The creators of two popular Kickstarter projects, which have each raised about $500,000 in less than a month, have joined forces after commenters on the crowdfunding site saw a connection between the two inventions.
Backers of Instacube, a OneStep-inspired 7.5-inch touch-screen photo display that will stream live Instagram feeds and Facebook photos and investors in SmartThings, a platform for connecting everyday objects like air conditioners and coffee makers to the Web, suggested the two campaigns team up to turn Android-powered Instacube into a station for monitoring and controlling various household items.
“The Instacube is a touch screen just like a mobile phone — you can unlock it and push a button to make something happen,” said SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson, whose project has sparked thousands of suggested applications from developers and backers, such as alerting city dwellers to available laundry machines in their apartment buildings.
Such events will trigger a graphic or text message to appear on the Instacube, which users can also use to make adjustments.
The mid-campaign rendezvous underscores the collaborative efficiency of the Internet. “It shows how dynamic Kickstarter is,” said Andy Butler, CEO of D2M, the design studio that invented Instacube and is based in Silicon Valley.
“They’re all the way in Minneapolis,” he said.