Tag Archives: Smart Design

Smart collar lets you protect your mental health in public

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If you’ve ever suffered a panic or anxiety attack while in public, you know how hard it is to be able to find a “safe space”. Sometimes all you need is a place to get away to breathe and ground yourself. But if you can’t find such a space, you’d want to crawl inside your shirt or something, which you really can’t literally do. This concept product will let you do that, crawl inside the cowl or high-neck collar and give you the privacy you need at the moment.

Designer: Maria Rybina

VOL. is a smart high-neck collar that you can wear every day or when needed and gives you personal space and privacy even in a public setting. When not needed, it can just be worn as a simple collar or cowl. It is described as “comfortable, stylish, and easy to use” and based on the photo renders, it seems to be that. The moment you need a bit of privacy, or you need to evaluate your current mental health status, you can zip it up and get a temporary respite inside of it.

It’s not a magic collar, but it comes with a microphone to help you communicate with someone at the moment, dynamics, so you’ll be able to listen, and a control center that lets you do things like turn the Bluetooth connection on and off, connect to your smartphone, or adjust the volume of what you’re listening to or who you’re talking to. You get some privacy as the insulating properties of the collar can lower sound up to 12 decibels so people up to 3 feet cannot hear what you’re saying or listening to.

VOL. is made from V-Lap Fabric which is non-woven material with vertically oriented polyester fabrics. It enables the collar to absorb speech when you need some alone time in talking to your therapist, friend, or whoever it is you need to talk to. It also has a heat-saving function which will be useful during winter and months of extreme weather. You can connect it to your smartphone so you can do things like listening to music, taking calls, and monitoring your mental health.

The last one mentioned is measured through a connected app. It will measure what your voice and tone sound like and give you a report on how your mood seems to be based on those factors. How accurate that will be remains to be seen but even for its privacy features, VOL. seems to be a useful, safe space for those who may need it. Those who also find it hard to be in public spaces with other people can also benefit from it.

The post Smart collar lets you protect your mental health in public first appeared on Yanko Design.

Moonside’s latest modular smart lamp turns your wall into a living art installation

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After two successful crowdfunding campaigns, Moonside is back with a third in their dynamic smart-lamp series – this time, their focus being on modularity. If you haven’t really heard of Moonside yet, think of them as a smart-bulb with the personality of a lava lamp. I went and even got myself a Moonside Neon Lighthouse earlier last year and it still faithfully sits beside my laptop, with its deliciously blended hue of colors that turn it into an instant mood-lifter.

Designer: ZK W

Click Here to Buy Now: 12 packs for $189 $396 ($207 off). Hurry, only 5 left!

The company’s products sit at the intersection of lighting, art, and smart IoT tech. The lamps that Moonside has made in the past are quite phenomenal to look at (their diffusion material is so well-calibrated that you don’t even see the individual LEDs behind it. You just see orbs of light that intersect with each other and move around within the lamp’s form). The Hong Kong-based startup’s third product isn’t a tabletop light, however.

Modeled more on the likes of Nanoleaf (although these ones are chunkier and have much more seamless colors and patterns), the Moonside Neon Hex sits on any wall, and can be calibrated to shine in a single or in multiple colors. Moonside’s own marketplace lets you download free preset color patterns (which are shapeshifting), and each light is even equipped with an audio sensor, allowing your light installation to respond to music.

The Moonside Neon Hex is the company’s first modular setup, designed to plug into one another to create a larger installation. The collection is made up of individual Y-shaped members (although Moonside mentions that there may be expansions and newer shapes in the future) that you can join together in absolutely any orientation possible… even around corners!

You can order anywhere from a pack of 3 to a pack of 24, creating a wall-based installation that’s as big or small, or as complex or simplified as you want. The units mount on the wall non-destructively – they support both putty-based and double-sided tape mounting options, so you don’t end up ripping the paint off (or worse, the drywall) while removing your Neon Hex installation.

Once you’ve assembled your Neon Hex together, all it needs is to be plugged in via the USB-C port on the Neon Hex (you just need to plug one in, and the entire installation gets connected through that one source) using the proprietary charging cable with the built-in remote and you’re ready to go. The remote comes with a button that lets you switch the Neon Hex on or off, toggle between lighting modes, and even control the brightness. My one big gripe is that like its previous products, the Neon Hex doesn’t come with a built-in battery, although it does support being plugged into a power bank.

While the Moonside Neon Hex does come with a few built-in presets, where it really, quite literally, shines is when you connect it to your smartphone using the Moonside app. The app lets you remotely switch on/off your Neon Hex, control its brightness, choose from the 16 million hues it has to offer and even browse through Moonside’s large free marketplace of lighting patterns.

The marketplace is easily one of my favorite features on the light, as it effectively holds the power to transform the entire room’s ambiance with its hues, styles, and methodical LED choreographies. The app (which Moonside mentions is getting a massive 2.0 redesign) even lets you connect your light to your smart home, pairing it with Alexa, Siri, Google, and even IFTTT. You can grab a Moonside Neon Hex 3-pack for an early-bird price of $66, and the product begins shipping globally from May 2022.

Click Here to Buy Now: 12 packs for $189 $396 ($207 off). Hurry, only 5 left!

The post Moonside’s latest modular smart lamp turns your wall into a living art installation first appeared on Yanko Design.

An automated composting bin that makes living sustainably easy

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Want to join the reuse, reduce, recycle gang but overwhelmed about managing trash? Fear not, Sepura’s Home Food Waste device is here to make your 2020 more sustainable! This is currently the only sustainable food waste disposing device on the market that does it all to make food waste management an effortless experience – municipality authorized, septic friendly and self-cleaning!

The waste can fit all kitchen sinks and spaces also providing a connection to built-in dishwasher drains that separate food from liquid waste. It takes it one step further by also collecting the food waste from the dishwasher and a safer alternative to the traditional garbage disposal. You can store your food waste for up to 4 weeks without any odors and reduce the usage of plastic garbage bags.

Sepura Home includes features such as flood detection, autostop, and it even cleans itself quietly so you can now run it at night too – could composting be easier than this? You can use your sink to discard all foods now without stressing and let the device do the job for you – push one button and it will separate the waste into an odorless, sealed collection center in a few seconds. There is a light indicator tells you how full the collection center is, just slide out the inner compartment and dispose of the organics in your compost or curbside collection bin.

Let the composting begin!

Designer: Sepura

Et tu, Fruitay!

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Then fall Caesar! Well, obviously I’m quoting one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, but that’s only because the OXO Apple Corer by Smart Design has this dramatic flair to it. The corer literally stabs the top of the apple (or the back of Caesar, metaphorically), and then pulls the core out, before releasing it with ease, thanks to its tong-like design.

Designed for Oxo, the corer speeds up the core-removing process by allowing you to quickly eject cores from the apparatus. Plus, its one handed design means convenience of having another hand free for stirring a caramel sauce, or reading a recipe… or perhaps perusing through the immortal works of William Shakespeare?

Designer: François de Martrin-Donos (Smart Design)

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