Welcome back to This Week in Kickstarterland. It’s a huge episode because I was sunning myself in the Bahamas last week. This week’s standouts are a bunch of food related projects, brilliant smart luggage and some photography products.

Trunkster – Seriously cleverly designed luggage.
Imp – Another Pi clone.
Flow – A bluetooth rotary dial with gesture and touchpad controls.
Printed Light – An LED desk light with gesture control.
iMovR Omega – Another standing desk. This time with a tilted keyboard tray.
Readydesk – Yet another standing desk, this time under $150.
Versa Bricks – LEGO bricks that connect to Hot Wheels, K’nex and alike.
MagSphere and MagBounce – Rubbery flash diffusers and bouncers for your SLR.
ClockOne – ePaper wall clock. What a great idea.
Lumera – Pretty spiffy camera add-on adds wifi, BLE, remote live view and control, timer lapse, one-click share, usb storage and other stuff.
Thingsee One – A very expensive sensor device for paranoid parents and other hackers. Wifi, bluetooth and 2G GPRS.
Memo Box – Connected medication box that reminds people to take their medication.
Point – Stalking your Airbnb guests.
SnapJet – Poloroid printer for any smartphone by using screen capture.
Lumino – Connected light switch. Really not sure what to think of this but the audience is certainly not listening.
iPin – Fricken laser beams from your iPhone.
Lantern – Satellite connected, solar charged, information device. This would make a great propaganda distribution device.
Flic – Bluetooth connected button for when picking up your phone is too much like hard work.

Food, glorious food

MAID Oven – Finally, a connected microwave oven! I am not sure I want to get recipes from my microwave (how stupid is this photo!?) but it’s good to see some innovation.
Tim3 Machin3 – Smart (but not connected) rice cooker, slow cooker and steamer. Excellent price point.
Pantelligent – Bluetooth connected frying pan. Could be interesting if they can actually deliver.
B4RM4N – Connected cocktail shaker and mixer. Because mixing drinks is too hard without technology.
Piconizer – Extra storage for your iDevice. Clever guys if they actually nailed this but the photos and videos are a bit vague.
Root – A connected food grower for people who don’t want to eat farmed vegetables.
Plantui – Another food grower that is going to change the world. Ho hum.

Left fielders

MoonTracker – No, this doesn’t track the moon. It matches women’s cycles to the moon.
6th Finger – For smartphone gamers who need to take a break once in a while. WTF?
Doorbell Phone – Connect your doorbell to your old analog phone ringer. This might have been worth doing about 10 years ago but who has any analog phones lying around anymore?
HUM – An intelligent vibrator thats going to make the world a better place and your man irrelevant.

Shitstarters

Flat Attack – Another battery charger this time claiming 60 minutes talk time on a single AA battery. Worst campaign I have seen in a while.
Appiom – Control your kids internet access. Pity your kids are way smarter than you. These products have NEVER worked on kids over about 12 years old.
FonePhrog – Words couldn’t do this project justice. You have to watch the video to really appreciate the brilliant utility of this device.

As always, it’s limited only by your frigging imagination!

Welcome back to This Week in Kickstarterland. After last week I didn’t expect much excitement this week and I wasn’t disappointed. Who knew that things could get so bad that a popcorn bowl could be the highlight?

Popcorn Ball – Hmmm… popcorn.
Skoog – You can never have too many ways to input.
Headless Ghost – Make your computer think you have a hires HDMI display.
Ghost Drone – Another very expensive quadcopter with some smarts and no controller.
Wolfpack – Backpack and frontpack in one. Clever design if a bit dorky.
Fireside – Like Pandora for your pictures only stupidly expensive.
uHoo – Connected air quality monitor.
Open Sesame – There is nothing inherently wrong about a bluetooth garage opener, but these guys make it look just icky.

Shitstarters

IglooStay – Way to promote a cleaning service through crowdfunding. Indiegogo, you are so awesome.
VITAphone – This guy thinks if he puts more details people might believe its not just his home hacking project. He also clearly misunderstands what a stretch goal is. No, you cannot take my money.
BitBite – Sorry Etai, I am not shoving another Bluetooth earpiece into my ear to count my chews. I can already see it going down and I don’t need your help. But at least you have a big team of skinny people working for you, making great Kickstarter videos.

As always, it’s limited only by your frigging imagination!

My weekly newsletter has gotten so popular I needed to expand to a platform that could both handle the load and meet the needs of the wider community. WordPress will be the new home of Kickstarterland and, if I get it all right, the emails should still come from Mad Mimi.

Each week I trawl through the technology projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and pick out the most interesting. I break them down into Kickstarters, Shitstarters and Left Fielders. I might write a few words of opinion on them but generally I leave it up to you to explore.

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Welcome back to This Week in Kickstarterland. It has been a bumper week with a bunch of coffee projects and plenty of Shitstarters to poke your stick at.

Brick-R-Knowledge – This is what you get when you ask German engineers to copy littleBits. Holy crap.
Wigl – It’s a novel idea but should be a Maker Shed kit for $25.
Puck – An IR blaster with BLE for $25? Pretty sure he can’t be making money.
SmartMat – Now yoga snobs can be yoga nerds.
Mooltipass – A hardware password store with smartcards AND pins. I think this may be going just a bit too far. None the less, for the paranoid, it looks pretty impressive. But as a bonus, it’s also an Arduino shield?!?!?
Aviador – A genuinely pretty design with over the top features. But I particularly like the thief tracker … so long as you stay within range of the nasty thiefs.
Eva – Someone has finally built a connected shower!
Cocoon – Yet another video security system with a video that looks/sounds like an Apple ad so it MUST be good.
Shuttereaze – Last week it was blinds, this week its motors for shutters. At $40 per shutter you better not want to connect your whole house.
Walkabout – Everyone should have one of these. The challenge is working out which diseases/bacteria are NOT collected in the filters. Do you win a prize if you do?
Sonic Decanter – I am not convinced of the validity of the science but I would certainly like to taste test it. This version failed to raise anything but Sonic Decanter has much better PR. Proof at last! “The backlit display is part of our design teams innovation.” I think this is code for “We bought this from a street vendor in Shenzen.”

International coffee week

Espruino Pico – A really little Javascript microcomputer.
Arist – Bluetooth coffee maker with recipies and NFC enabled glassware. Great photos, no video – unusual.
Bruvelo – These guys had the good sense to go with Wifi instead of Bluetooth but oddly chose Ayla.

A little out of left field

Hardcore – The first first person POV feature film. Pretty crazy stuff.
Lily Cup – I didn’t even know menstrual cups where a thing. But I could resist quoting “You literally forget you are on your period.”

Shitstarters

Emospark – Even the demo videos are terrible. Who would back this shit?
Blackhawk – I can’t think of enough ways to say “no”!
Ivi – WTF?
Vyoo – Why do people think they can say “The Worlds First” and people will believe it? This is just a Chinese knock off, some annoying music and terrible Photoshopping.
Comb720 – Who does this guy remind you of?

As always, it’s limited only by your frigging imagination!