If you’re wanting to keep up with the latest and most exciting up-and-coming technology around, you better head over to Kickstarter. Platform to an absolute abundance of new companies pitching their gadgets and gizmos, Kickstarter has it all. Here, I’ve rounded up a few of my favourite projects this month.
Keyless entry with monkey
Sick of forgetting where you put your keys for the 47th time this week? You could just invest in a key hook, but that wouldn’t be nearly as fun or convenient as monkey. If you live in a block of flats or a gated house, monkey allows you to control access to your home via a little chip placed in your intercom. It gives you the freedom to enter without a key, based on your smartphone’s proximity, which means you can get inside easily with arms full of shopping. Alternatively, you can set a time frame to keep the door open so that people can come and go as they need to (which is super handy for deliveries and guests – no more ringing up to you!). All of this is controlled from your phone, creating a user-friendly, easy interface.
Fund date: December 6th 2023. You’ve got a couple of months to decide whether you want to be lugging your keys around for the foreseeable future.
There once existed these devices called watches, which did this wonderful job of telling us the time, long before phones came along to replace them. Generally, watches didn’t do a lot else. Then came along the smartwatches, which are essentially a hybrid between the two. So, where do you go from here with a time-telling device? BLOCKS is the answer. Touted as “the last smartwatch you’ll ever need”, BLOCKS introduces a modular approach to the watch – slot together the different modules you fancy (heart-rate monitor, an extra battery, fingerprint scanner) and you’re good to go. This project customises the watch in ways that have never been done before, and it looks very, very exciting.
Fund date: November 19th 2023. The Earlybird rewards are all sold out (unsurprisingly) but you can still get your hands on it at almost a third off the retail price.
The world is your instrument with Mogees
Ever seen a lamp-post and just wondered what it would sound like if you could play it? Luckily for us, Mogees can answer that burning question for us. Mogees is a little sensor that you can attach to your computer or iPhone which allows you to turn anything around you into an instrument. You can train the app to recognise different beats or sounds, and then assign certain notes to each. Then you can drum on your door, or strum on the bath to make sweet, sweet music. It might sound a bit silly, but it’s guaranteed to be a lot of fun too.
Fund date: November 6th 2023. You might think the cost is a little steep, but can you really put a price on playing everything around you as an instrument?
Gardening from your phone with Biopod
Smartphone controlled tech is pretty in right now (as you’ve probably noticed – two of the above projects tend to involve smartphones in some way). But what about gardening from your mobile? For those who like the idea of growing their own plants but don’t want to get their hands dirty, they should check out Biopod. The concept behind Biopod is easy – you plant the seeds, let Biopod (via a smartphone app) know what you’re growing, and then you watch it grow. Fill up the water every now and again and that’s it. Biopod allows you to programme it for a whole host of different scenarios – herbs, tomatoes, even tropical plants. It also, brilliantly, can be used as an enclosure for hundreds of different pets.
Fund date: November 3rd 2023. The first wave of Biopods are due to be shipped out in December, so why not get one as a Christmas present?
