So it’s no surprise to find all sorts of creations providing shade and solar power more efficiently through the study of sunflowers. The “Sunflower” umbrella by Shadecraft is just the latest object to follow the sun as it arcs across the sky each day. Extending the “internet of things” smart home system to the outdoors, this umbrella does a lot more than you might imagine. For starters, the shade it provides moves to keep you cool all day long, so you’ll never have to get up and move yourself.

In addition to tracking the sun, the Sunflower harvests solar energy via photovoltaic panels and stores it to power itself. It fully charges within two hours, and thanks to its incredible battery capacity, it can function for 72 hours without sunlight. The Sunflower connects to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular data to offer users a strong internet connection outdoors.

You can use the Sunflower as a charging hub for your devices, and it’s got built-in lighting and speakers, too. That’s definitely a bonus for those of us who tend to lug a lot of stuff outside when we want to spend some time reading and relaxing. An integrated 360-degree high-definition camera captures security footage in the form of video and still images, so you can connect it to indoor security systems and keep an eye on your yard when no one’s home.

An accompanying app allows you to control all of the Sunflower’s functions right from your smartphone, or you can use voice control to deliver verbal commands. Talk directly to the Sunflower to control its movement, lighting, speakers, and other features. You can even use it to video chat with friends or livestream your activity. To top it all off, the Sunflower also functions as a weather station. Embedded sensors and motion detectors allow it to monitor weather conditions like humidity, wind, and even air pollution levels, sending alerts to your phone to keep you updated.

“Through the SmartShade app and integrated Wi-Fi, Cellular, or Bluetooth connectivity, you can play your iTunes library or jump to your favorite music app and stream directly through your SUNFLOWER,” explains Shadecraft. “Audio books, podcasts, live events, all at the touch of a button or via simple voice commands. SmartShade also controls SUNFLOWER’s lighting system. Four powerful LEDs with intensity settings you can control and schedule for optimum outdoor experiences.”

“With SmartShade, you can access insights into your outdoor world, and set up notifications & alerts — so you’ll know when to seek shade or ‘step outside’ and experience a perfect day.”

Winner of the IDA Gold Award 2017 and nominee of the Twice VIP Awards in outdoor automated devices, the Shadecraft Sunflower made its public debut at CES 2017. The company has already raised $2 million from private investors to fund production, and the Sunflower is set to be available for pre-order this fall for around $2,700, with orders expected to start shipping sometime next year.

The post Shadecraft Sunflower: High-Tech Umbrella Serves as an Outdoor Smart Home Hub first appeared on Dornob.

Mellow Sous-Vide

Pulling off the perfect meal is both easy and fun with Mellow Sous-Vide. It connects to your home Wi-Fi network and is chock-full of smart features that make cooking a total delight. Your food is kept refrigerated until cooking begins so no bacteria forms, and if there’s a weight fluctuation or food spills into the cooking water, your phone will automatically alert you. When the meal is over, Mellow asks you how it was and makes adjustments to the recipe based on your comments. It’s also energy-efficient, so you can use it as often as you want without having to worry about running up the electric bill. No matter where you are, simply use your iOS or Android phone to make adjustments to Mellow and turn it on and off.
Regularly $399, use the coupon code “SVGUY” this weekend to score $100 off your very own Mellow, plus free bags, on most major retail sites. Shipping is completely free.

Samsung’s New Wi-Fi Enabled Smart Refrigerator

If options excite you, then this product will make you swoon. This 4-Door Flex French Door refrigerator comes with two bottom compartments that can be easily be used as a refrigerator or a freezer to best meet your needs. Have Alexa lock its child safety doors or adjust the internal temperature or humidity whenever you want. Need a lot of ice for a special occasion? The fridge’s “Ice Master” produces almost 10 pounds a day and can store over 4 pounds at a time. On top of all that, it’s a beautiful ENERGY STAR-certified appliance that embodies the phrase “pretty is as pretty does!”
Regularly $3399, this smart fridge will be 35-percent off at JCPenny this Friday, bringing its price down to just $2195.

Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cooker

A certain type of cooking appliance seems to make a particularly big splash every year or so. This year, that distinction went to the Instant Pot. The unassuming little device is actually seven appliances in one: pressure cooker, slow cooker, sauté pot, rice cooker, vegetable steamer, warmer, and yogurt maker. You’ll cook everything up to 70-percent faster with the Instant Pot’s 14 smart programs, which make soup, stew, chili, and poultry preparation easy as can be. On busy days when you can’t be home, you can use the appliance’s programmable timer to delay the start of cooking up to 24 hours.
Regularly $99.99, this wonder product will be on sale for just $79.99 this weekend. If you use the code “JOY” when checking out at Kohl’s, that price will go down even further, bringing your grand total to $67.99.

