Best Kickstarters of the month - July 2016

If you always on the lookout for the latest tech, there is no place better than Kickstarter to find some fun, innovative products. If something does catch your eye, your backing will not only help the developer see his dream come to fruition, but you’ll also be one of the first to get your hands on some cool gadgets.

There’s always something new and interesting to check out, and there are a lot as well. So, to help make your search easier, we highlight some products that we feel are worth a special mention, in this roundup of some of the best kickstarters of the month – July 2016!

Superbook

The Superbook is a device that will let you transform your Android smartphone into a laptop. This isn’t just something that acts as a middleman between your phone and laptop, but is actually more of a laptop shell. You get a display, a trackpad, and a keyboard, and on the surface it looks like any other laptop, but internally, there is no processing hardware. All of that comes from your phone, by simply connecting it to the Superbook via USB.

This is all possible courtesy of the Andromium app, that has been developed by makers of the Superbook, Andromium. Once the phone is plugged in, the app launches, and mimics a desktop setup on the Superbook, which includes your wallpaper, apps, icons, a folder management system, and even a cursor. It makes it much easier to do things like write code or edit documents, with you now able to use a full, physical keyboard and a large display, instead of a touch screen and a small smartphone display. Of course, you can also play games and do anything else that you would normally do on your smartphone as well.

You can get online using your phone’s Wi-Fi or data connection, and you can even access its Bluetooth capabilities. The Superbook will be priced at $99 when commercially available, and if you’ve already spent a lot of money on the latest and greatest smartphone, the Superbook offers a great alternative to buying a far more expensive laptop.

Andromium was looking to raise just $50,000, but they blown well past their goals, having raised over $1.5 million, with still another 16 days to go.

ZEEQ Smart Pillow

We spend close to 30%, if not more, of our time in bed, and as depressing, or fun, depending on your point of view, as that may sound, it makes you realize how important it is the we aren’t wasting that time with having disturbed sleep and being uncomfortable. That is where the ZEEQ Smart Pillow comes in, and this is a product that can do it all, including stream music, help you stop snoring, analyze your sleep, and also gently wake you up.

To start, the ZEEQ Smart Pillow can help you fall asleep by actually streaming music from your phone out of speakers that are inside the pillow. Since your ears are going to be resting on the pillow, you will be the only one able to hear the music, and this won’t disturb your bed mate either. There’s even relaxing tracks that come with the pillow, that are based on binaural beats, to help you achieve sleep faster.

Once you are asleep, ZEEQ will monitor your sleep cycles by tracking your movement, and determining when you’re in a deep or light sleep. It will also vibrate to wake you up if you have set an alarm, but it will do this intelligently, by waking you up a few minutes before your alarm if you happen to be in a light sleep cycle at the time. This helps avoid the grogginess that comes with waking up suddenly from a deep sleep. In addition, ZEEQ can listen for snoring, and it’s very precise with its measurements, down to the decibel. If ZEEQ catches you snoring, it’ll gently vibrate to encourage a new sleeping position.

Of course, a pillow can be as smart as it wants, but wouldn’t be a great pillow if it wasn’t comfortable, and the ZEEQ Smart Pillow seems to be so. Warrick Bell and Miguel Marrero, the creators of ZEEQ,  were seeking a goal of $50,000 and even though they still have three weeks to go, they have comfortably surpassed that goal, having raised close to $250,000.

TLS Connect

The TLS Connect is a backpack made by Twyst, that lets you keep tracking of everything you keep in your bag, and more importantly, informs you when something is removed or missing. You use a tracking app, that lets you add an inventory of up to 50 items, and by using RFID stickers, you will always know where your items are.

The stickers communicate with sensors in the backpack thanks to radio frequency identification, and uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track objects through a radio signature. You can then name each tracker depending on what item it’s on. The backpack will then monitor when each tracker is removed and send you an alert if an item is missing. You can travel back and forth with peace of mind, and avoid that paranoid last minute check to see if everything is there, without needing to even open your backpack. It also helps that the bag looks good, and has a lot of small pockets and sections to keep a lot of your things.

Twyst, the creators of TLS Connect, are looking to raise a substantial amount of money, with a goal of $375,000. They’ve raised only close to $40,000 so far, but with 25 days to go, there is still plenty of time.

Das Keyboard 5Q

The Das Keyboard 5Q is a premium feeling, Open API, RGB mechanical keyboard, and the idea behind this product is that, instead of having tons of alerts, reminders, and alarms popping up on your phone or other websites, you can simply keep track of notifications by using the color of the keys.

This alert can be anything on the internet, including emails from your boss at work, or even a new upload from Android Authority on YouTube. You can link this alert to a key or multiple keys on your keyboard and then customize the color of it. You can also set up calendar events and notifications, and using this system, you can keep track of exactly how far away an upcoming event is, without really thinking about it.

You can do this for messages from certain contacts, or even fun things like have the keyboard light up in celebration when your favorite sports team scores, and the possibilities are endless. The funding period for this project is already over, with the developers raising over $530,000. That goes far beyond the original $100,000 goal that they had, and the great news is that we can hope to this keyboard be available commercially quite soon.

So, there you have it for this roundup of some the best kickstarters this month! If these products, or any others, have piqued your interest, do let us know in the comments section below.

SEE ALSO:

• Crowdfunding project of the week