Tag Archives: cube

These Matter-enabled modular cube lights are perfect for gaming, music, and smart-home setups

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I appreciate when products are functional and no-nonsense at the same time. What else do I say about a modular, multi-functional set of cube-based lights that are quite simply called Cube? Meet the Yeelight Cubes, a set of magnetic, modular, and IoT-controlled lights that can be used for a variety of scenarios. Whether you’re a gamer or YouTuber looking to RGB-ify your space, a film nerd who’d like a backlight for your TV so your wall can color-match your movies, an audiophile who wants his room’s lighting to vibe to his music selection, or just an IoT enthusiast who wants to tinker with modular lights to build out different smart home products, the Cube’s laundry-list of features has something for you. With three cube variants – a Matrix Cube or text and symbols, a Panel Cube for lights and gradients, and a Spotlight Cube for shining light on surfaces like your wall, the Yeelight Cubes give you the ability to build out your lighting rig. Each cube comes with a modular design featuring pogo pin connectors and magnets that let you snap cubes together. A base unit lets you connect your creation to a power source, and mobile and desktop apps give you immense amounts of control over your newly built lighting setup. See? Functional and no-nonsense…

Designer: Yeelight

Click Here to Buy Now: $198 $310 (36% off) Standard Kit with 4 Matrix Cubes + 1 Panel Cube + 1 Spotlight Cube + 1 Base & Adapter
Hurry! Just 7 days left!

The Yeelight Cubes are both customizable and incredibly capable, with their ability to transform into just the kind of light you’re looking for. The standard bundle of cubes comes with 4 matrix cubes, a panel cube, and a spotlight cube (like the setup shown above), letting you build out basic tools like a clock, music equalizer, notification machine, or any other type of device you want. Add additional cubes to the mix and you can get even more complex with your creations, building out 8-bit signboards, massive RGB ambient lights, or an entire discotheque setup that responds in real time to the music you play. That cheap Tiktok sunset lamp has nothing on the Cube’s dynamism and range of possibilities.

The three cubes form the framework for the Yeelight modular system. Like if LEGO met light!

What makes these lights more interesting than your average household LED bulb is their ability to be just the kind of lights you want them to be. Not only do you get to snap them together piece by piece to build the arrangement you need, you can activate/toggle them in a variety of ways. If you’re looking for just ambient colors, there’s a bunch of themes on the app. A DIY painter lets you paint each individual pixel on the Matrix block, and smartphone and desktop apps let you configure the Cube lights to work just how you want them to. Moreover, the Yeelight Cubes are IoT-ready and Matter-compatible, which means they can integrate into your smart home ecosystem of Matter-enabled products, and can be even activated via voice commands.

Immensely configurable thanks to its desktop Yeelight Station program and the smartphone app, the Yeelight Cubes can be programmed to do things like mirror the colors on your monitor/screen, react to music playing on your smart speakers, or even respond to your gameplay by connecting to it through programs like Razer Chroma or Overwolf. The smartphone app lets you tap into a variety of presets and dynamic themes, including giving you the ability to customize color and LED-paint the Cubes with your own colors, gradients, and shapes. The app even gives you simple controls to turn your Cube arrays into table clocks, calendars, and more.

Setting up your Cubes are a breeze as they simply snap and orient just the way you want them to. Given their power requirements, you can snap a maximum of 6 cubes to one base unit and plug them into an outlet. Any additional cubes will require an extra base and a secondary power outlet. You can then hop onto the Yeelight Station desktop app or the smartphone app to set your modules up to behave the way you want, or integrate them with your smart-home thanks to its Matter certification. Compliance with the Matter IoT standard makes the Yeelight Cube compatible with home assistants like Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Home Assistant, and more. The Yeelight Cubes run Bluetooth 5.1 and 2,4GHz WiFi to give them their broad connectivity.

Unlike other smart light solutions from brands like Nanoleaf, Govee, or Philips Hue, the Yeelight Cubes boast a kind of versatility and modularity that’s difficult to achieve otherwise. With matrix, panel, and even spotlight cube variants, you can achieve any kind of light-based setup you’re looking for, and with Matter compatibility, your Yeelight Cube setup becomes a part of your smart-home experience, so you can fire up responsive disco-lights while listening to Miley Cyrus’ 80’s inspired hit Flowers, or a backlight for your desktop monitor while you play Elden Ring or while you watch movies and documentaries online.

The Yeelight Cube comes as a $198 bundle of 6 lights, including 4 matrix cubes, a panel cube, and a spotlight cube, along with the connector base and power adapter. Individual add-on cubes can be added to your pledge for a price.

Click Here to Buy Now: $198 $310 (36% off) Standard Kit includes 4x Dot Matrix Cube + 1x Panel Cube + 1x Spotlight Cube + 1x Base & Adapter
Hurry! Just 7 days left!

The post These Matter-enabled modular cube lights are perfect for gaming, music, and smart-home setups first appeared on Yanko Design.

Ember, the smart coffee cup maker, enters the healthcare field with refrigerated vaccine shipping boxes

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The brand synonymous with keeping your coffee hot also wants to ensure that vaccines and other critical medicines are safely transported in the perfect cold environment.

To be honest, although the use-cases seem vastly different, Ember’s company mission statement remains the same – to harness the power of temperature control to transform how the world eats, drinks and lives. The California startup made its mark with the eponymously named Ember Mug, a slick, award-winning temperature-controlled beverage mug designed in collaboration with Ammunition Group. However, with Ember Health, the company embarks on a new venture that runs parallel to its Drinkware brand. Its debut product, the Ember Cube, is a self-refrigerated, cloud-based, trackable shipping box that’s ideal for the cold-chain logistical requirements of medicines and vaccines. Designed to be effective but also be durable and reusable, the Cube is set to offset nearly 3000 tonnes worth of medical shipping containers from entering landfills… in just the first year of its use.

Ember’s experimentation with developing battery-powered heated mugs for coffee ended up directly influencing and informing its healthcare product. The Ember Cube uses the same microprocessors, sensors, and algorithms found in the Ember mugs, but flips the parameters by ensuring the contents within stay cool instead of warm. It uses a vacuum-insulated design, lined with phase-change gel-packs on the inside that help the container’s contents stay 41°F degrees for up to 72 hours, even in warm desert-like climate conditions. However, that’s what helps the boxes retain their cool temperature. What actively cools them is a vented refrigerating system, where multiple boxes plug into a specialized rack with enough breathing room to allow air to flow through. To actively cool each box, a refrigerated mixture of water and ethanol is passed through the phase-change gel packs, bringing their temperature down to the desired value. Each individual Cube is also cloud-connected and trackable, offering a unique advantage over current traditional medical shipping boxes, while practically weighing the same as them.

The Ember Cube’s design process, described in vivid detail by Fast Company, was a bit of a challenge, considering the most obvious way to go about it was to create a plastic outer housing with a foam-lined interior that would help absorb shock and protect the precious vials on the inside. The problem with this, mentioned Ember founder and CEO Clay Alexander, was that the plastic boxes would end up getting horribly scratched and scuffed during the logistical process, looking terrible after just a few shipments. The less-obvious alternative was, however, to flip the materials inside out and use a foam exterior. The Cube’s black-box-inspired exterior now uses EPP (Expanded PolyPropylene), the same material used on the inside of bicycle helmets. This material is wonderful at absorbing shock and taking on impact, making the boxes act “like a rubber bouncing ball”, according to Alexander. “If I drop this box on its corner, there are several inches of EPP foam, and it compresses like a spring, and bounces back.”

The Ember Cube truly is a marvel of modern design and engineering. Its internal tracking systems allow you to remotely monitor its location as well as each individual cube’s temperature and humidity. The Cubes can comfortably survive a 72-hour journey, allowing them to be shipped by road, sea, or even air to any location, and once they’ve been received and their contents extracted, a simple ‘Return To Sender’ button lets the Cube alert the carrier for a pickup, while automatically generating its own shipping label and displaying it on the electronic ink display on the front. Considering how critical medical shipping can be, the Ember Cube ensures a snag-free, lag-free efficient shipping process from start to finish!