LG 7.3-Cubic-Foot Self-Clean Slide-In Double Oven

This space-saving electric appliance consists of two ovens and a range that automatically adjusts burner size to fit your pots and pans. Connect it to your home Wi-Fi network and pair it with Alexa to adjust the heat, clean the oven, and make a pot of water boil faster than you could ever imagine. The ovens’ oversized windows also allow you to see your food no matter where it’s been placed inside.
Regularly $2,389.99, Best Buy is offering customers a $790 savings this Friday, bringing the price down to $1,599.99.
Remember to shop smart and check the prices at multiple retailers before jumping on a single deal. After all, competitive pricing is rampant on Black Friday.

The post Smart Kitchen Appliances You Have to Swipe Up This Black Friday first appeared on Dornob.

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The Nise Wave is a revolutionary Wi-Fi-operated smart sous-vide machine that helps you make the most of your time by automating your cooking. Designed with all you busybodies in mind, this sous-vide allows you to make gourmet food at home with just the touch of a button, even when you’re out of the house! The high-tech chef device can transform your pan of water into a smoldering, smoking cauldron of culinary magic, using smart algorithms that allow the user to schedule cooking times and making the Nise Wave the first in its field to incorporate this “set and forget it” technology.

How Does It Work?

The Nise Wave’s accompanying mobile app has hundreds of recipes already built into it, including chicken dishes, steak, vegan soups, drinks, and desserts — all of which include instructions for your preparation and directions for the sous-vide to follow. CEO Rayner Mendes explains that the company goes by the motto “it’s what you want when you want,” representative of the care-free-yet-efficient lifestyle that the Nise Wave offers. “In the past, incredible cooking has required a big time commitment, that’s the beauty of our app…by allowing busy people to start meals up to eight hours before they plan to eat them, they can arrive home to delicious food.”
All you have to do is prep the food and add it to a pan of water. From there, you just use the app to inform the Nise Wave of when you want the meal ready by. That means that you can have poached eggs ready for breakfast in the morning or a tasty salmon fillet waiting for you after your evening workout. If you want to really treat those taste buds, have the Nise Wave whip up a fruity cheesecake for dessert!

The Nise Wave uses 1200 watts of power and boasts IP67 water resistance for effortless care. To top it off, all of these features have been compacted into a streamlined body for easy storage and mobility. The sous-vide is also ideal for the environmentally-conscious, as it only uses 20 percent of the power that a standard electric stove requires. The app even includes a “share” feature, which allows foodies and sous-vide enthusiasts to share their recipes and experiences with one another and create an engaged community of budding chefs!

Who’s Behind the Nise Wave?

Nise Tech wanted to create a product that allowed busy people to enjoy the luxuries and indulgences of restaurant-quality cooking. On top of this, the company wanted to give those who lacked the culinary skills and abilities to produce high-standard meals on their own the chance to fulfill their wildest cooking dreams.

Where Can I Buy One?

The Nise Wave device is currently seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter and offering a staggering 40 percent discount to its “early bird” backers. By contrast, other Wi-Fi enabled home devices tend to start at around $199. The product is shipped with ready-to-make meal packages, which include scannable barcodes that the device can read and pre-program, reducing your overall prep time.

The post Nise Wave Personal Chef Device Makes Gourmet Cooking Easier than Ever first appeared on Dornob.

The bureaucratic pain involved in recreating that original wallet led to the extremely versatile Volterman, which, among other things, boasts a built-in alarm system so you can find it when you’ve left it behind in a restaurant. When you move out of range, a helpful warning message will be sent to your phone. If it’s your phone you’ve misplaced, on the other hand, and you can’t find it in its usual hiding place behind the couch cushions, don’t panic. Just push a button on the wallet and listen for the ringing, which it will do even if it’s on silent mode.

The Volterman will also alert you when a sticky-fingered pickpocket has their grubby paws on it. This feature is especially useful to anyone traveling outside the country, where a wallet’s contents can’t just be replaced on the fly. The smart wallet has even been equipped with a clever theft-detection camera. When the Volterman is in “Lost” mode, it’ll take a photo of anyone who opens it and email you a copy of their mug. If a thief tries to electronically steal your data or identity, they’ll be met by the smart wallet’s built-in RFID-blocking system. Ingenious!

Small but mighty, the Volterman has also been fitted with an embedded power bank, which allows you to charge your devices on-the-go either wirelessly or with a hidden cable. That means no more fumbling for chargers and searching hopefully-yet-frantically for a free outlet to use. The wallet also features GPS tracking and Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities, keeping you connected no matter where you are in the world. Say goodbye to exorbitant roaming charges.

There are three siblings in the Volterman family, and we have a feeling you’ll be reluctant to play favorites. They are the “Cardholder,” the “Bifold,” and the “Travel Wallet.” They share virtually all of the same features, though each model’s power bank has a slightly different capacity because of size differences.

The Volterman reached its $45,000 crowdfunding goal on Indiegogo in a couple of hours. Its inventors seemed to anticipate this, though, describing the wallet as “the epitome of market-leading innovation and technological advance.” They’re especially proud of its technological features, which are “all wrapped up in a slim, lightweight, and stylish design.”

“Slim” is no exaggeration. The bifold version of the wallet is only 11 millimeters thick and weighs just 120 grams. It’s also completely waterproof, in case you find yourself in torrential rain. All Volterman wallets are constructed from either genuine Nappa leather or “superior-quality” vegan faux leather, and they are also fully compatible with both iOS and Android devices.

The post Volterman: The World’s Most Powerful Smart Wallet first appeared on Dornob.

Some of us go to great lengths to forget how drab it is outside our home on a rainy day, but for those who want to celebrate the sunless sky, this device brings the weather to you. Developed by experimental Swiss studio Micasa Lab, the Nebula 12 is a cloud lamp connected to wifi that produces its own puffs of steam to mimic the weather outside.

Of course, it works for daylight-lovers as well, in its way, changing color over the course of our daily solar cycle to the transitions from reddish sunrise to purple sunsets.

“Nebula 12 can, like a natural cloud, change in color and brightness and thus can be used as a variable source of light for romantic evening meals, when doing homework, when reading or just chatting.”

Tapped into the outside world via wifi, The Nebula 12 remixes liquid nitrogen and hot water, then uses suction to keep it in place. And for those who wish to mix things up a bit, it can be manually controlled as well, or tied into the news (good for sun, bad for clouds) and so forth, too.

“In the standard mode, Nebula 12 predicts the weather for the next 48 hours. A threatening low-pressure area is announced by a red cloud, and sunshine is shown in yellow. At the same time, the user can adjust the settings and define the source of information themselves. And the best is: regardless of how dark the cloud is, Nebula 12 never brings any rain. At least, not within one’s own four walls.”

One has to wonder how it affects the feel of your home to have a cloud of liquid nitrogen steam hanging out all the time – could it produce humidity issues? But as a novelty, it’s pretty creative, and a fun way to impress your guests.

The post Lamp Made of Steam Responds to the Weather Outside first appeared on Dornob.

White walls can be a boring waste of space during the day, dull and dark by night . Why not add some color and life, use them to project your schedule, adjust your social calender, view the weather and tell time on demand? This clever little all-in-one gadget proposes to do all of the above, and perhaps even more.

Yonggu Do, Dohyung Kim & Sewon Oh fashioned the device as a simple circular attachment – an unobtrusive, wall-mounted object that is activated by touch or via remote connection. Bluetooth, WIFI, and more – these days, all easy add-ons. A music player (with laser-light display of what you are listening to) would not be difficult either.

A series of lasers project digital information onto the flat surface surrounding the sundial, using familiar frames of reference for things like numerals one expects to see at a certain angle from center (making it easier to read from a distance, knowing the positions of hours and minutes and the relative size of the hands).

The post Digital Sundial Shines Time on Walls with Bright Laser Lights first appeared on Dornob.

Non-morning people will appreciate this double-dose wake-up call: a jolt of java mixed with your favorite tunes to rise and shine with. Android-based smart technology scans the packets you put in, tell you about the tastes, smells and origins of the beans – and can be set to play whatever music you want based on the kind of coffee you brew.

Designed by In-oh Yoo & Bong-yup Song for Metatrend Institute, this technology may be a bit ahead of its time – but not too far. It requires an (ideally continuous) internet connection to download the information to your digital coffee maker, and music as well unless you add your own mobile device into the mix.

Aside from the clever potential for cross-branding your favorite brands and brews, there is something to be said for the association of sound, smell and taste tied up in this espresso machine smart device that builds lasting connections between all three to reinforce your ritual wake-up routine.

Whether we need another multi-functional box is one question, but as remixes of basic appliances go it is great to see someone attempt to combine elements that play on multiple senses at the same time.

From the designers:

“As we all know, in Italy and in the rest of the world, coffee if one of the most diffused and appreciated drink. Prepared with the classic pot or with the modern coffee machine, it has a unique taste and an unmistakable aroma. Metatrend Institute created a new way to enjoy coffee, a perfect union beetween taste and technology. Using Android operating system, they created a coffee machine prototype named “Aspresso” that can read QRcode.”

“The QRcode (“Quick Response Code”) or QRC is a 2d bar code relievable with a simple reading software. It is decoded than transformed into a link that can be immediately opened by our browser. Connecting a smartphone, Aspresso can recharge it, make coffee and read the QRCs on the capsule and so reproduce information on the taste and aroma of the coffee and a specific music for every chosen pack. When coffee becomes art in music …”

The post Robotic Brew: Android-Based Musical Coffee Machine Idea first appeared on Dornob.