The festive season is coming, and Ukrainians are drawing up lists of presents to buy for friends and loved ones.
Luckily, present-hunters in Ukraine are spoiled for choice when it comes to picking gadgets as gifts: the country has a host of hardware startups producing ingenious gadgets and toys for Christmas or New Year’s.
LaMetric Time
LaMetric Time is a smart clock that combines a stylish design with sophisticated electronics.
It can be set to display its owners’ social network notifications, email inbox, weather forecast and other information on its large-pixel display. The clock can also be connected to apps like Google Calendar, CrossFit, Apple Store, IFTTT, and others.
Simple tools like a stopwatch, alarm and others are also built-in.
The clock also works with a range of other gadgets, drawing information not just from the internet, but from its surroundings, such as air temperature and humidity.
LaMetric Time
The main feature, however, is called “clock faces” – the feature that won it the prestigious Red Dot designers’ award in 2016. Clock faces are emojis depicted on the screen. They can be simple Lego or Minecraft heroes, logos, symbols or other images, including customized ones created via the LaMetric app.
The clock adjusts its brightness automatically, reacting to lighting conditions.
And each button on the clock’s body can be programmed individually to carry out specific tasks, such as calling a taxi, ordering a pizza or switching lights on and off.
LaMetric Time: $199 at lametric.com
Pixio
Ukrainians have made something that might well become the successor to the hugely popular Lego and Meccano toys — a set of building blocks called Pixio.
The ingenious toy consists of small plastic cubes with built-in magnets that allow them to stick together.
The colorful 8×8-millimeter cubes weigh just over 1 gram each, and stick to the sides of other blocks by magnetic attraction. The polarities of the six magnets inside the blocks are so arranged that the cubes can be connected to each other in any configuration. The cubes come in 16 colors.
Pixio
A winner of prestigious Red Dot Design Award, the toy might be an especially appealing present to those who loves technology, design, and most of all — computer games, including Super Mario and the indie hit (and now Microsoft-owned) Minecraft.
Pixio has an app with manuals that shows users how to put together models using the blocks — from Pokemons’ Pikachu to Steve, the hero of Minecraft.
The app also allows users to model themselves in varying levels of detail using Pixio blocks.
Pixio: $5–80 at pixio.site
Hushme
Hushme is a Darth Vader-style mouth mask that makes one inaudible to other people when wearing it.
The absurd-looking Hushme, a hands-free Bluetooth device, fits over its users’ mouth and muffles their voice. The idea is to make sure nobody in an open-space office can overhear another person’s phone conversation.
The device cuts out voice sound in two ways: by noise blanking and noise masking. The first is simply the muffling effect achieved when the device is worn. The second is when the device’s built-in speaker plays various sounds while one is talking.
While the later hardly achieves the goal of making the user inconspicuous, it does keep conversations private by drowning out the user’s voice. There are a variety of sounds, from the more “serious” ones like wind or ocean waves, to “fun” ones like the breathing of Star Wars villain Darth Vader or beeping of the robot R2D2 from the Star Wars films.
Hushme works with an app by which users can choose these sounds and automatically adjust their volume. It also comes with wireless earbuds and a built-in microphone.
Hushme
According to its developer, people on the other side of the phone conversation will hear the user even if they’re in a very noise environment.
The gadget’s battery will power the device for about 10 hours on one charge.
Hushme: preorder for $189 at gethushme.com
Pix
Pix is an urban backpack with a built-in digital display.
The display on the backpack has large, chunky pixels, but it great for showing simple animated art, images.
It connects to a smartphone and can change the picture shown via a mobile application. Pix’s users can choose to display pictures and animations (like emojis) from the app’s library or create their own art.
Besides images and animations, Pix can be used for playing simple games, displaying widgets, and even showing notifications from social media, email apps.
The backpack works if connected to a power bank, including the one Pix sells as an extra for $39. As it turns on, it pairs with the smartphone and can be used via the Pix’s app.
Pix
Pix is shock and water resistant, and keeps working even in heavy rain, or if it’s dropped or hit, the makers say.
The gadget makers say the idea of the backpack is to give people an opportunity to share their emotions, feelings and preferences in real life.
Pix: preorder for $208 at pix.style
SolarGaps
For those looking to switch to using more “green” energy, SolarGaps is a great choice. These are solar energy blinds for windows that generate electricity for a household. Simply plug a device into the blinds’ power socket, and solar energy starts to flow.
Once installed on a window, the smart blinds with their built-in solar panels can generate over 100 kilowatts of energy a month – that’s roughly the amount of energy consumed by each Ukrainian citizen every month.
The energy generated can also be stored by nearly any battery pack to serve as an emergency backup.
SolarGaps
The smart blinds automatically track the sun and rotate accordingly. Controlled from users’ smartphones, Google Home or Amazon Alexa, they can also be used as an optical alarm in the morning – opening when the sun rises.
SolarGaps: $500–$1,000 at solargaps.com
Senstone
Senstone is a recording device that promises to make note-taking a breeze. It records and organizes voice memos, without the need for any fiddling around with a smartphone.
The size of a bottle cap, the recorder can be worn as a pendant, clip or a bracelet. Recording starts with one tap on the wearable. Voice notes are stored on a paired smartphone and backed up to a cloud service.
Senstone
The cloud software platform also converts the voice memos into text and extracts keywords. The text later appears in the Senstone application or in a popular third-party app of one’s choice, for example, Evernote or Trello.
The gadget works in 11 languages and promises at least 95 percent accuracy in text transcription.
The device also works when it is not connected to a smartphone – it is able to record up to two-and-a-half hours of audio when offline.
Senstone: preorder for $129 at senstone.io
The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.