The Ember Cube comes in partnership with Cardinal Health, one of the largest distribution companies in healthcare, with a yearly revenue of $162 billion through shipping medical supplies and prescription medication to hospitals and drug stores (1/3rd of that business comes from CVS). Cardinal Health aims to have the Cube reach critical mass by the end of 2022, practically replacing up to 7 million pounds of packaging waste each year, including single-serve cardboard boxes, styrofoam protectors, and disposable ice-packs.

Designers: Ember Health & Cardinal Health

The post Ember, the smart coffee cup maker, enters the healthcare field with refrigerated vaccine shipping boxes first appeared on Yanko Design.

The world’s first carbon concrete building marks a milestone achievement in materials engineering!

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Formed from the dense carbon mesh and concrete cast, the Cube will comprise of two main components.

Henn, an architecture firm based in Germany, recently unveiled the concept for the world’s first building made from carbon-reinforced concrete in close collaboration with researchers at the Technical University of Dresden (TUD). The so-called Cube will primarily function as an exhibition space and research facility for the university’s students, and will also house a classroom and small kitchen. Formed from the dense carbon mesh and concrete cast, the Cube will comprise of two main components, a precast box that will make up the floor and walls, and a double-curved roof, twisted from the bendable carbon-reinforced concrete.

The Cube will function as a central hub for university students where they can gather for research and learning. Researchers from TUD have been researching the functionality of carbon-reinforced concrete since 1998. Now, in collaboration with Henn Architekten, the newly developed concrete building material can be put to the test. Carbon-reinforced concrete essentially replaces steel rebar with carbon fibers to maintain concrete’s industrial strength while reducing the amount of concrete used for construction.

Henn describes, “Carbon concrete could contribute to more flexible and resource-saving construction processes, and switching to carbon concrete could reduce the CO2 emissions from construction by up to 50 percent.”  The Carbon Concrete Composite is developed through a process of thermal decomposition called pyrolysis that binds together carbon fibers to produce carbon fiber yarn, which creates a dense mesh that unites and strengthens the concrete. The removal of steel rebar makes carbon-reinforced concrete four times lighter than traditional concrete building material. Carbon-reinforced concrete also lasts longer since the carbon mesh is rust-proof and its technical makeup inherently evades the threat of oxidation. Inside, the Cube houses a single classroom, research facilities, an exhibition space, and a small kitchen.

The single unit of carbon concrete proves the versatility and malleability of the building material during the building’s development stages. “The benefit is that you can make the concrete much thinner while being able to carry heavy loads, so you can design completely different shapes. There are some research examples of super-thin concrete building components or benches or reinforcements. The aim is to get away from the huge amounts of concrete that are being used today.”

The Cube’s final form merges its ceilings and walls into a single unit, as Henn explains, “The design reinterprets the textile nature of carbon fibers through the fluid merging of ceiling and walls in a single form, suggesting a future architecture where environmentally conscious design is paired with formal freedom and radical rethinking of the most basic architectural elements. Wall and ceiling are no longer separate elements but functionally merge into one another as an organic continuum.” Ditching the rigidity of steel rebar for more versatile building material like carbon-reinforced concrete allows architects to design structures in new shapes and with fewer structural parameters. Additionally, the lightweight nature of carbon-reinforced concrete means less building material used and CO2 emissions released during construction.

Designer: Henn Architekten and the Technical University of Dresden

This side table is also a powerful 200W high-definition sound system!

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It may look like a demure little table for your coffee cups and magazines, but the Cube was designed to pack a punch. Sitting within its spectacular hand-crafted wooden frame is an incredibly powerful 200W speaker system comprising two full-range speakers and a massive double bass reflex woofer with dual aluminum vents. That’s audiophile-speak for “This table knows how to drop the bass”.

Ultimately the Cube is a uniquely expressive piece of furniture that’s more than just a surface for resting your cups. Combining patented audio-technologies into one award-winning piece of furniture, the Cube surprises with how good it sounds for a device that small. Moreover, it eliminates the need for you to even own a separate speaker set because your furniture IS your speaker set. Considering how the Cube could be used by regular people as well as audio-enthusiasts, it comes outfitted to connect to a variety of devices. It has built-in Bluetooth, which means you can hook your phone, tablet, or even laptop to it, while the option of analog RCA connectivity, digital optical input toslink (DAC 24-bit 192Khz), and a 3.5mm input means the Cube could be hooked to a host of external devices like your television or even vinyl player. The Cube’s upper surface is perfect for resting your phone, placing a mini bonsai planter, or just stashing magazines. If you want to use it as a table to keep your coffee, you’d best use a stable cup and a coaster, because the Cube’s control panel sits on the top too, allowing you to play with the volume, bass, and treble. There’s even a shelf below the audio unit, for storing larger piles of magazines and books.

