. At worst the founders would drain the life savings of their friends and families.

But no more! Now, thanks to Kickstarter, Indiegogo and the rest of the Internet, startups can hedge their future on a successful video and viral marketing. The future!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Look over to one of the upper corners of the room you’re in. What’s there? If you’re like me, probably nothing.

Three Stanford product design majors are building a speaker to take advantage of the wasted space and natural acoustics of the corners of your room.

The Tiptop speaker is a small pyramid that can stand alone or fits into a mold made for the upper corners of a room; like a Jambox, it’s wireless and Bluetooth-enabled. When mounted in a corner, the speaker takes advantage of “room gain,” using the natural acoustics of a room to make the sound richer and more appealing.

“[The shape] changes how you use the product, but it also changes how the product uses the space” co-creator Jack Brody tells me, arguing that too many speakers are “repackaged goods” rather than actually fresh ideas.

Brody, Madeleine Thompson, and Alex Walker launched the project on Kickstarter yesterday and so far have 154 backers and have raised almost $30,000 towards their goal, at the time of publication.

They are aiming to raise $215,000 by June 1, just two weeks before the three seniors will graduate, to start producing the speakers. On Kickstarter, they’re selling Tiptops for early bird specials of $175 (first 200) and $199 (next 300), as well as the standard price of $249.

They also have philanthropic goals, pledging to give a portion of their proceeds to a Bay Area non-profit music foundation if they surpass $400,000 on Kickstarter, and lower, lighthearted goals, offering do a pushup for every $1 donation “so we can get ourselves in Tiptop shape.”

The three product design majors worked on a social media aggregation site last spring, which they quickly abandoned.

“We knew we could never actually bring that to market,” Brody says. “This time around was totally different.”

They were in a capstone class for the product design major, where their classmates were working on a wide range of projects—from another successfully funded project Grip Clip to recyclable backpacks to run of the mill iOS apps.

Walker says they thought about the problems they and their friends had, particularly as college students and young adults living in small spaces.

One night this past fall, the three were in Walker’s room discussing ideas and music. Thompson was surfing Kickstarter for inspiration, while Walker sat at his desk; Brody lay on the floor looking up at the ceiling, when using the corners of the room struck him. They held the speaker up to the corner to test the sound and loved it.

“Things have kept happening like that,” Walker says. “It feels like the right use of our time because it’s almost developing itself. The idea came up very organically.”

They began making prototypes in Stanford’s Product Realization Lab, changing small details like smoothing the corners of the wall mount to make up for rooms’ imperfect corners.

They had friends come into a room with their eyes closed and would play songs for them with a speaker in the middle of the room and then with the speaker up in the corner. Walker says their friends thought they were playing two different speakers, and thought the “corner speaker” was much better.

They ran a similar test on me and it was my “aha” moment of reporting when I knew they were on to something. The same song sounded a lot richer and fuller when it was up in the corner. Plus, with a desk and room as messy as mine, I can use all the help I can get in de-cluttering.

Thompson, who is currently in New Jersey playing professional soccer for Sky Blue FC, balances training, schoolwork—she’s still an enrolled student and travels back to Palm Drive for the occasional test or meeting—and developing the product. As a result, Brody and Walker handle more of the physical iterations, while Thompson does more online work.

The trio hopes to raise their lofty Kickstarter goal to pay for more prototypes before settling on a final product and shipping to Kickstarter supports and potentially new customers by the holiday season in December.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A lot of people don’t carry cameras anymore, now that they have smartphones. But that means that you could miss opportunities to capture great moments, especially when you’re missing out on the great optical zoom available on some more expensive or specialized dedicated camera devices. That’s what Snapzoom hopes to fix with its binocular mount for smartphone cameras, and the best part is that it’s completely universal, meaning it fits a wide variety of both phones and binoculars.

The project got started when Hawaii-based co-founders Daniel Fujikake and Mac Nguyen started using their own smartphones to film their surf escapades via a completely DIY, garage-made mounting device that they hacked together. They saw the utility, and other surfers asked them about it every time they went out, so they partnered up with a professional designer to form HI Resolution Enterprises and build a proper prototype using 3D-printed materials.

The duo took to Kickstarter to fund a production run for Snapzoom, and has already blown past its $55,000 goal in just over a week. The funding will help the two turn the 3D printed prototype into a glass-filled nylon injection molded retail product, which the company hopes to manufacture both in the U.S. and overseas.

“It’s going to be extremely tough, since it’s something that’s meant to be used outdoors,” Fujikake told me. “You can put it in your bag, you don’t have to worry about babying it, you can get it wet, you can drop it, it’s very very tough.”

Already, before even closing its Kickstarter funding, Snapzoom has had a lot of interest from well-placed retail partners, including U.S. camera equipment and accessory retailer B&H Photo. Based on funding interest and prospective retail partner enthusiasm, the team seems to have tapped a strong, unaddressed consumer desire, even if it is a bit niche. And it’s not just voyeurs who are interested; this is great for nature photography and action sports, too.

Snapzoom is looking to ship in September, and retail price for the mount is expected to be around $79.99, but currently pre-order backers on Kickstarter can get one for just $70. The team is working on stretch goals now, since it has already earned almost $10,000 more than its original goal.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While you are riding into work on your daily bike commute, why not charge your phone? There’s a bit more to it than that, but ultimately that is exactly what the Siva Cycle Atom does. A brilliant idea.

Reaching their KickStarter goal of $85,000 after only a week, the newly funded Atom is on display on the floor of Hardware Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

The Atom is a generator, complete with a detachable battery, that is fixed to the rear of your bicycle. As you pedal away, the generator is charging the attached battery. However it can also directly charge your phone too, using a smart switching system that goes back and forth between the device and the battery.

For example, if your phone is hooked up to the device it will directly charge your phone while you are pedaling, however when you come to a stop, your phone will automatically draw from the battery to keep you topped off.

Once you reach your destination, you simply detach the 1300mAh battery and take it with you for extra juice for your smartphone.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch