Crowdfunded gadgets you must check out – March 2020
Orbitkey Nest
Funding: US$ 457,811 pledged of US$ 25,000 goal
Link: https://dgit.in/OrbitkeyNest
The Orbitkey Nest is an aesthetically-pleasing everyday-carry-gear desk organiser that helps you declutter your desk. Sporting a premium build with a fabric underside, a leather cover and a polycarbonate shell, the Orbitkey Nest ensures that you have your everyday gadgets and gizmos tucked away neatly. The organiser is held close with the help of an elastic latex cord which wraps around a zinc alloy button clasp. The organiser also features a nifty little pen holder. The organiser is 9.5-inches wide and 4.7-inches tall and can easily fit inside any backpack and even some purses. Not only is the Orbitkey Nest portable, but it is also customisable, featuring six divider tabs (with velcro on the bottom) that you can arrange in any manner, as per your needs, within the carrying case. The organiser also comes with a built-in 10W wireless charger. This means you can charge any Qi-enabled device on the surface of the organiser, such as your smartphone, AirPods, smartwatch and more. On the rear side of the lid, there’s a USB Type-C port for the wireless charger. Aside from the six divider tabs, the case sports an organisation panel with dedicated slots for cards, small notebooks, and loose items such as SD cards, paperclips, keys and more. There’s also an extra elastic pouch on the side for extra items. Overall, the Orbitnest Key is a nifty, portable desk organiser that merges both aesthetics and functionality.
Clicbot
Funding: US$ 333,835 pledged of US$ 25,000 goal
Link: https://dgit.in/clicbot
If you were to merge robotics and modular design, you’d get Clicbot, a fully-modular and programmable robot. This smart robot is made specifically for education and STEM learning purposes. Nevertheless, it is an absolutely adorable piece of tech that looks oddly familiar (Pixar lamp, anyone?). Clicbot has a single, cycloptic eye that rests in the middle of its head which has over 200 reactions. Did we mention that these reactions are extremely adorable? Some examples include Clicbot peeking around to find you when you cover its eye, getting excited when it’s being connected to the charging station and more. It has an extremely playful nature which causes children to warm up to it instantaneously. Due to this, Clicbot is a very engaging teacher. It teaches your children how to code using an array of techniques. The first is No-Coding robotics where the child can simply record a sequence (movement) by hitting record and then manually moving Clicbot. Next, it moves on to Learning to Code where the child advances his knowledge by learning simple drag-and-drop coding (based on Blockly by Google) to program Clicbot. The third and final stage is Advanced Coder where older children or even parents can perform complicated coding using Python. As we mentioned before, Clicbot is fully modular and has over 1000 different pre-defined setups which allow it to climb walls, dance, crawl, and even serve you some coffee! You don’t even have to limit yourself to these setups, simply create your own or get inspiration from the Clicbot Community.
VOIXATCH
Funding: US$ 40,527 pledged of US$ 25,000 goal
Link: https://dgit.in/voixatch
VOIXATCH is a smartwatch. No, not your traditional smartwatch. This one comes equipped with an inbuilt Bluetooth headset which can be used to take/make calls. Each VOIXATCH comes with a customisable and detachable bezel that can be extracted from the watch and used as a Bluetooth headset. The bezel has its own integrated speaker and microphone. Detaching this bezel (headset) from the watch’s body will automatically answer incoming phone calls. Additionally, this headset comes with integrated LTE+GPS, so, you can leave your phone behind and still answer phone calls. To attach the Bluetooth bezel to your ear, you need to simply fix the support hook present on the back of the headset to your ear. The smartwatch’s bezel is customisable as well and comes in four different colours – Moonlight Blue, Platinum Silver, Modern Black, and Gold Brown. In addition to this, the watch/headset comes with premium features such as Bluetooth 5.0, fitness tracking, notification alerts, on-wrist charging (Bluetooth headset can be charged via the watch), IP67 water resistance and a dedicated app. The talktime on the headset is rated at about 3 hours, while the watch’s battery is about two days. Additionally, the smartwatch is powered by an ARM Cortex-A53 processor with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. It also features a heart rate sensor and a gyro sensor.
Dhriti Datta
Perpetually sporting a death stare, this one can be seen tinkering around with her smartphone which she holds more dear than life itself and stuffing her face with copious amounts of bacon. View Full Profile