Each Cube comes meticulously hand-crafted in the Spanish and French Basque Country regions, close to La Boite’s company headquarters. Although they come outfitted with spectacular sound-systems, the Cube’s primary role really is to look like high-end furniture too… to that end, the Cube table features a variety of styles including dark and light wood while also using materials like leather trims, metal accents, and even a variant with a Corian counter-top for that faux-marble effect. Given how exquisitely they’re built, the Cube doesn’t come cheap. Each unit retails for €1290 ($1531), and the company goes as far as to offer free shipping in France and the rest of the EU as well as an international 3-year warranty on the entire unit.

Designer: Samuel Accoceberry for La Boite

Forget the Rubik’s Cube… this origami-inspired shape-shifting cube is the most entertaining toy you’ll see

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I’d totally understand if you decided to watch the video above on loop instead of reading what I have to write. Nothing I can say will ever match up to how entertaining the Shashibo Cube is to look at. Designed in the avatar of a 3×3-inch cube, the Shashibo is, in fact, made from 24 different triangular segments that snap together and rotate in relation to each other using a system of internal magnets. The results, as the video above should rather appropriately demonstrate, are simply stunning. The cube bends and folds in ways that will confuse, excite, and absolutely hypnotize you. Each triangular segment rotates freely (thanks to the magnets) to create a whole variety of geometric shapes, while artwork on the cube’s outer and inner surface fold and flex as if they’re being contorted in the time-space continuum. The fact that you’ve even reached this sentence instead of binge-watching the video is frankly confusing!

Designed by Andreas Hönigschmid, the Shashibo combines his love for geometry, magnets, and art into one endlessly entertaining product. A single Shashibo cube can transform into more than 70 different shapes… a number that reaches infinity when you realize that the magnets even allow you to snap multiple Shashibo cubes together! Opening and manipulating the cube is relatively simple – start by grabbing the corners of your cube, and open it like you would a pistachio nut. The cube instantly buckles as you split it open, warping into one of its many different shapes. While the very idea of the Shashibo is to explore its intricacies and understand its complex yet delightful geometry through actual experimentation, you could alternatively download the Shashibo guide as a ‘handbook’ to help you master the cube’s infinite power! The award-winning toy comes in 7 different art-styles, and is perfect for people of all ages and walks of life, and even for the vision-impaired!

Designer: Andreas Hönigschmid

Click Here to Buy Now: $18 $20 (10% off site-wide with Coupon Code “yankodesign”). Hurry, deal ends March 31, 2021.

Shashibo – 3D Magnetic Puzzle Box

What looks like a cube becomes so much more. This patented Award-Winning mysterious magnetic puzzle box transforms into over 70 shapes. Collect and connect 2, 3, 4, or more to unlock 1,000,000+ structure designs.

Each Shashibo is powered by 36 hidden rare earth magnets.

Click Here to Buy Now: $18 $20 (10% off site-wide with Coupon Code “yankodesign”). Hurry, deal ends March 31, 2021.

This side table + speaker is every audiophile’s perfect modern home collectible

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I don’t know if there’s ever music not playing in my apartment. I even fall asleep to it. Music makes all the difference when it comes to the mood of a home. Whatever we may be listening to, the guitar plucking of folk or the upbeat tempo of disco, music fills the room and sets the tone. Just like when phonographs were the main event of a 19th-century parlor room, speakers are today’s chosen medium of broadcasting our most beloved playlists. Designing a speaker fit for today’s devotion to small-scale and wireless living, La Boite, a team of French technological and acoustic innovators, has created a wireless speaker that doubles as a coffee table called Cube.

