Christmas is over, but there’s always room in the stocking for one more gadget. In case Santa left you feeling a little disappointed, here are five great Chinese products that met their crowdfunding goal this Christmas:
The sProjector is about the size of an iPhone and very lightweight (150g). This projector, worth $190 USD, was made by a Beijing-based team. The projector supports 1,000 lumens projection and a battery boost, it can last for up to five hours of projection without external power supply. Its energy-efficient design provides an auto lamp dimming function and auto brightness adjustment function to lower the total cost of operation. The campaign closed on December 25th, and surpassed its Indiegogo goal by almost fifty times, with over $498,000 USD pledged of a modest $10,000 goal.
Shenzhen-based Seed is a smart water bottle that tells you when to drink more water. It tracks a user’s water consumption and provides reminders to meet a daily goal. The lid features an LED touch screen display, and shows the real-time water temperature when touched, as well as the percentage of daily intake consumed. Moikit app, available free on iOS and Android, integrates seamlessly with third-party apps and devices via Bluetooth, including Jawbone and Apple’s HealthKit. The battery will last over a year and can be replaced easily by users. This project doubled of its goal $20,000 USD, reaching $50,450 USD with 16 days left to go.
Conventional scanning can leave documents with flattening curves, fingerprints and other frustrating glitches. Czur Scanner makes it easier to scan pages, books, and even sculptures. Its smart algorithm can automatically flatten the curve, erase the fingerprint, purify the background, and correct the distortion. Sold at $299 USD, a fraction of price of traditional scanners, Czur Scanner is also 20 times faster. It can be also used as a video presenter by connecting the screen through HDMI. Developed by a Shenzhen-based team, the project has reached over thirty times its pledged goal, raking in $682,588 USD in funding as of December 7th.
A Shenzhen-based team created a desktop industrial robot arm, Dobot. The arduino-based Dobot Arm can perform repetitive actions like writing, printing and drawing with its 0.2mm precision mechanism. The robotic arm can be controlled by PC, app, leap motion, gesture and voice. Dobot is open-sourced and supports three types of OpenSource Firmware for special applications and developers with different programing preferences. A robotic arm sold at $499 USD, the campaign reached over twenty times their goal and completed $13,188 USD in funding as of December 23th.
These Shenzhen-based makers were passionate about bikes, and wanted to proved that helmets can be smarter. The LIVALL helmet enables cyclists to communicate with each other. The helmet comes with an app, Windbreak mic and Bluetooth Speaker, which lets users speak to other cyclists via walkie-talkie, as well as listen to music while cycling and covert messages into voice messages. When a rider falls, the G-sensor on the helmet will sense an unusual gravity acceleration and send an automatic alert to emergency contacts. Total funds of $257,835 USD were raised as of September 30th, more than 10 times their goal.
