With Wimbledon 2015 fast-approaching (it starts in June, in case you’ve missed that), Pulse Play felt it the perfect time to launch its crowdfunding campaign for a wearable that will not only track your physical activity, but also the score if you’re playing racket sports.
Available to back from today on Indiegogo, the Pulse Play G1 Wristband will provide live score announcements to help settle your on-court squabbles about whether you really were already on ‘deuce’ before that last shot. It’ll also store your game history and assign you a global ranking against other users once your game is over.
It’s not just for tennis though, the company says it should work just as well for table-tennis, squash, badminton and other racket sports.
There’s also a feature planned for the accompanying iOS and Android apps that lets you arrange games with people in your local area who play at a similar skill level.
In total, the project is looking to raise $75,000. The lowest pledge to secure yourself a Pulse Play G1 is $50 – for early birds – and purchases at the other end of the scale will net backers the chance to battle it out on the court with the company’s CEO and three time Grand Slam champ Andy Ram, as well as VIP passes to the upcoming US Open and French Open events.
As with any crowdfunding project, however, it’s caveat emptor on whether the project will be delivered on time, or indeed ever.
A spokesperson for the company told TNW that there are already prototype devices in existence and that Pulse Play is being backed by sFBI (Small Factory Big Ideas), an Israeli startup studio to help ensure it makes it to market once the campaign is over.
➤ Pulse Play G1 [Indiegogo]
How to check your new or replacement Note 7 won’t blow up
In case you haven’t heard, Samsung has issued an unprecedented recall on the Galaxy Note 7 , after isolated cases of phones catching fire during charging.
The company was blasted for not working with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission at first, but has now begun the process to make the recall official with the government.
Fret not, as Samsung has a couple of systems in place to tell new units apart from the old ones. It’s worth noting these instructions come from Samsung Australia, but we imagine a similar system will be in place in the US once the CPSC makes the recall official.
On the box
Note: The packaging changes are only confirmed to be happening in Australia at the moment.
The easiest method will be to just look at your retail box. New units will be identified with a circular sticker with a blue ‘S’ on it. There’s also a tiny black box on the bottom right corner of the barcode sticker, as a back up identifier.
On the phone
Samsung has built a database where you can input their IMEI (or serial number) and verify your phone comes from a safe batch.
Your IMEI is located on the box barcode, but you can also access it with a few methods on the device itself:
Go to Settings > General management > Status > IMEI information
Dial *#06# in the phone app
Look for the faint text on the bottom of the back of your device:
You can then check the database here .
Godspeed, friends.
Butterfleye’s all-singing, all-dancing smart home monitor heads to Indiegogo
Smart home monitoring cameras aren’t hard to find nowadays; there’s things like Nest’s Dropcam , Flir FX or Simplicam , to name just three.
Now, however, there’s a new contender trying to break into the home security space in the form of Butterfleye , a ‘smart’ camera that connects to your smartphone to keep you in touch with your home while you’re out and about.
While a lot of the features it offers can be found on existing devices, the company says that it’s the only one to offer all the features in a single package.
Among these key features are wireless operation (it’ll last two weeks on battery power, which is handy if your power fails) allowing you to move it around your house at will, and there’s internal storage for up to 12 hours of footage, as well as free cloud storage on a rolling 24 hour basis. If you need to keep footage for a week or a month, the company will be providing paid-for storage options, though pricing hasn’t yet been set.
Like rivals it also has movement sensors and claims to be able to differentiate between a person and an animal moving around your house, so you shouldn’t get alerts every time your dog wanders in front of its path. There’s facial recognition too, which means it can tell the difference between each member of your household and strangers, in theory.
In fact, the company says the camera will learn your habits and routines and will send smarter notifications over time. It also promises that things like tree branches blowing in the wind (or people moving on TV) won’t be reported as an alarm.
There’s also a two-way mic on board (that you interact with via the app), so you can shout at your dog to stop destroying your sofa (or alert a burglar that you’re calling the police) and it offers activity-based recording instead of continuous, to cut down on the amount of footage it captures.
Rounding off the list of notable options are tamper notifications, so that you know if someone has moved the camera or interfered with it in some way.
Before any of that can happen though, the company needs to reach its Indiegogo goal of $100,000 .
The lowest tier to reserve a camera will cost you $199 (plus $10 shipping in the US and Canada) and they’re due to start shipping in December this year. Once the campaign ends, the retail price of the Butterfleye will be around $249.
➤ Butterfleye [Indiegogo]