About
ZING | Intelligent Night Light
$184,379
1,629
Individually, each Zing is an awesome, full-color, plug-in night light with smartphone control and light effects, including automatic blue light reduction to help you sleep better.
Packed with connectivity options (Bluetooth 4.2 and WiFi), Zing can act as a visual indicator for incoming calls and other smartphone events.
When used together as a system, multiple Zing lights learn and automatically illuminate your path without the need for manual configuration. Conversely, Zing can notify you of unusual and suspicious motion activities via push notifications on your phone.
With our optional (free) Zing Locator service, Zing can track & locate most other Bluetooth devices in your home with room-level accuracy.
COLORFUL
First and foremost, Zing is an energy-efficient LED night light with dusk-to-dawn light and motion sensors. Powered by 12 full-color RGB+White LEDs, each capable of over 4-billion colors and 512 levels of brightness, Zing can be as soft or as brilliant as you'd like. Individually addressable LED elements allow for a full-range of light effects, from a cozy camp fire to the mysterious northern lights.
GENTLE ILLUMINATION
When motion is detected, Zing will gently power up to 40% intensity (configurable) via its bottom LEDs to help you navigate without blinding you. It will gradually return to standby levels after motion ceases.
SMARTPHONE CONTROL
Zing's light features are fully customizable using the Zing app. Events and triggers can be assigned their own colors and effects.
AUTOMATIC PATH LIGHTING
A traditional motion-triggered night light will only turn on when you move in front and in range of its sensor. Zing is much smarter.
A pack of Zings will automatically learn and predict your entire path at night. Your midnight refrigerator run, your kid's trip to the bathroom, etc. Every Zing along your anticipated route will light up with a soft glow as soon as the first movement is detected. No more scary dark doorways and no need to reach for light switches.
Zing does this automatically by observing and learning your movement patterns over the course of 7-10 days.
In technical terms, each Zing continuously calculates the conditional probability of an imminent motion event from its own sensor inputs and those from its neighbors. When the predicted probability is high enough, Zing turns on. The entire process happens without the need for configuration and is self-correcting. If your night-time habits change, Zing will change with you.
Better still, Zing does this securely and without servers. The predictions are made individually within each Zing and never leaves your house. No wifi connection is needed or required for this to work. Nothing outside your home needs to know your activities.
ZING LOCATOR
Not only does Zing help you find your way in the dark, it can also help you find your stuff.
Many modern gadgets emit Bluetooth Smart signals as part of their normal operation, including key trackers, fitness bands, smartwatches, even your phone. Zing Locator combines these signals into a real-time position of each item and makes their locations accessible via the Zing app or voice commands through Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
Simply install a Zing in each room, configure the Zing Locator service, and effortlessly track all the gadgets in your house. Don't waste time looking for your tagged keys, wallet, purse, or smartphone in the morning. Find them in a snap with Zing.
Zing Locator works with most Bluetooth Smart devices on the market today and supports device beeping with select brands.
EVENT NOTIFICATION
Don't miss a call if you happen to leave the mobile phone in another part of the house or phone is set to vibrate.
Zing pairs with your phone to act as a visual indicator for incoming calls, text messages and many other smartphone events. Perhaps a family member is hearing impaired? Zing would make a thoughtful gift.
BLUE LIGHT REDUCTION
Zing is easy on your eyes, literally. Zing automatically reduces blue light emissions at bedtime which has been shown to help you regulate your melatonin levels and sleep better.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Zing is built with open technologies and can interface with many home automation platforms. We are committed to open and secure API access to all of Zing device capabilities. IFTTT users can expect rich integration with existing recipes. Set up Zing to work together with other smart home devices. Be visually notified when someone rings the Ring doorbell. Receive flash alerts when Nest Protect detects a CO2 or smoke emergency. Your imagination is the limit.
CERTIFICATIONS
SPECIFICATIONS
MEET THE TEAM
We are Factory Method, an Internet-of-Things design shop here in sunny San Diego. We specialize in wireless tracking systems and we love bright and shiny things.
Zing is the coolest product we have ever made and the culmination of everything we have learned. We hope you will love it as much as we do.
WARRANTY
We stand behind our product. Every Zing comes with a one-year limited warranty -- we will do a 1-for-1 exchange for any defective product within the first year. No questions asked.
PROTOTYPE GALLERY
Thank you for your support!
Risks and challenges
Bringing a new product to market is inherently risky. This is doubly true for new technology products. There is a saying in the industry that "hardware is hard" and we know this well first hand. Over the last 3 years, we have shipped 100's of thousands units, encountered many setbacks ourselves and learned, the hard way, how to anticipate and address some of these issues.
Many first-time entrepreneurs start with an idea, then quickly go to industrial design, then hardware and finally the software. This "outside-in" approach is a recipe for disaster -- software *always* take longer than expected and hardware loses luster quickly due to Moore's law.
For Zing, we chose to do things differently. We began working on Zing 18 months ago, focusing our early efforts on aspects that are less visible, difficult to quantify and harder to get right the first time: core concepts, software, firmware, and system infrastructure. We experimented with numerous designs; built prototypes with legos and Raspberry Pi; wrote and rewrote over 100k line of source code before we came to Kickstarter.
We are ready, demonstrably so: anyone can go to https://zing.fm and see our Locator service in action with an Raspberry Pi. (In fact, please do! We'd love your feedback even if you are not currently interested in Zing the night light.) The Locator service is completely free for home users. We even have an uber installation script to automate the entire process for you. AI assistant integrations with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are working right now, out-of-box with zero configuration needed.
That being said, these projects are never without risks:
- ID Risk: We have done our best to closely model the physical properties of the materials we plan to use (physics-based renderings, PBR), but the finished product may look slightly different or have different light scattering properties than some of the renderings provided here.
- Technology Risk: most of the software has been written already; almost every feature exists and been tested in isolation but there's still much to do before everything congeals into an integrated & polished consumer product.
- Supply-chain Risk: minimal to moderate. We have designed Zing with stable, well-tested components that are widely available from multiple sources. We do not expect supply problems at the projected initial-run quantities.
Lastly, beyond what's been stated above, unforeseeable issues and unusual circumstances could still occur. Should we miss projections, we promise to let you know why and make it right as soon as possible.
Thank you for your support.
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Funding period
- (42 days)