The Cube high-fidelity loudspeaker was conceptualized and built with La Boite’s long family history committed to the “traditional high fidelity industry with the design of ergonomic ‘all-in-one’ products optimized for new technologies.” Their patented technology makes it so that from wherever the Cube high-fidelity loudspeaker, which measures 47 x 35 x 49 cm, is positioned in a room, neither the sound quality nor its volume will ever be compromised. Due to its small size, innovative design, and finely-tuned sound quality, The Cube high-fidelity loudspeaker can double as a coffee or side table sized to fit in any space ideally.

Each speaker of the Cube’s collection comes outfitted with a total power output of 200W and features three speakers, one front-facing speaker, two aluminum vent ports for bass reflex, and two rear speakers equipped with La Boite’s patent Wide Sound 2.0 immersive technology. Mindful enough to make the Cube compatible with both wireless and wired capabilities, La Boite also integrated an analog RCA input, a digital optical input Toslink, Bluetooth 4.0 Codec Apt-X built-in, and a mini 3.5mm jack input.

Designer: La Boite

Click Here to Buy Now!

La Boite’s patent Wide Sound 2.0 immersive technology was developed in their Research and Development laboratory to deliver extended stereophonic sound due to the reflection of the sound from the rear speakers on a deflector.

Additionally, each of the speaker’s control panels includes a familiar array of switches: a power button, dials for the volume, bass and treble, pairing buttons for wireless connectivity, and additional auxiliary input sources.

Finally, I can solve a Rubik’s Cube

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The Rubik’s Cube has been around for decades. I’ve toyed with the cube, probably in the very late ‘80s or early ‘90s, but never even imagined being able to solve one; from entirely shuffled, to perfectly ordered. But wouldn’t it be satisfying if I co...

The WOWCube Is a Rubik’s Cube-like Gaming System with 24 Screens

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What do you get when you combine a Rubik’s Cube with mobile gaming capabilities? The WOWCube Entertainment System, a $250 gaming platform with 8 processors powering 24 individual screens that allows players to twist, tap, shake, and tilt the unit to play games and solve puzzles. Well, consider it added to my birthday list.

The WOWCube’s developers bill the system as “the first-in-class immersive-reality innovative console and gaming platform providing a unique experience of interacting with the digital world as if it’s a real object.” So basically the lovechild of a Rubik’s Cube and Bop-It that can play smartphone games.

In addition to 3-dimensional gaming, when placed on its charger the WOWCube also doubles as a widget display, connecting to your smartphone or smart home and being able to display their information, including social media posts, weather, photos, and more. But can it slice and dice and make Julienne fries?!

I’ll be honest: I’m not the world’s greatest puzzle solver. And if I can’t peel off the screens like the colored stickers on a Rubik’s and replace them on the correct sides, I don’t think I’ll be able to solve any of those puzzle games. At least not without my patent-pending Cube Puzzle Solver. Which, yes, is the 2-pound steel hammer I borrowed from a neighbor and never returned.

[via DudeIWantThat]

This swirling orb of ice helps make your drinks look amazing and cool faster too!

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This could be the mildly delusional me speaking but oh, what I’d give to be in a crowded bar, not being able to hear myself think while sipping on an Old Fashioned and admiring the swirling orb of ice in it. As perfect as that orb does tend to look with the orange peel above it and the alcohol around it, it seems like it could be perfected, be engineered to look better, and perform better.

It isn’t often that something as mundane as an ice-mold wins a design award, but it seems like the Icy Galaxy deserves recognition. Designed to look like a beautiful wavy orb of ice, the Icy Galaxy sphere does two things – It creates an interesting interaction with the liquid it’s immersed in, especially when the liquid slides into the orb’s multiple crevasses, but at the same time, it also helps rapidly cool drinks down by increasing the icy orb’s surface area (similar to how motorcycle engines come with fins that increase their surface area allowing wind to cool them more effectively). The orbs are crafted using silicone+plastic molds that create two spheres at a time, and the resulting ice spheres look absolutely mesmerizing when suspended in colorful liquids… sort of like galaxies within your glass!

The Icy Galaxy Ice Mold is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2020.

Designers: Ladan Zadfar and Mohammad Farshad

Amazon is having a sale on all of its Fire TV streamers

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Amazon has dropped prices across its Fire TV range. These aren't the lowest prices ever, but it's a consistent cut across the board, making it a good time to buy in if you're updating your TV setup. First up, the second generation Fire TV Stick which...