4 Kickstarters That May Be the Future for Smart Homes

Once upon a time, the development of the devices that loom large in our everyday lives was restricted entirely to the domain of corporate engineering and marketing teams.

Crowdfunding has torn down these walls, bringing average consumers into the innovation process and allowing them to invest in the products that pique their fancy.

Kickstarter is the grandfather of crowdfunding sites, so we took a look at the current lineup of projects and found a few that may become mainstays in smart homes…with your support.

Bright Light

Smart speakers, like Amazon’s Echo series or Google’s Home, are certainly the rage these days, but some technophiles may prefer a more elegant solution than what is currently available on the market—one that takes well-being into account.

The COVI is a speech-enabled light and and open-source home hub that aims to free you from excessive interaction with your smart phone.

While other smart speakers resemble something akin to the world’s most advanced pepper mill, the COVI is a full-bodied lamp of sand-blasted glass, constructed by highly skilled German craftsmen, that achieves a look that is both modern and minimal.

But the COVI is more than just a pretty face. The intelligent lamp takes dictated direction and its open-source nature allows the COVI to interact with all your home’s other smart devices and apps—from lights and locks to thermostats and playlists.

If you’re a fan of Alexa, Amazon’s A.I. assistant that powers the Echo products, you can easily integrate it into the COVI—with one nifty additional trick. COVI allows users to cut the "Alexa" voice prompt for calling the assistant to action, thus cutting down on pause time and enabling a more "natural" conversation with your smart lamp.

The COVI also features a few unique traits befitting its nature. For example, the lamp will learn your circadian rhythms and adjust the strength and glow of its light throughout the day to match your schedule.

To date, the COVI has smashed its initial goal—$131,324 of $80,009—with 20 days remaining as of July 17, 2017, but if you’d like to be an early adopter, you can pledge here.

Magic Mirror

Smart mirrors are a growing market in the field of intelligent in-home products, but we’re yet to see one that is as simple, straightforward and well-suited for a sizable family as the MirroCool.

This smart surface realizes the reflected individual via proprietary facial recognition technology and then, post-pairing with the user’s mobile device, presents important information—emails, calendar items, app notifications, texts, weather, traffic—in an unobtrusive manner so you can prepare for your day as you primp and preen.

There is no limit to the number of registered users MirroCool will recognize, so if your living situation involves two or two dozen, everyone will be treated to a specialized shiny surface experience.

And because there is nothing more obnoxious than multiple sets of fingerprints on a mirror, MirroCool is completely controlled by gesture commands—wink, blink, smile and head shake your way to control this smart mirror.

Best of all, MirroCool comes equipped with an HD camera that can be enabled to post mirror-shot selfies directly to your social media channels, allowing you to start that "What I’m Wearing Today" photoblog you’ve been dreaming of.

To date, the MirroCool has passed its initial goal—$56,878 of $50,000—with 38 days remaining as of July 17, 2017, but if you’d like to get in on the action, you can pledge here.

Intelligent Scent

If you’re looking for a smart home device whose primary purpose is not time-saving functionalities but rather imparting a sense of well-being, perhaps consider pledging to support Pium.

Billing itself as "your personal aromatherapist," Pium aims to automatically fill your space with intelligently designed fragrances throughout the day.

Consisting of a smart scent diffuser, proprietary fragrance capsules (featuring 100% organic essential oils), and an accompanying app, Pium builds a profile of your preferences and schedule and dispenses scents accordingly: An enlivening quaff for when you arise in the morning. A focusing fragrance for your productive hours. A relaxing tone for the end of the day.

Of course you can manage your scent destiny entirely if you so desire, schedule diffusing time via the app or ordering them on demand. Pium will even allow you to construct your own custom-fragrance palette from their collection of essential oils.

The Pium plans to pair with just about every smart device on the market, so you can tap or speak your olfactory orders as you please.

To date, Pium has not met its initial goal. It currently has $16,138 of $48,000 pledged with 46 days to go as of July 17, 2017. You can pledge here.

Sleep Smarter

Every day brings a new study about the importance of sleep to maintaining a happy and healthy life.

As such, "sleep hacking" has become the latest frontier for smart product developers. From wearables, like the AppleWatch, to bedding, this growing market is trying to figure out how to optimize our downtime.

Enter the Neuroon Open, the "world’s smartest sleep assistant"

This sleep mask runs a range of functions to help you analyze and optimize your sleep—as well as a few more unique features.

Featuring an electroencephalogram (EEG) built into the sleep mask, the Neeuron Open is able to monitor your brain’s electrical activity during your dormant hours. It provides this information, along with a number of other sleep-focused data points in the accompanying app—providing the consumer with perhaps the most in-depth sleep analysis available on the market. But because everyone doesn’t have a doctorate in sleep studies, Neuroon will also provide data-driven tips on improving your slumber, e.g. "eat a lighter meal tonight" or "go to bed 50 minutes earlier."

In addition to data capture and analysis, the Neuroon provides some immediately practical sleep aids by communicating with the other smart devices in your bedroom. If the Neuroon recognizes that you are getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom for example, it will activate your lights at a dim level to help the process—avoiding the sleep-shattering full glare of flipping the light switch.

Neuroon can also combine with your room’s lighting and your digital music library to run a meditation program, which it will also capture and analyze. And perhaps most interestingly, it will leverage the sense-focused stimuli to attempt to induce lucid dreaming, if you so desire.

The Neuroon Open has blown past its initial goal—$250,377 of $100,000—with 9 days left to go as of July 17, 2017, but if you wish to be on the cutting-edge of sleep science, you can pledge here.